BLACK

(35) Home

EDITED

-Oren-

The rain pounds into my back like heavy chunks of hail, the slam of the trailer door is swept up into the hurdling winds. Black's control throws our body down the steps, wringing ourselves angrily against the railing as the cast got caught step after step. I could feel the surging winds around us as we fell straight forward with too fast of a velocity onto the ground. My head ricocheted off, Black's reflexes too absent in his anger. From the ground, now covered in mud and surely soaked with bitter cold rain, he snarls so viciously it outdoes the volume of the storm.

His heavy, thick throated growl leaves the ground shaking in vibration. Surely everyone around heard, and then Black had only one mission. He forces our body up from the mud, grass flattened beneath our fall and some broken stems sticking to our soaked skin. The cast dragged through the mud, slugging with wet dirt and weighing us down even more than my soaked clothes.

It was tempting to shift into our second skin, Black's fur. As the cast dragged into the mud like a heavy reminder, I fought against the desire to do so. We would be faster, stealthier. Yet we would also become weaker. The leg was healing, there was less pain in the mornings and during my activities, but this right now made it burn. Shifting would only feed the firing pain.

So rather we struggled across the terrain, weighing twice as much under the unforgiving downpour. Softly, through the howling trees and wind, I think I hear Noire. Her cries echoing all around me, so loud and vibrant it is a hard urge to resist and not run straight back to her.

Under the darkened sky, with thick grey clouds that left no room for light, I squinted and breathe heavily on the track. The paths I'd been running and making some differentiation upon had faded under the fog and sopping vegetation. Black channeled in mostly to use his senses, but even his nose was no match for this thick sheet of water. Once or twice we fell, me feeling the impact more so than Black. Each time, he got right back up. Our clothes had started to tear from the friction on the rocks, our shin scraping and bleeding. My hands became covered in earth, the rain making an effort to wash it off drop by drop. Often we stopped, cautious of running in circles. We knew the path, or one of them. A mission to find a special someone was always uncertain.

Yet slowly, as I couldn't see far in the distance from the hill, cabins started to emerge around us. My hands dusted along their wooden sides, feeling them for certain. I had to find that cabin, but from memory I knew it wasn't one of these. My skull pounded with the weather, thinking far too much and coming up short. Black snarled again with frustration, his back rippling to transform.

From inside, I tried my best to hold him back. Tugging on each string of his that I knew existed, coaxing him and relaxing him. A job usually of Noire's, but a matter I'd been dealing with far longer on my own. It's always me and him, inside my head. Black was my only company, the only person to work with me on absolutely everything. My right hand, my good eye. My nose.

The cedar wood did nothing to avail him, sending him to spike his own claws through my human hand and scratch down the side of the cabin. It's searing sharp scrape was loud, but quickly became drowned out from the rain. Surely those inside would have heard, and so Black and I waited. And waited.

And waited.

We moved to the front, pushing against the door to find it locked. Black threw it open quickly. The doorframe came close to our temple, but the small foot inside gave us a fraction of shelter. The lights were out, no heartbeats hidden under mother natures drums. Black's head twirled, my vision dotting from the black abyss. I held onto my ropes, tightly. They were the only things keeping me from drowning into the back of his mind.