Fighting Instincts

Chapter One - A Starting Point

History, family history, the things everyone has as a starting point in understanding who they are. These things used in creating character, building your person, I don't have. The basic gifts given to you upon your beginning, I lack. I didn't even have a name. I was found on a forest edge, a place avoided by anyone of sane mind. Thankfully, the woman I grew to know as mother was not of sane mind when on a mission. Her gathering had brought her to the forest despite her husband's warnings. She found me and took me home. A few years later, they legally adopted me, giving me a family I didn't have. They sheltered me, fed me, and named me.

They raised me to be the child they could never have. They ensured I was taught manners, I learned to respect my elders, maintain an image befitting a young lady, and followed all the social norms expected of me. I became a respectful member of their community and peers. My father reminded me often of the importance of fitting in so others would be comfortable around us. Those who are average and normal are more lovable and trusted. Always aim to be well accepted, because when it comes to helping others, they are more likely to come to you if you aren't wild and unexpected. What a surprise it was when I hit puberty and, instead of receiving the typical menstrual blood and cramps, I was overwhelmed with breaking and shifting bones. The night of the full moon, for the last five years, I have had to shift in secret. Mother and father had come to love me too much to neglect me, or that's what I had always assumed, and for the other days of the month I was still the perfect image of a daughter they wanted. However, monsters and wild animals were meant to be caged and so the monster in me was caged.

I understood it was also for safety. My mother had long since left the medical field. She did not agree with the way western medicine was moving. She had taken her degrees and knowledge and became an apothecary of sorts. Her specialty was living with nature and using homeopathic medicines to help cure ailments. Perhaps it was fate for someone such as my mother to find me.

If someone had found out I wasn't human, who knew what testing they might want to do? They could take me away, and it would ruin not only my image but the image of my mother and father. When I was sick, my mother cared for me. When I needed to take time off school because a shift was a little more rough than usual, father would cover for me using one of his many business trips I sometimes got to go with him on. It became a routine. The monster I became was rarely discussed, and I fell into an easy habit of fighting the wilder, animal urges occasionally running through my system.

Of course, that was all in the past. I never had full control of my shifting. Sometimes I moved into the wolf with ease and back into human with little trouble. Other months it could take hours to become human. I never speculated with my mother and father over this, but I suspected it was related to suppressing the wolf. It was a price I was willing to pay. Until this past week. I was now stuck in my wolf and couldn't seem to calm enough to change back to my normal self. I couldn't be sure how many days and nights had passed. I could smell the game hiding in bushes, and it took every inch of my human self not to chase and eat. As time passed, the fight grew stronger as the wolf gained more control. My thoughts weren't words so much as they were emotions or instincts.

Images of the wolves in the basement. I had been caged, waiting for the full moon to take control. The change began just as screams from upstairs slashed through the peace and quiet. Human ears couldn’t have picked up the sound, but the ears of a wolf didn’t find the sound-proof room effective. Blood wafted, and I found myself howling out in concern and agony as the sounds hushed. The ominous footsteps moved from the living room above to the stairs of my monthly retreat. The door to the basement opened as I finished the last of my shift. The three men who descended were strangers to me. But their sneers spoke volumes. They were foes. The rest of the images were blurs of memory. The cage was opened, I couldn’t remember how. We locked it. A padlock, but this was no obstacle to them. At some point, one man had shifted, and I had attacked out of instinct.

Naturally, an untrained, suppressed werewolf was no match for someone who accepted the monster within. I was small and used it to my advantage. I slipped around the intruders and didn't stop running until my feet and legs were sore and cramping. Even then, I tried to keep going until I could find a place to hide. When night brightened into morning light, I expected to return to my human form. However, the night played over and over. Newer details would register. The stench of blood wouldn’t fade. My paws had been soaked. I found water to wash in. Images of my parents hit next, and I curled up, unable to process the truth looming, waiting for the human part of me to resurface, so it could destroy my mind all over again. The unrealistic, simple wolf mind focused solely on one fact. Other wolves. There were other werewolves. I wasn't alone and I wasn't sure if it made me happy or not.

