Howl Your Appellations

New Hope

Lissana Mons

It wasn’t like we weren’t prepared for stronger cave beasts to attack the settlement, we had strong Weres at our side to and we were ready to flee at any time but this night, it felt different. Something enraged the beasts and somehow it set off  “Vakruti”, they were an old cursed Were, older than most of the people who started to living here, they were the original dweller of these caves and her existence is the first thing they tell you about when you decide to live here. “What ever you do, do not follow the night-black moss. If you see even the tiniest black moss, run as far away as you can, as fast as you can. Vakruti is no ordinary cursed Were, it is said that she was one of the night skies.”

I still don’t know what they entirely meant by that, and they aren’t fully sure as well since the warning has been passed down from descendant to descendant for centuries. All I know is that they were right. Vakruti should never come in contact with a living being, but…that night, they came and it became a night of pitch black and red blood. The beasts running away from Vakruti led them to my settlement and we were unprepared to defend ourselves. Even with such enhanced vision, we couldn’t see what was happening and everyone was screaming, screaming out of pain and screaming each other’s name. I managed to get a hold of Stray, and Solly and Pres managed to leave our dwelling safely,  our houses carved from the giant stalagmites or stalactites, destroyed with just one s***h of Vakruti’s many arms. I was running the fastest I could run, I ran without thinking about anything but protecting Stray, but stray wasn’t thinking the same…I…I didn’t notice that Sol and Pres were slowing down and screaming our names in agony, I couldn’t manage to hide Stray’s eyes from seeing her parents slowly succumbing to the darkness and…She impaled me, she used her antlers to break away from me and ran back to her parents. I don’t know what happened next but I survived, I was bleeding really hard from the puncture wounds Stray gave me but someone had patched me up and left me near the rivers. I believe it was the Leader that saved me, he was running back to save people when I was running with Stray, but he couldn’t manage to show his face to the survivors because of how much he failed to protect. There were 37 People of Here, now there’s only 4.

I stayed devastated for a long while, the four of us didn’t want to see each other because of how much it hurts for us to remember our families. So we went our separate ways, I stayed near our settlement for a bit. I wanted to make sure, I wanted to see with my own eyes that, they’re gone and I’m still here.

I went back to the settlement one day, there was no particular reason, I just felt like I could handle the pain better that day. I went back and… it was all rubble, there were no signs of life, there wasn’t even the smell of decay, there was just ruins. I cried there for about three days until I finally realized that I needed to go.

I wandered around the caves without a goal, there was no way that I could avenge them. Vakruti had disappeared and I will never gain  enough strength to fight them even if I lived forever. This made me recall the memories I had before I lived in the caves, it felt eerily the same as how I felt at that time. Had I experienced something similar? But I realized then that I just felt the same. I wanted to die. I wanted to die of I threw myself into the woods for the wolves and bears to eat me, but I managed to become a Were and in my new life, I managed to become happy and content for a while but circumstances led me back to square one, but this time I have memories of why I want to die and if I die, these memories would disappear and that thought’s what kept me going. I tried my hardest to survive until I found another settlement, until I could find another person to protect.

In the settlement, I was welcomed happily. It was the same but this time I ended up with an old dying Were. They own a lot of books, he mostly collected them and barely read any so I read some of the books to him to repay him for his hospitality. That’s where I learned that he wrote most of the books I read to him. He wrote about a lot of things from encyclopedias to personal journals and that’s where I learned about the rule of ‘forbidden’ appellations. His wife had this, and he was so happy when he told me about her, but also incredibly sad he couldn’t tell me her name. I lived happily with him until he died of unknown causes but I believe that he took his own life. It wasn’t as sad as I thought it would be, I was happy that he could finally take his rest and be with his wife. I inherited his dwelling and I was content with being alone and reading his books but one day as swarm of bloodied dwellers from another settlement suddenly flooded in and that’s where I met Goa. He was all alone with blood streaming from his head and blood splattered all over his body, he was screaming, “I can’t say their names! I can’t say their names!” over and over again. Everyone thought it was peculiar but the most peculiar thing was, they didn’t have appellations. They had none as if they were reborn or un-cursed. I gave Goa his name and took him in. He told me that, their settlement was flooded by a weird fluid and everyone started getting cuts and bruises all over. When the survivors awoke, they ran into a panic thinking the flood might come back and ran towards our settlement for help.

