Female ✔️

18: to be with endurance

Time has been consumed by a long while of hiking and exploring around the vast, ocean sided packland to come to this place. A true sanctuary. Nestled in the crook of the mountains, near where I had run away... A lake.

Placid and calm, so utterly different from its oceanic counterpart. The Sun feels different up here too. Warmer, the air protected from the harsher breeze by the peaks that stretch up, up, up.

Barefooted as I will always be, my mind lulls in the steadiness of the environment that's all mine. I didn't tell anyone where I went, didn't allow anyone to follow my fur. Shifted for once to walk naked along the sparse patch of clean rocked shore because the transition doesn't hurt anymore. The little slab of stone I stand on jets down two feet to meet the dark water like a wall.

Smelling of clean glaciers and fresh pine, I can't help but compare it to other lakes from the south. It had always been so dry and dusty, even the forest was sparse and rocky. More brush than bush. The primitivity of the northwest has my heart in it's grasp, all apart of mother nature's intention. We are meant to love, not destroy.

I sit on the lower angle of the rock and let my feet slide beneath the surface. My naked back taking the early morning sun as steam begins to rise off the water in billowing plumes. Imagining the burn marks on my back, wondering how they look in this light. I haven't thought about it in awhile. My lips purse as I look down to where my ankles submerge, ripples wrinkle the water skin and flow out.

Without ability to see the bottom, I put fear aside for a moment and rely on the prospect of reasoning for everything. I push off my agenda for the day, knowing later on I'll have yoga with the young female Asher, after that I'll spend time with Jack.

But for now... I'm living, breathing. A female with no place to be but here, no reason to stress when the sun is shining on the mountain crests.

I lean back on the rock, letting my full front absorb the rising angle of the Sol, listening to the sounds of nature around me. Absently, I let my eyes wander over the sky, the few fluffy summer clouds sprinkled around.

The Solstice ended a week ago and my body still feels tired, a headache shadowing my forehead. I wipe my hand under my nose as if to find more droplets of blood as I had yesterday. To say the least, the more I think of my intimacy with JK, the more feelings bloom in my belly. I need to talk to him.

Just not now.

Though it presses on my skull, begging to be let out. Just like all the rest of my revelations yet to be unearthed. Rotting in the full graves of my head, covered up by years of more torture and the sanctity of such a pack as this, where all the good seems to blanket the bad of my past. Smother it all instead of deal with it. Fine to be this way.

Up here, things can wait.

With that out of my head, I sit up and slowly slip into the cold cover of water easily. I hand myself over to the will of the silent, melted snow. My body would always be given up for the Earth.

---

"We're children of the Moon, Tana." Asher breathes out mystically, bracing one foot on her thigh before stretching it out straight. She lifts her leg high in the air, holding her arms in a stretch above her head. I try to mirror and actually manage a more minor success. I'm getting better.

"What does that mean?"

"It's what the people say. Role with it." The female tries to keep her voice smooth and magic like but can't help the small teasing snap she throws in. "It's also the fact that we are all in the same boat. Us wolves, you know? I mean there are chasers of the Luna and chasers of the Sol, but we all somehow are in the same boat."