the girl who cried wolf|Wattys 2015

prologue

It was the coldest winter Crescent Falls had ever experienced. I remembered the way the cold seeped through my shirt from the snow. I don't remember being afraid, or crying, or screaming; that is until I felt the teeth digging into my arm. I wasn't cold anymore, but warm. The last thing I saw was a pair of bright silver eyes.

When I came too, the light was too bright as it reflected off the white walls and my arm throbbed with pain. Before I could open my mouth to ask what happened, I was overwhelmed by the cherry blossom scent that lingered on my mother's clothes. Her hands were warm as they pressed against my cheek.

"Thank heavens you're awake. I was so worried."

Once news hit that I was awake, there were my parents, newscasters, journalists and countless streams of men and women in white scrubs coming in and out of the room - all asking me questions. I hadn't been able to recount the full details. All I could remember was following the paw prints into the cluster of trees in my backyard. I was curious, seeing how we'd never had any sites of woods in Crescent Falls.

Eventually the paw prints came to an end, near a patch of snow that was rich with blood. Something about the blood panicked me. It sunk in that I couldn't see the porch light in my backyard anymore and I was lost.

I heard the rumble of a growl first. When I turned around, there stood a wolf breathing hard with blood dripping from its muzzle. The air suddenly smelled crisp of metal and wet dog. Its eyes were glassy and black as if there lied no spirit inside. I don't remember moving, but suddenly there was the sound of a branch snapping beneath my foot.

That's when it pounced. The force rattled my bones, knocking the air out of me. The feeling of its tongue against my skin was warm soothing the chilling spots where its careless teeth had ripped at the fabric of my shirt. I could remember it tasting me, biting quickly at any available patch of skin. I didn't mean to fight back, but at one moment I struggled to push it's head away, that's when I felt its teeth snap into my wrist.

It wasn't until four months after the incident that I could remove the bandage from my wrist. I expected to see teeth marks; yet, the puffy red skin was strangely in the shape of a crescent moon. As years went by, the scratches on my arms faded into pale peach tones and the skin of the scar flattened out, but never did it lose its shape.

Never did it change, until the night I turned sixteen.