Ghost Dance

chapter one

The first time I saw my father cry was when I emerged out of the forest after 3 days of being missing. I was caked with dirt and my mother told me I had a feverish sheen about me, my forehead degrees warmer than it should have been. They at once knew what had happened, and all had gone back to normal. Normally, werewolves are born fully wolf or fully human, and would be able to shift at will when they reached sixteen. However, in the days of puberty, which in a boy's case spanned from ages 12-16, the hormones in a were's body would fluctuate.

The day I had gone missing was when I was around 14 years old. My parents were busy attending to pack matters, and me being the Alpha's son, had used my developing power to convince the guards to let me run to the lake. I don't remember exactly what happened, but as I was running through the forest I felt my mind detach from my body. I was still running, but my eyes were watching the scene play out like it was a first-person shot in a movie. Then, everything went black.

It sounds a bit cliché, but when I awoke I was hungry and confused. Not to mention I was very much naked. My surroundings were foreign, and all I could judge of my direction was that I had ran towards the north. Most of the moss on the trees had been accusatorially poking out at me when I had awoken, propped up against a tree. In the northern hemisphere, moss grows mostly on the north of trees. Hence, I had ran north for the ending portion of my less than memorable expedition.

It was only when my stomach continued to pang with hunger that I decided to walk towards the south. And it was only when I was walking south that I became acutely aware of how hungry I really was. Hungry enough to kill. An unlucky squirrel crossed my path on the way home, and suddenly fourteen year old me was on all fours with a dead body in my mouth.

I had become a wolf. My senses were enhanced, I could see farther, albeit in far less color, and hear for what seemed like miles. My stomach also rumbled even more ferociously, and I thought that if I wanted my sanity to remain intact I should probably shift back. And so I did. I remained like that for a full day, in a state of semi-consciousness as I followed the bare side of trees to the South. As I neared familiar looking territory my wolf took over once again and I began to run wildly towards the various scents I had come to know so well.

I emerged out of the woods a bloody, dirty mess. Wiser than I had left, my body had unknowingly begin to stabilize itself into a form in which I would be able to merge both wolf and human skills. It would take another four years for me to hone the skill into one that I performed with ease. It took another four years after that to master politics, both human and wolf, and learn the difference between the two.

By the time I was twenty-six, I was fully capable of running a pack, and fighting for my people. I had graduated from college with an MBA, and the day I threw my cap in the air was the day I took over as Alpha of my pack. It was on a Tuesday funnily enough, the night of a full moon, and the festivities had ran late into the next morning.