Animal

.:29:.

"You can take my heart, you can take my breath, when you pry it from my cold dead chest." — The Resistance, Skillet

-:-

Come on, come on, come on, I chanted to myself. My muscles, or rather Shark's muscles, were already beginning to grow tired. We were working as hard as we possibly could to keep our pursuers on their toes. We darted around large trees, through dense and thorny undergrowth (which managed to snag in my fur at times), and veer them so deeply off the original road that even I wasn't completely sure if I would be able to find the way back to the compound.

"I know where we need to go when the time comes to start back. I can follow my scent back easily. Try to use the sense we share now, McKenzie. Try hard. Can't you smell our trail?"

In all honesty, I couldn't smell it. I wasn't sure how Shark was able to, either. We shared the same damn nose, and here she is telling me she could smell our trail that led from the compound to here. I could only smell wet dog and car fumes and exhaust, which, by the way, had a stench that was so much worse in the form of the dog, which must be why I didn't smell it in town or while on the bus. Maybe Shark's senses could be tapped into in human form, but with practice.

"Focus!" she commanded, making my sight blurry with concentration. She was trying to add more of herself in control, trying to force her conscious to join with mine. This was her body, she was thinking to herself importantly, and she should be in control of it more than me. "You cannot afford to be zoned out right now, stupid child!"

Stupid child? My blood began to boil at the harsh insult, and I felt the working of my paws on the forest floor begin to become heavier with each new time in came to the grassy floor, my body starting to grow numb to the pangs and aches whenever sharp branches stabbed at my flank, or when thorns caught my skin and my anger urging me to prove to her just how wrong her words were towards me. I was not going to let a dog call me stupid and get away with it, I was not going to prove her words right, and I was not a stupid child!

Before I knew it, I had lost track of time. The forest raced past quicker than I expected it too, leaving a blurry movement of green and brown behind, replacing it with more green and brown. Some of the shades were darker than the last, then were quickly blocked out by the sun beaming its light on the magnificent forest, making the surroundings brighter than they had been.

My parents appeared in my field of vision each time I leaped over a fallen tree, or turned around and darted in a different path. They stared at me, looking worried. My father was a tall man, with dark eyes and a strong jaw. He had his arms wrapped tightly around my increasingly worried looking mother. My mother, her dark brown hair pulled up in a high pony tail, her lips moving as though she were speaking to me. She reached one of her hands out to me, but each time I stretched my legs long enough to almost touch her, reach her, their image faded and appeared minutes later, their lips moving in a silent speak.

I grew frustrated when they kept appearing close, but couldn't be reached. It felt like I was experiencing a mirage, a trick of the mind, teasing the desires one seeks. My lips curled back and I lunged out at the distorted images, my claws slashing through them and a snarl ripping through my throat. It didn't sound like me at all, and if I was to hear that sound from an actual dog, I would probably turn tail and run to the nearest high ground.

My muscles were starting to burn, or maybe they had been burning for a while and I was only just feeling it. I didn't know which was true, but the burning felt outrageous. It knocked whatever breath I had left in my body, and my legs started giving out. I stumbled along, slowing down with each step I ran through the forest.