The Long-Dead Living

The darkness was thick, pressing down on her until her legs gave way. Looking up seeking any guidance from the Mother Moon all she saw was eyes. The eyes of her parents. The eyes of her pack. Millions of eyes pressing in upon her. Eyes of wolves she had known, eyes of humans she had seen, eyes of wolves she would meet, and people she would see. Eyes of hawks, mice, cats, snakes, insects she had pounced on as a pup. Each pair of eyes was visible to the outer rim of the iris, and all were shifting. Her mother's eyes, which had been staring at her, now had shifted to the back of the pack of eyes as the human's eyes came forward peering anxiously at her.

Her eyes had opened once more into the world of reality. For a few moments all she could see was a blur of green, black, and silver. As her eyes focused she could see the moon, in the otherwise black sky, behind the pine trees. Lifting her head cautiously she looked into the long barrel of a gun. So, the human's friends had found him. She sighed as her head dropped back to the earth.

The humans were talking, but she didn't care enough to translate the guttural tones. Suddenly she felt something pulling in her mind, pulling and snapping at the strings of the magic that held her wolven form in place. Some of them were beginning to give and soon she would be back in her human form. Picking her head back up she saw the unarmed human say something urgently to someone who may have been his brother, for the likenesses in their faces. "This isn't right. Something isn't right," he was saying. The older one shrugged, taking the warning for a bit of child foolishness. Too bad for him.

The gun barrel that had been in her face cocked. Her body tensed, as she howled louder than before, disguising what words were spoken under it. The young male fell to his knees, hands over his ears. He could hear the words, raw power turned into a language long forgotten. Metal hissed and sizzled suddenly hot, burning the owners' hands. Snow melted as the guns dropped into the snow, barrels sealed shut with melted bullets. The now seriously burned, previously armed males ran into the woods, heading toward the trail that would take them back to their town, leaving the youngest alone and forgotten in the shadows of the trees.

Her head flopped back down, now completely exhausted. It had been a long time since she had used magic words of any sort. The only magic that she and her pack had used was the shaping spell. The pack. Now they were all dead, all dead except for her. She couldn't stay a wolf now, but she had come to love the freedoms of the shape over the long centuries. Now, though, the freedoms had become restricted, and it became perilous to keep them. The strings were already half gone because of whatever had been cutting at them, making it easier to release the rest of them.

Paws turned to hands and feet, muzzle turning into nose and mouth, fangs into normal human sized teeth, her tail shriveling up as her spine shortened, fur turning into the light brown shirt and loose dark green pants that she had worn all those years ago, as clean as they had been the day they were made. The fur along her back shrank into long white-blonde hair. "Ow," she said as she sat up, leaning her back against the closest pine tree. The male who had been left behind was still in pain from the word she had used. She would decide what to do with him later, after she had recovered enough to use another, smaller, easier spell. She reluctantly shut her eyes as sleep over came her.