Tsuki

Chapter One: Kōrudo

Darkness. That is all that Tsuki knew at first. He was in a dark void where he felt nothing and the concept of time simply did not exist. The flow of thoughts that usually swept through his mind was halted, as well. It was as if he were suspended in a bubble outside of the world; outside of time and space itself. In a way, he was.

He did not know how much time had passed- a heartbeat, a sun's rotation, a season. When he tried to open his eyes, he was left wondering if they were open at all, but the sight of pale and frothy whitecaps around him corrected that thought. As his bleary and fuzzy mind became more focused, the bewildered male was able to take stock of his situation: he was surrounded by water, it was extremely cold and dark, and he was absolutely soaked from nose to tail tip.

The last thing he'd experienced was the sever cold of a winter ocean. He'd been asleep, contently curled around the one he held most dear, but then he had found himself underwater. It had swept him out of his den and he remembered breaking the surface to hear the horrified yells of his packmates calling for their loved ones and for help. It must have been the middle of the night because he could see nothing but the stars and moon in the sky. He only got a glimpse, however, before he was yanked once more underwater by a powerful current. Tsuki had been helpless in the water's grasp as he was blindly swept along. He clawed for the surface—for freedom—but his strength paled in comparison to mother nature's. Somewhere along the way, he had lost consciousness and everything past that was lost to him. A growing pain at the side of his head led the drenched wolf to guess he must have been hit by some sort of rock or debris that knocked him out.

The realization slowly dawned on the canine just how dire a situation he was in as his surroundings began to lighten. Was the sun rising? He almost could not tell until an obvious twilight settled on the land—or lack thereof. In every direction he looked, Tsuki saw nothing but water. The taste of salt was already heavy on his tongue and lips, but actually seeing it removed any hopeful doubt that was once there.

I am stranded at sea.

The half-submerged log he found himself desperately clinging to was just large enough to support his weight. When he gathered enough of his strength to try and shift his shivering form from one end to the other, it would dip dangerously into the water and he would nearly loose his balance. If not for him sucking in a deep breath and suddenly retreating, he would have certainly lost his purchase and been left without a buoy. The odds were stacked against him here; he was not a very strong swimmer. Being perpetually wet certainly did not help. How was he supposed to conserve energy when he was shivering it all away?

Panic had yet to set in. If there was one thing that he was incredibly grateful for in a situation like this, it was the extensive mental training he underwent in his pack as a trainee. Many times, his teacher would stick him in quite the hairy circumstance to exercise his ability to control his mind and body over his fear. That and many nights sitting in the cold snow during a whitestorm meditating had tempered him, giving him the ability to slow his thoughts and sort them through. This allowed him to focus on the most pressing matters currently at paw instead of succumbing to his insecurities.

One such training exercise had suddenly popped up when he and his mentor, an older she-wolf with an ebony coat, had been patrolling the territory. The two had been traveling through a dogwood forest, their spring blooms just starting to fall. He had been an apprentice at that point for only a single season and was easily distracted still. His teacher knew this and so, as they trotted along, she did not warn him of the hole that was obviously in his path. It was deep—at least several wolf-lengths—and when he inevitably fell in, he landed wrong and twisted his right forepaw.

"You weren't watching where you stepped again."

He'd growled back a defensive rebuttal once he'd stood again and examined his injured paw. At the time, he couldn't see how that had been fair for her to not warn him of the hole. In his mind, she had done it to be mean and he'd gotten hurt as a result of her prejudice. As mad as he was then, she never corrected his disrespectful tone. Knowing her, she had probably anticipated it. Tsuki had quite the temper as a pup and this held true to when he was made an apprentice under her.

"Find your way out of this. You'll have to think your way through instead of rushing ahead without a plan. Distraction is what landed you in this predicament. Focus will be what allows you your freedom."

After speaking those words, his mentor had disappeared from sight and wouldn't reply to his howls no matter how loud they were. He'd screamed and raged and threw plenty of temper tantrums. The walls of the hole became harder to climb the more he clawed at them and his hunger grew the longer he remained at the bottom of it. For two days he stayed in that small pit. He was at his wit's end when he finally sat down in the middle and just glared up at the circle of sky obscured by the very tree branches that had helped to seal his fate in the first place. Once he'd peered up, he noticed something that he hadn't before in his elevated state: several roots from the trees grew through the soil and poked out from the walls. Previously, he'd furiously chewed on a few at the bottom, but there were a few long, thicker ones that hung down from the lip of the entrance. There was no way they could support the weight of a fully grown wolf, but he was still a juvenile at this time.

When he finally emerged from his self-inflicted prison, he had found a half-eaten boar waiting for him and his mentor asleep in the shade nearby.

"I knew you would figure it out." Her wise words now echoed in his mind. "You're a smart pup. Foolhardy, but smart."

What I would give to be there now, he thought forlornly. He would much preferred to have been back at the bottom of that hole and hungry than stranded all alone at sea like he was now. For a brief moment, he was able to put himself back in the same pawprints he'd trod when he was younger. For a heartbeat, he was once more home. That fleeting experience was not meant to last because suddenly, a wave crashed down over Tsuki's head and nearly threw him off his life log.

Suspended in the cold water, his large paws scrambled for a foothold with which to haul himself back on with. The wood was soaked and slick, the log being from a tree that had fallen who-knows-how-long ago. It was half-rotted and as a result, quite slick. After what felt like a lifetime of fighting, Tsuki finally managed to pull his upper torso onto the poor raft, but no more than enough to keep his head above the water. His muscles quaked from the cold and exhaustion, the adrenaline from him first waking up having long since worn off. He found himself hungry and thirsty, but had no hope of any provision relieving him of this.

His pack had lived near the ocean and as pups, he and his siblings had been fervently warned against salt-sickness. The water of the sea would never quench your thirst and would instead make it worse. If you drank too much, it would drive you mad and enough could spell your end.

He knew the huge expanse of mystery could be a cruel mistress, and experiencing a taste of her wrath like this was truly humbling and a lesson he hoped to never repeat.

The shivering wolf looked up at the paling sky, his ears pinned miserably against his skull, and watched the scant few clouds roll by.

"Spirits," he whispered, his voice shuddering with his shaking, "guide me to land. Please... I have to get back home. I must see them again."

Surely, this couldn't be how his story was destined to end?