The Luna's Gift

A Very Good Day

    The run is exhilarating, and Helena can't believe what a different experience running in the forest is compared to the gardens at the Daae. The array of trees, flora, animals who startle and run away from her, the smells and sights of the natural environment. She loves the gardens, but they are also all she knows. Her family moved to the Daae when she was five, and she didn’t shift for the first time until she hit puberty at fourteen. Although her birthplace in Sneem, Ireland is beautifully green and luscious with wide open roaming space, she never experienced it through her wolf. As she runs through the forest, her senses are alive, her endorphins coursing through her body, her wolf senses heightened. She slows near a small pond, eyeing the ducks floating along the surface unfazed. Helena quietly approaches, and makes a leap into the pond, causing the ducks to scatter and quack in anger. Helena playfully nips at them, chasing them around the pond, jumping in and out and splashing in the water, her soaking auburn fur glistening in the sunlight. One of the ducks sternly quacks at Helena, as if to scold her, before wading off away from her. Helena rolls along the small shore, covering her fur in dirt, and falls asleep for an afternoon nap. Helena feels fully relaxed, so much so that she realizes she hasn't felt this calm and content in a long time. At the Daae, Helena does important work she loves, but this run made her realize she’s been neglecting her wolf. Her runs in the garden were of necessity, when her wolf was so restless she couldn’t keep her at bay any longer. She feels so disconnected from her wolf, like they were two separate entities instead of one whole being.

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    When Helena returns to her cottage, she falls onto her bed, laying sprawled out naked, stretching into the sunbeams like a house cat. She texts Mags, “Just ran in their woods...life changing. We have to start making trips out to a real forest. Let me know how the new intern goes and if Jonas is still acting weird. Miss you xoxo”. As she hits send, a loud grumble sounds in her stomach, and Helena is hit with a pang of hunger. As she thought about what leftovers Ingrid might have in the kitchen, her thoughts drift further to her dream in the kitchen...“It was just a dream. Artemis isn’t even here. It was just a dream” She tells herself this as she goes through her suitcase for something to wear. She stops at her shorts that she vaguely remembers being the ones she wore in said dream, and purposefully opts for some grey sweatpants and white t-shirt instead. She goes back and forth on whether she should put a bra on, but decides in the end that no one is home, and she’s in the mood to be comfortable.

As she turns to leave, she catches her reflection in the antique standing mirror next to the dresser. Her long auburn curls are tousled, and even finds a leaf and twig sticking out. She stares at herself, her green eyes stare back, brighter than she remembers them being, but at the same time she can’t remember the last time she really looked at herself. Her face has a glow to it, that kind of glow someone gets after a perfectly relaxing day in the sun, and freckles dotted over her nose and cheeks. It’s been a very good day, she decides. 

In the kitchen, Helena is disappointed to find no leftovers, and assumes the pups must have cleared any out for the camping trip. She settles on making a turkey sandwich--well several sandwiches if she’s being honest, she’s starving--with a side of chips and applesauce. 

“Ms. Flynn?” An unfamiliar voice asks.

Helena jumps a little from the startle and spins around, the knife with mayonnaise still in her hand. Her eyes lock with the stranger’s bright blue eyes, and it suddenly feels as if all the air has been sucked out of the room. An electric shock runs through Helena’s body unlike anything she’s ever felt, the sparks reaching every corner of her body, and hot tingles radiating from her core. An explosion of lights play around her line of vision, blurring everything but the woman with the blue eyes. Like a magnet, her body pulls towards her, Helena taking a few steps until their faces are mere inches from each other.

Artemis growls “Mine. You are mine!”