Moon Wolf

Alone

Your death was a brutal lesson to me that life is so fickle. I wish destiny had given this lesson to me in a different way.  

Maya glared down at the cobblestone underneath, pain continuing to rack her body. She needed to move and find help. Food and a shelter but mostly she just needed to get warm, and the snow silently and peacefully flecking the ground wasn't helping her situation.

She gave up her staring contest against the stone ground and sighed shakily, leaning back against the wall of the alleyway. The situation was terrible. She was bleeding in multiple places, he fur was matted and muddy and she was pretty sure she had a few broken bones. She was tired, hungry, cold, hurt and oh yeah one other thing.

This wasn't her body.

She crashed her head above the surface of a small pond, in a forest she didn't recognize, gasping for air as if she had been deprived for days. Coughing and spluttering, trying to stay above water, she looked around frantically at her new surroundings. The pond shimmered under the light of the full moon and the ripples of Maya's splashing created sparkling lines of white across the surface. The water was freezing but it was also clear and clean and blue. It was frozen at the edges as icy reeds and pale lily pads drifted around shriveled and frozen. The trees surrounding the pond were a little ways off, leaving a small clearing of short grass that mixed with sparkling sand as land dipped into the water. The pond harbored a small peninsula of only soil and instead of mixing with sand to connect with the water, it cut off on the edges, leading straight into the shallow depths.

Maya swam towards it and pulled herself up, laying herself on the grass to refill her aching lungs. How long was I down there? she thought. Where am I? What happened? She stared up at the sky and saw the moon at it peek surrounded by subtle strips of observant clouds. It must be the middle of the night, or close to it. She rolled over and tried to push herself up but froze when she saw hooves instead of paws. 

Hooves. 

Wait. 

Hooves. 

Maya looked behind her and saw a long tattered tail, no longer made of fur but dark blue horse hair. She crawled towards the ponds edge and stared at her reflection. 

She was a horse. 

Adrenaline filled her system as she saw her pupils shrink and her new muzzle open to let out a high pitched scream. With the new found energy she ignored her aching joints and broken bones to turn tail and run through the forest blindly, that is until she tripped and did a somersault onto her face. She cursed and slowly got up on wobbly legs. Maybe I'm hallucinating, she thought. But when she looked down the hooves were still there and she groaned. I can't worry about this right now. I'm injured probably beyond repair... She glanced around instead of turning her neck because it hurt too much to move and realized she had caught her leg in a ditch dug into the side of a path through the forest. Her ears perked as she saw the faint lights of a town in the distance between the branches of the thick trees. 

And that's how she got here. She limped to and through the town looking for signs of life but no one was on the streets during this time of night. She left a trail of blood in her wake and when it started snowing she hid herself in an alleyway between two houses. She sat there changing her attention from the ground to her new hooves to shivering uncontrollably. Well at least I'm shivering, she thought. That's a sign that my body is trying to warm itself. Though probably not for long.

She was strong yes, but everyone had their limits. She was alone. She hated being alone. And when a particularly strong shiver jolted her body she let a few tears slip past silently. She cried and told herself it was okay to cry now when no one could see and everything was wrong. Everything was so wrong. So wrong that she could bite herself and she would wake up and Makiel would be there, watching over her in their den. 

"I can't believe how long they made us stay after work."  

He'd go catch her a rabbit, maybe a deer who knows. 

"Hey the pay is good! And I love our job miss grumpy pants!"

And her other six brothers would dog pile her once she came out healed and fed. 

"Always looking on the bright side, Sparks."

She smiled in spite of her tears. 

"Is that... Is that blood?"

She wanted to go home.

"Whoa! Hey are you okay?!" 

Maya slid off the wall and onto the cold ground. The voices had been faint at first as she thought of home, but now they were just blurred in the background replaced with a ringing in her ears. They were still talking to her, shaking her. She caught a few things. 

"...-my Celestia she's freezing... -up we can take her t-... -on work with me here..." 

So she pushed herself up and felt two bodies hold her sides and she walked. It was slow yeah but they were making distance. Maya didn't know where they were going but she didn't care. It was her natural instinct to keep going, to survive, and these... well whoever these guys were, they seemed to want to help her. She kept walking and more felt the vibrations of them talking, to her or each other she didn't know, but opted not to talk back because they were distant and muffled. The two helped her limp along for who knows how long before her legs started to give way. She felt herself be lifted up between them and carried on their backs side by side, careful not to drop her and keep moving. Warmth washed over her as she felt them struggle to get through a small space and started elevating. Their voices were more distant, farther off. She was starting to black out. 

When she felt herself inevitably fall into unconscious, she heard someone say something to her.

"Don't worry we'll take care of you."