The Awakening-2

I can’t react and as a hot invasive sensation moves down my shoulder, I can only squirm, wanting so badly to get his hands off me. He’s not that dumb though and with all eyes on us, he leaves me alone to my fate as I try to fight to come back to a sense of now. Suddenly afraid that after this is done, he will be the one to tend to me like this. Responsible for ushering me back to my clothes and the concealed shadow of the cliff edge. Who knows what he will do? I don’t recall if the turning takes you out of the drug-induced stupor when it’s done or not.

I can’t dwell on it any longer as a burning light hits me hard over the entire surface of my body, almost like a blowtorch was turned on, and I spasm instinctively into an arched position on the floor. Every inch of my skin bubbling and blistering to searing levels of torture as though I have been set alight and I strain and claw the ground beneath me, gasping with effort. Breaking nails on rough terrain as I scramble for relief and yet can do nothing but scream.

Crying out in pain, writhing in agony, as an intense sensation rips my skin from my bones and engulfs me entirely. My voice deepens, scraping and hoarse like I’m swallowing splinters and cries become growls, my throat almost bursting into flames with the effort. For a second, it’s like I’m being strangled. I’m under attack. My body is being ravaged, twisted, snapped and slain, but this isn’t another wolf ... this is the turning. It’s so much worse than I ever imagined it could be.

Cracking, convulsing, and devastating agony rip through me hellishly. Sending me rolling around to relieve the pain as grime, rocks and dust scrape at my flesh and burn as I graze across them. I whimper and moan, but it eases nothing of the torture of my body crunching and shredding itself apart. I cry out, beg for my mother to save me, wail for the Fates to stop this, and claw at the rocks, breaking fingers with the sheer force of my fight and gouging what’s left of my skin on sharp edges underneath me.

No one could prepare me for what this feels like and I’m being turned inside out while slow-roasted over an open bed of hot coals. I can’t breathe, I can’t scream anymore and silently I writhe and jerk and twist and turn as I am consumed by hell.

Our noises are drowned out by the stamping, chanting, and clapping of the packs, thundering through the ground and reverberating through my broken, smashed body, giving way to howls as the moon reaches its peak and they encourage us to make the final transition to become like them. Combining to howl, under strict orders that none are to transform tonight and break the ceremony. Only the new shall change tonight. Only our blood will spill as our human form is destroyed to build something better.

I want to die.

The pain is unbearable, driving me to the brink of insanity, and it truly feels like my human self is being tortured to nonexistence. Every bone in my body snaps and reforms as though it’s being done manually, one at a time. My flesh tears free and pulls away from muscle. I’m wet, a hot pouring out as blood drains from the hellish self-inflicted wounds that seem to last forever, covering me in sticky warm heat, smothering me and leaving a vile metallic scent all around. I can’t tell what’s sweat, what is blood, what is maybe other kinds of fluid. Barely holding on, reaching a pinnacle where my mind is on the verge of collapse and the dregs of sanity teeter on a cliff edge. I howl and strain with all my might, so I extend my face up into the air and gasp with relief as my lungs inhale and I finally take a breath.

And then ... everything is still.

It all just stops. Like having a cold drink poured over scorched sunburn, and instant soothing hits hard and intensely as my noise becomes silence, my burns become cool and my breaks become one.

I stop fighting my body. Aware of the immediate cease of all of it and the creepy quiet that surrounds me so suddenly. The unnatural silence. Hazy and blurry as my head spins and I grasp for some sense of reality. Catching my breath, gulping in cool air and calming ambience as the fog clears, and my vision returns only a little.

I try to get up, to right myself, although it feels different, and I stumble sideways with a disorientated sense of upright. I’m on my hands and knees even though I don’t know how I got this way. I can’t stand or push myself up as I would because it all feels strange and I blink and shake my head to clear my eyes enough to see which way up I’m facing. Confused, yet there is a calm taking over me, a sense of serene with heightened senses in every way. I blink, my eyes watering, as finally, dry is restored to moist and I see forms and shapes and shadows which then define to details and more.

I gaze down and I see paws that startle me at first. Gasping at the closeness and realize they are mine, where my hands should be, flat on the ground. Large, clawed but strong paws, larger than I thought they would be. I lift one and shake it, almost as if I need to convince myself that I can use and control this limb, it’s truly connected to my body. My legs are solid, with thick silver-gray fur up my muscular chest. I have a streak of purest snow white that travels as far as I can see. I stare at it, lean back and pull my chin in tight to follow it until I can’t strain any further to see.

I have very little memory of my mother in her true form, but I know this is from her. She was a white and my father a silver, yet it’s rare to combine both in such a way. Most wolves are brown or gray ... white is a mutation that’s almost unheard of and my mother used to try to hide herself because it brought only stares.

I shake my head, the unfamiliar weight of a different form pulling me from side to side, not fully in control of my limbs or movements just yet, but aware it’s so much bigger than my human skull. Staggering on strange legs and fall flat, splaying out and bumping my undercarriage as I collide with stone. Aware, suddenly, of the scene around me coming back into focus and realizing we are still being watched. Sobering fast as my new metabolism pushes the last of the drugs out of my system and cleanses my blood.

The atmosphere is charged and I’m surrounded by newly changed wolves of all shades of gray and brown; although I’m the only one with white in my coat. Turning as the Shaman’s chants draw my eyes back to him, I trip over my uncoordinated self as I try to right myself and get up. It’s hard to use my hands as front legs and I instinctively rear backwards too far onto my haunches, lose my balance and reel forward again to correct it, before tumbling face forward to the ground once more and meet the dust with a lower jaw clunk.

“It gets easier. Try to stay on your feet. All four of them.” The voice above me pulls my head to tilt towards it and I recoil as I realize Colton Santo is standing right by me, watching as I make a spectacle of myself falling flat out on new legs. I don’t know if I’m shocked that he spoke to me, or wary that he did.

I’ve never trusted anything about him, or any of his motives, and wonder when he got over here, so close. Avoiding looking directly at him, keeping my eyes averted from his and attempt to get to grips with this weird body and focus on learning to use it. All I can do is whimper back, realizing I can’t form words this way and go into my own head link instinctively.

Wolves in the same pack have a connection mentally, so they can communicate without talking, which, admittedly, is impossible as a wolf. We don’t have the vocal cords for human talking. It’s also possible when close enough to talk to one not from your own pack. If they are willing to hear you.