Quote from Indy on July 10, 2023, 2:48 pm

"Silas...."

I blinked. Blinked again. Watched the lights of the car flash by and didn't ask why we didn't ask for a ride. The air was cold. My legs were numb. The air felt hazy and almost unreal around me.  We were so, so alone. I couldn't smell another presence besides ourselves and wildlife anywhere near us.

"Who are you?" I demanded, "Who were those people, what am I doing out here? Why the heck did you ever talk to me?"

I was back-pedaling away now, except my feet were still shaky. I tripped on a stone by the side of the road and fell backwards, staring up at the stars. My lungs were burning. The world was spinning. I couldn't figure out quite how to stand, so I started scrambling backwards until I hit my head on a stone.

I chewed back a curse. I had no idea what I was going to tell me mom. If I would see my mom. Because I'd been so stupid.

Quote from Adriana on July 10, 2023, 3:37 pm

"Man, I'm not going to hurt you."

Just introduce you to my criminal friends who will kidnap you and sell you.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have approached you. I knew that. I'm an idiot. I'll be kicking myself for a while, a good long while. I'll tell you more on the way back."

I sighed. Needed a cigarette. Needed caffeine.

"I know a guy, he's a cop, and a werewolf... I've only seen him a couple times but, we'll pay him a visit. He might be able to work something out, get some extra support around your school for a bit. He kind of.. helps, keeps werewolves in society safe."

I walked over to the kid and put my hand out.

"We need to get you to transform. It'll be a four day walk if you can't, but if you can, we can cut that in half. Maybe actually make it to the rest stop and hitchike."

Quote from Indy on July 10, 2023, 3:49 pm

I stared upwards, still shaking. I wanted to wake up from this nightmare, tucked in my bed, and worrying about a Chemistry final. Except it wasn't a dream, and I wasn't going to wake up.  I wanted to get as far away from all of this, from Ja-Silas - except there wasn't any other option. He could outrun me, and besides, I had much bigger problems than him.

I flopped to my side, curling around myself. Surrendering.  Hearing the voice of my mother in my head rattling about all the ways I'd thrown away my future.

"I told you. I've only done it once, and I wasn't afraid for my life at the time".

Quote from Adriana on July 10, 2023, 4:17 pm

"Come on, you can't stay here. We need to go. You've done it before, just not consciously - but the muscle memory is the there. I'll work with you. Just, get up."

This was going nowhere, fast.

Quote from Indy on July 10, 2023, 4:23 pm

I took the arm extended, and slumped back to my feet. Absently, I noticed the feeling of his paw pads. If it was any other circumstance, I probably would have asked him for a finger print.

"I told you, I don't know how. That one time, I'm pretty sure it was a fluke.  I've tried meditation before and after, and I wasn't able to shift outside of the moon".

Quote from Adriana on July 10, 2023, 9:33 pm

"Well, we're not going back for the car and we're not going to make it back to town until you transform. So. You wanna start walking or do you want to try and figure it out? Because saying you don't know isn't going to help."

I know my patience was short. I really, really wanted to get out of here...

Quote from Indy on July 10, 2023, 10:40 pm

My head was spinning - maybe from getting shoved in a trunk, maybe from the pressure, maybe from both. But then I felt something still in me for just a moment. Long enough to remember pounding my head on a wall as math homework sat untouched, and my mother hovering just nearby in concern. Long enough to remember her presence, instructing me to breath in two, and breath out three. And how math homework didn't seem so bad, after.

In two, out three.... I took several gulps of air, slowly, until everything stopped spinning. I sat up with a slump. Okay. Okay. Everything was fine. Mostly fine. As fine as it was going to be.

I glanced behind me, up towards Silas, "Okay... where do I even start?".

Quote from Adriana on July 11, 2023, 2:44 pm

"Let's get further off the road." Silas instructed, and began leading Zander away.

