The White between
573 Words
The world was gone.
No fire. No laughter. No forest.
Just light — vast, blinding, endless. It pulsed like a heartbeat, soft and steady, until Meghan realized it wasn’t the world she was hearing. It was her.
Her pulse, echoing through the white.
“Hello?” she whispered. Her voice barely carried. “Is anyone—”
Something moved through the haze. A shadow, tall and lithe, walking toward her with deliberate grace. Not human. Not entirely.
At first, she thought it was a wolf again — the same massive creature with eyes like the moon. But as it stepped closer, the shape shifted, blurred. Fur became skin. Claws became fingers. And then—
It was her.
Or almost her.
The girl who stood before her was Meghan, and yet not. Her eyes gleamed with silver light, and her hair streamed like it was underwater. Her bare feet left trails of frost in the shimmering air. She wore no expression — but power radiated from her like heat from the sun.
Meghan stumbled back. “What— what are you?”
The other tilted her head, curious. “You already know.”
“I don’t—”
“You do.” The words slid through her mind like silk. “You’ve felt me. In your bones when you run. In your blood when you dream. I’ve been waiting, Meghan.”
“For what?”
“For you to stop being afraid of what you are.”
Meghan’s throat went dry. “I’m not— I’m not anything.”
The other Meghan smiled — sharp and knowing. “You are me.”
Light rippled between them, thin threads of silver connecting hand to hand, heart to heart. Meghan felt something stir deep in her chest — something wild, something ancient. The frost she’d made at the bonfire hadn’t been an accident. It had been her nature breaking through.
She could feel it now — fur and flame, blood and moonlight, all twined together inside her. A wolf’s heart beating inside a human cage.
“Why now?” she whispered.
“Because the moon has chosen,” her counterpart said. “And because the pack has forgotten what it means to be whole. They’ve bound themselves to fear, to rules, to the old ways. But balance is coming. Through us.”
The world around them began to fracture, cracks of black opening in the white. The other Meghan stepped forward, pressing her palm against Meghan’s. The contact sent a surge of energy through her — like every cell in her body had woken up.
“When you wake,” the wolf-self said, “you will remember this: you are both. Not girl, not beast. Both. And they will come for you because of it.”
“Who will?”
“The ones who fear what they’ve lost.” A sad smile. “Now— go.”
The light exploded.
Meghan woke on the forest floor, gasping. The bonfire was a dim blur, the pack gathered in a tense circle around her. Lila clutched her hand, whispering her name over and over.
Meghan sat up slowly. Her heart still thundered — but beneath it, she felt another rhythm, deeper, older, in sync with hers.
And when she looked down, the frost spreading from her fingertips wasn’t cold anymore. It shimmered, alive — breathing.
For the first time, she didn’t flinch from it. She let it bloom.
- Writer
