Forever Luna

Pessimism

noun ~ a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen

CHARLIE

I lost track of time a long time ago.

I wasn't sure when it was, or what time of the day it was anymore.

Oddly, it was a relief to not worry about mundane things. It felt natural to submit my body clock to nature. The sun's pattern in the sky was always something to rely on, and I recognised that autumn was approaching when it set earlier.

So far, nothing worse has come from the hellbent attack on Calida's old pack. Her wolf was still as feral and wild as it was when we first left. But I was gaining a few moments of time to hunt for myself now. Her mood swung like a pendulum. Some days she would leave me left overs like I was a stray pup, some days I couldn't get within six feet of her.

I took it as it came.

Every day was a new day in the wild. If you over thought it, then you'd never survive.

You had to be able to move on from the past, and move on from what you have done. You have to be able to hunt; to take lives of the innocent animals around you in order for yourself to survive. And you had to be wary of what would happily take your life.

A poisonous plant, a wrong step down an incline, a human trap, or an animal that wanted to test your strength.

Have I ever mentioned that good things take time?

Well, they do. Like Calida. I had hoped she'd come back to me.

But the other side of that is the question of balance. For every good thing that happens, there has to be a bad thing somewhere. For every move, there was a countermove.

For now, we were on the upstream. But the further we ventured through the slither of no-man's-land, the more my body tensed with apprehension. At one point, I felt like somebody was right beside me, breathing into my ear.

But it was just my mind, because nobody was here. Just me, myself and I.

Smooth sailing never lasted, so I hoped that my delirium went with a night of sleep.

As the sun went down on another day, my body yearned for something I was unaware of. My wolf was on edge too, the slight twisting of uncertainty in our gut.

I knew I needed to shift back tonight; if we even stopped. Going by Calida's movements over the past hour, she was looking for somewhere to camp. She always moved with her head hung low, her pace slower.

Eventually, she found a spot she liked and proceeded to scent-mark the area. I remained in the shadows, leaving her to her space. She purposely pissed right before me, huffing at me with agitation.

She didn't like me following her.

But she didn't chase me away anymore.

I think she understood she was stuck with me.

She hunted a decent sized hog, and I had a hard time muffling the whimper of wolf as he caught the scent of it. I had long since grown immune to the hunger pangs, but Axel fucking loved pork.

We remained on the border of her grounds, surveying the surrounding area. I could feel my ears twitch with every movement, and every scrape of bone had my eyes darting back to her.

As the sun set, she rose from her kill and cleaned her snout in the grass. Her eyes looked around before lazily landing on me. She huffed, clearing her airways before she glanced back at the kill. I felt Axel preen with interest, rising to all fours as she walked away with one of the pig's tusks in her jowls. When her tail swished once, we knew we had a chance.