Odin's Prize

Fog

Gloomy night sky lingers way past the last roll of thunder, morning just a few hours away.

Silence now is too loud, too scary. I keep expecting him to come back from that darkened corner.

The heavy scent of iron mixing in with the oxygen I'm breathing in is what causes my father to burst through the door. He would have been the first to die if I would have cried out.

A small trickle of blood is still coming out of the cut on my cheek that's refusing to close.

My mom the next to enter as my dad picks me up off the bed that I haven't been able to move from. The pillow, mattress stained in my red.

Vengeance and fury's language hits my ears hard, the shift is instant for mom, while my dad holds me to him. The wolf sniffing every crevice, corner of the room, her teeth shredding the pillow, the mattress that holds my stains is torn apart.

If she could glow red, I'm sure I would see the inferno that she's becoming.

For my dad's part, his terrible quiet edge makes him seem as if he's seething from the inside out.

Mom doesn't settle until everything holds her scent on it including my father and me. He's very calm while looking at her. He's whispering words of understanding to the wolf, cooing soft tone melodies to her wild side.

"Get me the healer and the doctor." Dad's voice deceivingly low, but the vibrations of it scream his madness to Uncle Grey whose eyes flashing shiny tin that just doesn't look right coming from him.

Everyone's balance has been thrown off.

Dad looking around the room that is drowned in the flood of fluorescent light, my eyes squinting with the assault of it.

Mom's wolf walking out of the room only for her to come back tying a robe around her body.

"How did he get in?" He's talking quietly to me as if it's just him and me in the room and not the family gathering outside my door.

"I don't know I just woke up and he was there."

"How did he leave?"

"I don't know he just melted into the dark." A tremor of fear shivers inside of me from a deep place that holds all my greatest of fears.

"Let me look at it." Mom's voice muffled from the wolf inside her trying to break out. Her eyes fall to my cheek, then at my stained pajama top before Lana comes in without rush.

The body of calm.

"This is going to scar very bad, she's going to need stitches." Lana turning my cheek this way and that, assessing the damage silver can bring. With those spoken words my mother once again shifts from skin to fur, she's lost inside herself that even my father's words do nothing to calm her down enough to shift back.

The wolf rages out her discontent, before nuzzling into me again, her body warm while her nose is buried into my neck. A tongue is coming out to try and lick clean the wound and stop the bleeding. It only makes the wound open the newly forming scabs along the edges, so it's as if the cut is brand new again.

"I'm sorry mom." Guilty, so very guilty. I caused all of this. My mom unable to calm herself down, dad so distraught from seeing my mom like this he's having a hard time composing himself.

The wolf going to my face, then back to my father for a pet only to come back to me in a vicious cycle that's repeating over and over again. This has lasted for hours until the sleepy world starts to wake with a splash of gold trying to peek through the morning mist. Her howls drawn out, long and full of pain. We're unable to get out of my room because the wolf will not let anyone of us leave or anyone inside it. The doctor waiting patiently outside.