The Wild Hunt

[ 12 ]

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Winny clutched onto the edge of her window as Griffin's truck bounced off the end of the driveway, and spun onto the road heading for Redborough. She squinted against the wind, hair flipping and twirling in the wind as she watched the road ahead merge with street traffic. Griffin slowed to a stop at the lights, and we watched the travel traffic go by the corner store where Uncle Gavin, Rosanna, and I filled up on gas that very first day.

I turned away from Winny to gauge the look on Griffin's face. He was wearing his sunglasses, though, and when he looked at me, I couldn't tell much from it. I tucked my hands under my legs so I wouldn't risk brushing it against Griffin's tattooed skin.

"It's... been a while since I've been in a vehicle," Winny confessed, flinching as Griffin turned down the road, and one of the wheels hit a pothole. "I had my own moped back at home. Didn't have many places to go, and if I needed to go far I'd just—"

"Shift?" I said, and she nodded mutely. "I imagine you have more control over it than any of us do."

"I'm not going to lie—we definitely do," she said, and turned to me with a weak smile. "I'm sure you aren't too bad at it. You know how our brains work in that state."

"I'm not sure I know, but I can understand it," I confessed. "You know, though?"

"Of course I do. It's a lot like the derivative and primitive languages Native Americans use," she explained, "but perhaps I just experience it differently from you."

"But it doesn't feel like a language. Nothing makes sense and it's all jumbled into one long strand of what-the-fuck," I said, and when she laughed, she showed all of her teeth and her sharp canines.

"Yeah, that's one way to describe it. I personally can't speak any of my ancestor's languages, but since we share their memories through the grand scheme of things, I've picked up a few things along the way," she said, drawing her finger across her knee, and then drawing it back. "Having shifted for so long, I was almost entirely connected to it. Their languages are nothing like modern languages we know now.

"The way they viewed the world was different, though. They saw nature and understanding as the main goal in communication," she explained. "Very few of us seek understanding and our connection with nature these days."

"I don't know if that's entirely true," I confessed.

"Regardless—how you view the world in your wolf form depends entirely on how you view your wolf form from beyond it," she said.

I blinked in surprise, my hand lowering from below my chin. I could see what she meant, but... no one had ever explained it like that. No one, not even Grandma viewed wolves as anything other than wild beasts that needed to be tamed, and if not tamed, then kept under control and away from the more fragile humans. Winny's brow tensed as she watched me contemplate this, and I distinctly felt as though she was pitying me for not having realized this sooner.

I closed my eyes and rubbed them irritably before looking up at him with a sigh. Griffin checked his cracked phone screen and asked off-handedly, "So... how exactly are you planning on keeping Winny a secret from Graham. He knows she was unconscious before shit hit the fan."

"I know. I'm thinking," I confessed, glancing out the window. "I don't know if Jillian's sticking around..."

"So you're gonna push a... lycanthrope on your nervous-wreck of an aunt?"

"Does it really sound that bad?" I whined. "Jillian wouldn't mind. A whole lot. I mean, she married a lycanthrope at one point."

Griffin didn't say anything aside from what his sharp look said.