The Darkness Within

16 - Traveling

"Alright, who's driving?" Ciara asked the next morning as they stood in the garage, staring at the two available vehicles. She turned back to look at her traveling partners and noticed the guilty look on all their faces.

"Oh, no no no no," she said in exasperation, "not a single one of you knows how to drive?"

"We've barely ever left the forest," Evelyn admitted, making Ciara groan and turn back to the vehicles. A large SUV and a regular sedan. Guess they're taking the SUV.

She turned back to them, already assessing how they were all going to fit with Tala's huge body taking up the entire back of the car when she noticed that they were all still wearing their unusual and identical grey-only clothing. She herself had changed this morning with spares from one of the closets. "Do you guys have any other clothing? There are some extra clothes in the closets here, your attire is odd and will definitely attract unwanted attention."

"We wear it in honor of the Goddess and our pack, we do not wear anything else," Oliver stated and Ciara just rolled her eyes.

"The Goddess won't smite you because you wore something different now go upstairs and find some regular human clothes if you want to pull this off." Ciara spoke with authority and she could feel the power within her rise a bit to ensure they obeyed her. Evelyn's eyes glowed yellow for a moment before following after the others, looking a little stunned at being commanded by a 'human'.

It was a few minutes before the werewolves returned. In the meantime, Ciara packed everyone's bags into the car at their respective seats. Thankfully the SUV was the larger version, and Tala was able to fit at the very back, albeit a little squished. Looking much more human-like- if the canine teeth, similar features, and abnormally large body size were ignored- the werewolves returned and buckled themselves into the car. Cautiously, Ciara started the car and started on their way.

⥐

One thing was for sure, werewolves were not made to stay put quietly in a confined space. Even Tala was handling the situation better than the five werewolves present. As a rule, werewolves were a lively group, and after around an hour in the car, Ciara was ready to rip her ears off. They chatted nonstop, but that wasn't the issue, the issue was how annoyingly loud they all were.

However, as annoyed as she was, the werewolves' excitement to see large-scale human civilization was endearing. There was such an innocent nature to their excitement as they theorized what the city might look like, that in a way it helped to pass the time for the endless driving through the forest. Ciara knew, thanks to the GPS giving her directions, that she was quite a ways away from her own town, not that she wished to return there. They were headed to a different city in the opposite direction than the city her mom worked in, and she was thankful that she would not have to feel like she should check-in. The nightmares were back, and ever since her mom had found her nearly dead that night, she had been pressuring Ciara to explain everything to her and she didn't want to. Mainly because her mom already felt like a failure for being gone and giving him the opportunity to do the things he did, and knowing the details wouldn't make it any better. But the other part was because she wasn't ready to explain what happened to anyone, hell she couldn't even look at the smallest of her scars. She had forced herself to testify at court, but beyond that, she had no interest in sharing.

To get the stupidly annoying but also adorable werewolves to calm a bit, Ciara let them out when they had to stop for gas. They were amazed by the gas station and asked many questions about the food products available. They each ended up having to buy some form of snacks but Ciara refused to let them buy candy. They were energetic enough already.

"Ciara," Evelyn spoke up from the passenger seat, "what's the city like?"

"Well the city we're going to right now it's very big but it does have an airport. Cities have big buildings, lots of stores and offices where people work. There are apartment buildings and houses where people live. There are a lot of restaurants where you can go and eat all different kinds of food. They have places for games too like arcades and bowling and ice skating. There are always a lot of people too and it's weird because you can know no one and that can feel a little lonely but at the same time it can be profoundly nice to know that you are only one small and anonymous piece of one large system."