Snowmelt

XII

My eyes slowly blink open, and I try to figure out where I am, mind still foggy from sleep.

"Wait... Where am I?" I climb to my feet, impossibly slow. I glance around me, looking at what looks like a nest made of leaves. I lift one paw and shake it, trying to rid myself of the leaves between my toes. As I do so, I realize that I'm not in my normal leaky den, but instead in a seemingly endless forest. I'm not my normal pale grey, but instead a mix of brown and white. I'm not in the pack's territory! I don't smell them anywhere!

I grin, then leap into the air and shift into a dark red hawk. I flap my wings, once, then a second time, then a third, until each wing beat cuts through the air like a claw through the flesh of a long-dead deer. I screech, joyful at the freedom my distance from the pack has brought me. My cry echoes in the wind and I notice a few small birds fleeing from the forest below.

"Finally! I'm free! Completely free! Even if they follow the scent trail, they don't know about this part of me! Aika, you're completely free!" I  say joyfully, doing loops and turns in the air. "They don't know that anything that moves, anything they may see or hunt or flee, anything at all, could be me! They don't know to look for not just a grey wolf, but to look for anything! They'll never find me! They'll never be able to... to treat me the way they have my whole life..." At this last realization, I fall silent, joyous yet solemn, realizing that I'll never have to deal with that kind of treatment again. I glide, slow but steady, down into the forest. I land and shift, still silent, into a pure white wolf.

"I've almost always lived as a wolf, so this feels right," I mutter, turning around to make sure that the shift traveled all the way through me. Whenever a young pup who hadn't shifted much would shift, there was always a chance they wouldn't change their tail or something like that, so there would be a wolf pup with a mouse's tail. "It'll take a bit of time to get used to the different color, though... Oh well. I can't stay the same, so I have to change something." My ears perk at the faint sound of running water, and, after making sure I'm heading away from pack territory, I break into a run, heading in its direction.

When I reach the stream, I notice a small cave beside the water. After some investigation, I learn from smell and sight that no creatures have lived there for quite some time.

"This... This is my home now. I will live here, on my own, until the day I die, whenever that may come."