Wolf-blood

Happy Birthday

One week came and passed with speed I didn't think time could pull off. I had done all of my homework though it was Saturday, eaten my food, got dressed, double-checked that I had done my homework, and changed my clothes again when Father entered the room. When he saw me pacing, he grabbed my shoulders and squared me to face him. "Calm down."

"I can't! I'm acting like a maniac but I can't calm down." I said exasperatedly to him.

"Indigo, I haven't spoken yet," my father said to me worried.

Vox! Don't talk to me when I'm anxious like this!

You need to take a breath and calm down, Indie.

How can I? My best friend is about to go through the worst pain he's ever been in and there is nothing I can do to help him.

"Indie."

I snapped my eyes open. "Yes Father."

"I want you to understand that whatever happens, no matter what you hear from the woods room, you are not to go near it. You will stay in your room, the kitchen, or the study, but no where else, okay?"

"I suppose so. It just doesn't seem fair."

"Think of it this way. He's going into it with more knowledge than you ever had. He knows that he can't get any outside help. He understands the nature of the situation far better than you ever did. If anything, the unfair part is how much knowledge he has, not how much experience he is lacking."

I sighed, "I'm so jittery. Its all Vir's fault but he won't calm down. I've tried, Vox has tried, and still he won't stop. I've got all this extra energy and nothing to do with it. I feel like I'm one strong emotion from a change and I can't use the woods if I change. I'm trying to remain calm and collected but I can't. Even Vox is freaking out a little, but she's good at hiding it."

"I could always taze you and knock you out if you start to change," Father joked.

But this wasn't a joke to me. "Would you? If I was going to change would you taze me?"

"No, Squirt, but I don't even want to think about what I would do. You just have to focus on calming down. You'll be fine."

"I'm not so sure," I began, but before I could finish, the door bell rang. I turned to face the noise, on high alert already.

My father squeezed my shoulder, "I'm going to go let them in now okay? Just focus on calming down. Remember, this is Michael."

He walked out of my room and I sank to the floor, taking deep measured breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. All that did, though was bring their scent to my nose. Other wolves. Get them away. I heard Vir in my head. I started to walk towards the door but then I remembered my father's words, "this is Michael." Mikey. I couldn't hurt him. But they are intruders, trespassers- No! They're my friends! I heard Vir and Vox collectively growl and get to the door. No! Stop! I tried to argue. But it was no use. Two against one. I couldn't win.

Vir lead us through to the kitchen where Mikey and his parents were. We entered and growled, low and dangerous. All eyes turned to us. I bared my teeth and was about to pounce when I doubled over. I didn't stop growling, though. I was about to change when I heard someone say, "Damned taser, never there when you need it." Then I was being grabbed by the arms and dragged backwards. I tried to bite at the hands holding me but they were smartly placed where I couldn't reach them. I reached up to scratch them, but found my hands being held to my sides. I kicked and flailed and growled but still, I wasn't released. I managed to yell out a mangled, "Trespassers!" before I was forcefully thrown backward into a room.

I didn't have time to look around because as soon as they dropped me I had to rip off my clothes. When I changed, I became pure instinct. Clearly this was Vir. We paced around the room, which I now saw was a weird storage space, and looked for another exit. We found one in the form of a small window, too high to reach normally. But there were boxes surrounding it and with a couple of long jumps, we made it. The window was closed, but that was no matter for us, because Vox had had the idea of grabbing a hammer on the way up. We tossed the hammer and, as expected, broke the glass. We jumped through the whole with excellent precision, jumping through without getting scratched by jagged glass. Here, we faced a conflict. Some of our instincts said run, some fight, some to go back into the house and calm down. We stayed frozen on the spot for a moment too long because eventually my father stuck his head out the window. He looked furious. Immediately any instinct to fight was gone. That left us with two choices. Flee or submit.

And we fled. We didn't know where we were going, just that we had to get away. We ran and ran until we had run straight into the woods that bordered our little town. And still we ran. Eventually, we realized that we had lost Father a while back, and saw that we were deep into the woods of Dunderson. We took gulps of midnight air and sat down to rest. There was no point in turning back to a human this far out in the wild at night so we went searching for water. We walked for 45 minutes until we found some, and when we did, it didn't taste nearly as fresh as the one at home. We were starting to despair when we caught the scent again. Deer. Deer. No! Don't you remember what happened last time? So? That was when we were in the basement, not the woods. And I'm hungry.

We quickly followed the scent with Vox protesting the whole way, until she saw the deer. It was a beauty. He had a big 8 point rack on him and he was as three times as big as I was in wolf form. Wow. Time to make good on my promise to you, Indie. I let Vox and Vir take full control as I watched. They crouched behind the creature; it hadn't seen them yet. They readied their spring loaded legs and pounced. Vox aimed for the neck and before the buck could react to what had happened, it was dead. I tasted the blood running down my throat and moaned. It tasted just as good as I imagined. Then we dug in. We ate all of the meat as though we had been starved. All of us moaned because of the tastiness of the venison at least once during that meal. Even after stuffing our faces with venison, there was still left overs. So, we grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him back to our little reservoir. We drank some more water and then slept off the night.

In the morning, we finished off the delicious deer and decided to try and find our way home. I was pretty sure that the woods were to the east of Dunderson, so we went off jogging west. We got into a kind of rhythm with our steps. One, two, three, four, breath, one, two, three, four, breath, and so on and so forth. We kept going like that until we needed to stop for a drink, and then continued on again. We went on until we found a town at about midday. The only problem? It wasn't Dunderson. I could tell that much from looking. It didn't have the characteristic spires of Darenger's, nor the cracked sign that said, "Welcome to Dunderson!" Instead, it had a flawlessly painted sign in front of flawlessly arranged homes with a larger couple down the road away. The sign said, "Welcome to Kingston."

So, if this were Wizard of Oz, who would be Todo?

Vir. Why?

Because, Vir, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.