Female ✔️

9: to the peaks

"One hand here, the other... Here, yes, press your palms together."

I feel like a fawn on newborn legs, attempting to balance on this log fallen over the feeding creek. I keep looking down at it, watching the leisurely paced water head southwest. It gives me chills, having taken me a long time to even get on the log, this was holding me back further.

The young wolf, Asher, is trying to teach me the practice of yoga. She says my balance needs some work, that she is surprised for such a focused wolf I stumble more than most.

It keeps rubbing me the wrong way that someone younger is teaching me. How should someone with less achieved winters know more than someone with more? More years?

Making my headache, Asher shakes her head at me for losing focus yet again as I stumble to my knees, clutching to the log with fear for my life. This makes her laugh and me growl.

It doesn't even bother her, just like Jack. They brush me under the rug like I hold no power at all.

"Stand back up, try it again! Just stand on one leg this time, feel the wood beneath your foot and imagine a thin string holding you up. This string will tie you closer to the moon!"

She doesn't help me to my feet, doesn't insult my pride that much. I inhale deeply and try to lift myself to one foot. If this will tie me to the moon, I need to try harder. At first I'm a wobbling, shaking mess. Then- I'm golden. Standing solid on one foot, arms out like a bird. I open my eyes that had been squeezed shut so tight. I look at Asher who's beaming like I'm her pup all grown and improving. I'm grinning so wide... Until my arms are whirling like wild branches in wind.

My feet scrape on the bark as I fall backwards the short distance into the water with muck and rock at the bottom of the otherwise clean water.

I surface choking and sputtering, flailing my arms again and scrambling out. Water lapping at my heels, clinging to my shirt and the tight cotton pants.

My eyes are wide, I feel the strain, and my mouth cracked at the jaw like I'm about to scream but I can't, I struggle for air, panicking, trying to get away from the black water.

I open my eyes again and Asher is in front of me, saying something, I watch her mouth move, listen to the dull hiss of nothing and deafening thud of my heart.

I bend forward on my knees, pressing my forehead to the Earth, trying to draw some sort of power, some sort of control, but again, I can't. My skin is rippling, turning gray with the shift underway. I cry out, I can feel it raw in my shifting throat. I want out of this body. I want out. I don't care about my promise to John, the challenge I accepted. Nothing matters but now.

My skin tears in two and I take off, sprinting into the forest, I get far away from the creek, travelling deeper and deeper, I run until I can't breathe right and taste copper in the back of my throat. Then, and only then do I start circling back. My movements still reluctant as I wonder if I really want to face the pack yet. To face John.

I'm riddled with the heavy feelings of terror, my nightmares that were real so recently always coming back in my highest of times, I can never keep them out. Always they will haunt my sleep and torment my thoughts. Blu will always hurt me somehow in this vulnerability he's established over me.

I come to rest in the brush near the spot where Jack first took me, where we slept and I had growled and told him to leave. Laying here I watch the ocean awash with night, it has been hours since I ran from the creek.

Black water in a basin.

I shiver just thinking about it, feeling the same creep of nerves as I watch the ocean. I eye him as a competitor seeking affection from our higher power. I won't come close, I'll watch from above, abiding by Alpha John's wise words.