»—————————–

“These caves are scary. It’s probably cursed itself, or maybe it just worked this way but we just keep surviving. I later learned that Goa saw his mother and sister die in the floods and that reminded me of Stray, I failed to protect her but now I have the chance to protect someone else. I’ve been training and learning new things just for that boy for my emotional gain. He eventually started treating me like an older brother and we sort of just became the characters we portrayed. I’d die protecting him but then he found you, Sana.”

Man, these boys have been through so much, I guess it’s the same whether you’re inside or outside of the caves. Something’s always out there trying to kill you. We’re in a s**t sandwich with the bread as certain death and the meat as us, stuck in the everlasting middle.

“Dude, the s**t you’ve been through...”

“We’re all more or less the same in these caves, no one’s exempted from loss. We’re too exposed to those things. We just pick ourselves up or else our mind would just cycle around the memories of when we feel shitty. Isn’t it better to be happy in the memories you have than focusing on how guilty you are and how much it hurts? We’re all just…people. We can’t turn back time, we live in the Here. Hahaha, get it? Ah---”

“UUuuuu~~ SOB, hic…Uwaaaaaaaahhhh!!!”

“Why are you crying!? Sana, don’t cry so loudly, Goa’s going to hear you and I haven’t asked for my advice yet!”

“I’m s-sorry, it’s just! Hic! Sniff! I’ve been beating myself up these past months about my brother and now this random boy just says the exact words I needed to hear! Waahhh~~!”

“Sigh, okay. There, there, Sana. You’ve had it rough too haven’t you?”

                                                                                             ⁂

“Your tears are as big as you are! Look at my shirt! It was brown now it’s light black! Even my hair’s a bit wet.”

“Sorry, that was like, probably more than six months of tears I’ve been keeping inside me. I feel lighter now.”

“Crying does do that. But anyway, what I needed advice about, I told you about Goa’s  mother and sister, but I never told you about his father.”

“...Oh…”

“Yeah, he apparently left Goa and his family for the outside world. He says he wants to find him someday and punch him. I love his guts but, if he leaves the caves, what’s going to become of me? He’s still weak and hasn’t even channeled 15% of his Were form. Now that we found out that you’re from the outside and are trying to go back, he’s gonna get all fired up. I want to help him but I also want him to stay…”

“Why don’t we just ask the boy what he wants?”

“What!? No way! I don’t want him to know I’m that attached to him, ugh, don’t make it weird for us, Sana!”

“Well, if you say it like that then why don’t you just go with him? It doesn’t matter where you are as long as you’re with him right?”

“...”

“I know that’s what you really want to do, right? Stick with him ‘til he tells you to piss off!!”

“That’s…I need some more time to think but…yeah, I think I’m closer to my answer. Thank you.”

He’s clutching his chest…ah, he’s still thinking about his old family after all, I bet his scars reminds him of them everyday. No matter how positively you look at things, you can’t escape your feelings. There’s no perfect way to moving on, we just simply move on without leaving our memories behind. This is how we still get to love our current lives.

“Let’s go back to Goa, yeah? You got things to say to him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, let’s go back. I can go down on my own this time.” now he’s really thinking. Let me help him down a bit faster.

“Hyup! You’re too slow. Jump down, I’ll catch you!”

“Didn’t I tell you to treat the caves carefully!? Oh mighty Luna, Sana.”

“Just jump, i***t. We don’t have all day~!”

“Ughhh, fine.”

“Oooff---!!!! Why did you transform!!, Ow! Get off your claws are pinching me!!”

“You didn’t think I’d jump without repercussions, did you? Anyways thanks. Goa’s probably nearby. ”

Ben, shows so much potential…all he needs is more time and training. If he really is a Jaguar Were then he’d be stronger than me in 10 years if he uses those years right. I’ve never fought a Jag Were before, maybe when he gets older we’ll have a little fight sometime, Goa can officiate just in case we kill each other…hehe…sounds like so much fun~!

“Yo, Ben! Why’d you name him ‘Goa’?”

Oh whoa, he’s backtracking pretty aggressively, “DO NOT!!! Tell him this but… I meant to name him, Goal. Because protecting him is my new goal but I got embarrassed so I just named him Goa. I told him it was a type of strong rock, and he liked it so, here we are.”

“Pfft, that’s…charming. I’ll support you guys in whatever you want to do. But even if y’all don’t want to, you guys have to give me a map out of here, I hate this stupid place!”

“Haha! We’ll see, Wolfie! Maybe we'll even come with you!”