As he led them, he began to explain his first transformations and the succeeding ones to Zander. His first one came somewhat early, at fourteen. He told Zander of how it came relatively naturally to him, and the different practices put into place by his family to ensure an environment that made it an easier event. Every full moon would be a gathering and the children would be present to observe so that they wouldn't be afraid of it when it happened. Fear, he emphasized, was the enemy of the transformation - it made it far more painful in mind and in body.

He continued on with how he was taught to be aware of everything in his body, and know that every cell played a part in the transformation - expanding, stretching. How he was told by his father and mother to imagine each one folded over on itself hundreds and thousands of times, from the atoms that made up his bones to even those that made up the water in his body, as though they were an intricate origami design, or Damascus steel.

"It's an active process as much as a passive one, for most. It sounds like you were meditating passively and with time, you might have achieved it, but it's not a passive action and that won't help you in a pinch. Your body is able to do things whether or not you mentally posses the capability to know how to do them. Anyone can whistle or cross their eyes, a lot of people can wiggle their ears, but you have to know what muscles to move, and how to move them, otherwise it's lost on you. The best example-stay with me-are women." he said as they came nearer to a clearing, well off the roadway.

"Women aren't taught how to give birth. The process can be explained, but there is no physical practice that can take place prior to teach you how to birth a human. But when push comes to shove, their instincts take over and they can navigate it with very little intervention, often successfully. And yet the process of giving birth is two sided just the same - they must overcome fear and play an active role in the physical side of it for it to be successful. It will happen regardless, but for it to be easy, their will, intellect and body must be intimately intertwined in the process. What we do-while nowhere near as amazing-is very similar." he began to instruct Zander to work on his breathing, feeling his lungs expand and shrink, imagining the cells in his body doing the same during the transformation.

He went on, saying that he felt further information of the werewolf species were necessary for Zander to accept it, as Zander seemed to be a critical thinker and therefore naturally afraid of what he was. Perhaps fear of the unknown was a mental roadblock, preventing Zander from being able to transform easily.

"Werewolves who are newly infected, find the transformation the most dramatic. As their cellular structure is changed from something it wasn't before, and they lose their humanity - literally becoming something different  - they fall dangerously ill and a lot of times, don't survive. The kind of cellular restructuring involves just that - breaking down a lot of cells to rebuild them. If the infection spreads too quickly, and the host is too weak or frail to actively protect themselves against it - it will break down the cells faster than it can repair them, resulting in death. The first transformation is often very traumatic as it takes a great deal of physical energy when their bodies do something entirely new and powerful. This often leads to first generations "blacking out", sometimes for the first several changes, which is when you see the highest rate of "mad rogues". Giving into instinct and letting go of human thought is the only way for some to cope with the experience. There are a few who can't seem to overcome this madness, as a traumatic first transformation can make it really difficult to ever gain control. Your brain will naturally take the path that is the most familiar each following change." he continued; now having Zander focus on various body parts intently, for a few seconds each.

"Half breeds, children of a werewolf parent and human parent, will find mixed results - if they survive the womb, which will not always recognize the child as a human and actively try to remove the perceived threat. Pregnancies where the father is the werewolf and the mother is a human aren't always likely to be to successful, but when the circumstances are flipped, the chances of gestational survival tend to be higher, for whatever reason. The child may or may not fall ill - it seems to be a random chance of the werewolf cell slowly integrating as the child grows or suddenly becoming aggressive around the time of puberty. In the case they pull more from the human parent than the werewolf, they may go through the same illness that first generation werewolves do, and face the same dangers." now he was also instructing Zander to stretch his limbs and muscles in various positions to awaken them for the transformation.

"Then you can have werewolves who intermingle with humans enough that the bloodline is diluted to the point that someone down the line-while fully human-will become an active carrier of the infection. However, they cannot call upon the change when they have become too far separated from their werewolf forefather."