I uncoiled my body and crawled on my belly to get out of the little den I had made myself. It seemed only natural to find someplace only I could fit into. I could sleep safely in case one of the attackers managed to track me down. I was careful not to leave tracks to and from the den, but my scent was likely all over. I was aware my senses increased in this form. I also knew as a human I had an advantage. My mother had noted an increase in eyesight, not drastic, but enough to never need glasses. My hearing made it harder for mother and father to speak in secret, so I had gotten used to using an ear plug that lessened noise until it was second nature to suppress my hearing to an acceptable level. Smell hadn’t developed as fast as other senses had. I knew I could pick up scents better than when I was younger. I kept this note to myself for my mother's sake. I didn't need her worrying, I could smell when she was on her menstrual or even when she was afraid. I also found it easier to know when she was home because I could follow a fresh trail at the door or a stale one. The longer I ignored the scents the easier it was to ignore them as well, but I probably gave into it more than my other senses.

Yet, all bets were off when I was stuck as a wolf. As per the typical routine I had created over the last couple of days. I hurried to a nearby brook. After filling my stomach with water, the hunger lessened. I found a sunny spot in an open field where the tall grass barely let me see over it when sitting. I curled my tail around me, and imagined my human body.

Long flowing brown locks, wavy and framing a small circular face. A small button nose between two ordinary chocolate eyes. A bit shorter than average height with a slightly chubby frame and curvy hips. Normal. A plain human. I pulled more and more details into my self reflection. The freckle on my cheek, like a dirt speck. A slight scar under my chin from when I fell off a trampoline. It had healed fast, but mother had used silver to cut it open again and keep it from healing as fast, so she could remove the piece of metal stuck in the bone. The scars on my knee and my foot from accidents involving extracurricular school activities. We couldn’t risk these healing too fast so mother had used other means to slow the healing meaning they scarred a little.

I thought about the imperfections, the less than perfect shape of my belly, the lopsided smile my lips curled into. The more I tried to focus on my human self, the more my wolf popped into my mind. The lean frame of my wolf with an off-white underbelly and thick black coat. She was nothing like the clumsy woman I had become. In a couple of months, I would be twenty, and I had nothing to show for myself. I still depended on my mother and father. I had a job but only because they helped me. I did all my college courses online, so I didn't have to find reasons to excuse my monthly change under a lie. They also believed I shouldn’t move out on my own until I was married. The two were a little more traditional in that sense. However, how was such a thing ever going to happen? Who wanted to marry a monster?

I growled, a sound reminding me I was still not changing back and I couldn't be sure why this shift was lasting so long. Would I be stuck as a wolf forever? Did werewolves become stuck? Was there a time you just didn't change back? Perhaps all werewolves just eventually became wolves because they lost their humanity. I growled. I hadn’t lost my humanity. I was a human, except when I wasn’t. That was one day a month, except this month. I was human. The silence was cut through again with another grumble and then a growl from the stomach I had been ignoring.

I wasn't stupid. I did some research when I knew what I was and the first shift wasn't the last. I knew the lore. I knew what was said to cause a change to a werewolf. When this was new I even asked father if I could have been changed through bite, but we couldn't determine I had ever been bitten by anything other than a spider. It had to be something in my blood. I was born this way. Theory two was I had been bitten as a baby and the mutation took over a dozen years to change your DNA. Such theories were only ever in my head. I didn't need my parents thinking I was stressing over my changes. I had wanted them to see I could be a regular human. I could have a regular life and live among people who were also normal. Only I would never be able to have a husband and make a family unless I wanted to tell them about my monthly change. Plus I never really had periods so perhaps I wasn't able to have children. If werewolves were barren then how did I exist? So many theories but nothing to compare them to. A bookworm who adored a good mystery but could never solve her own.

I huffed and lowered myself to my belly. I was hungry again. I could fill on water, or I could go hunt down some edible roots. Just as I was about to rise, I scented a small rodent darting to my right and, without thought, bounded in the same direction. I gave chase without a chance to fight, hunger and the need to hunt filling every muscle and thought. I didn't want to stop until I ran into a form coming from behind one of the larger trees circling the field. My small body slammed into it full force, but it didn’t budge. I landed on my side on the grass. I prepared to gain my standing but was stopped when another wolf entered the scene. They had found me after all.