"For pure bloods, like yourself and I, we are gifted with the ability to have genetically predisposed knowledge on how to change, creases in the paper if you will-and it's mostly practice, figuring out how to manipulate it with greater levels of ease. The more pure the bloodline, the more naturally it tends to come - years of dominant werewolf genetics lending to greater strength and control, more ability to manipulate your body earlier on in life. Besides the ability to control your form at will, you will find yourself able to do things you couldn't if you were human. Heightened reflexes, an ability to manipulate muscles and tendons in a way a human can't... give us an edge. It's why I was able to evade the werewolf back there. I can tell you by watching her body language she was a first generation-she was inclined to move and attack exactly like a human. She hasn't spent a lot of time working with her secondary form."

Now he stepped back from Zander after having been pushing different points in his muscles on his arms, neck, shoulders and back so that Zander would be consciously aware of their location.

"Are you ready to try?"

Quote from Indy on July 11, 2023, 6:34 pm

I narrowed my attention to a singular point - divided only in processing Silas' words, and isolating the different muscle groups as he prompted. Any other thought didn't have room in my head, couldn't have room in my head.  I closed my eyes, turning the information of a people I'd been born into.

What could I even remember in those days leading up to the first change? It was all a blur. Concerns about schoolwork, probably an upcoming exam, concerns about friends... but other things too. Food tasting differently, my eye-sight flopping from near-sightedness to far-sightedness evidently overnight, migraines, and exhaustion. Had there been a fever?  I recalled a few days sick from school, but nothing gave me the impression of the severity Silas indicated.  I hadn't ever been taken to a hospital.

Maybe I'd just been lucky. Or, unluckily lucky, since being born into all of this without someone to show you the way couldn't be called 'luck'.

I could feel a hint of it in Silas' voice of why my life had been a challenge, besides the obvious. Your brain will naturally take the path that is the most familiar each following change.  My first change had been confusion and fear.  I didn't have any reason to expect what was happening to me, anyway to mentally prepare as Silas had.  Memory had been a strange thing, all disjointed and raw until several months later. The ever-present threat that I'd had a psychotic break loomed over me. There was so much I hadn't known.  So much I had to learn to trust myself on, because no one else would have the answers I needed.

Except maybe some part of me hadn't trusted. Some part of me remembered the first morning at the library and the scattered pages of a hundred books torn up in shreds around me. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on my breathing. It didn't have to be that way. I didn't have to be afraid.

"Are you ready to try?"

I nodded but didn't say more than that.  There was a lot to be afraid about. Fear was an instinct. The thing that kept you safe. But maybe, fear was a choice too.  I divided my attention to every inch of me. Muscle groups I hadn't been familiar with, until Silas had pointed them out. The way I breathed. The way the body was functioning.

It could move if I asked it to. It could take on another shape, if I asked it to. I tried to remember the feelings on full moons. The feeling when I'd once, managed to incite the change through meditation. The power in padded claws, running through the soft undergrowth of a forest, the magnitude of smells by a hundred fold in my other skin.  It wanted to be free, didn't it? Hadn't that been what those dreams had meant, of imagining my other life, my other skin?

The first impression I had was once of sinking. Like I was falling asleep and I was falling. I flinched instinctively and cracked my eyes open, only to feel the sensation seize and constrict inside of me. I felt like I could puke. Fear is the enemy of the transformation - it made it far more painful in mind and in body. I stopped myself, closing my eyes again, even as the sensation built inside of me. Something that would burst open - but one I chose to trust wouldn't hurt me...

I was falling into myself. Falling falling, with nothing to catch me at the bottom. Except when I hit the bottom, I didn't fall - I rose up in a crackle of energy.

My body responded. I shot straight up - far, far too high than anything I could jump, and nearly smacking myself on a low-hanging tree.  Then I fell. But with far more grace and poise, I landed, notably, on four legs rather than two.

I looked down, then examined the rough texture of my paw pads and the glossy dark texture of fur.

"W-w-woaahhh...."

As I inspected further, I realized Silas had neglected one little detail. Namely, that werewolf bodies weren't meant to squeeze in clothing not made for them.  My jeans were in tatters, with the jacket not faring much better.  I couldn't help myself. I rolled on my back and started laughing. It was 2 am and I was singing to racoons again, because something about the state of us was hilarious.

And then it got better. I caught sight of Silas' tail and laughed even harder until it hurt.