Renewal

The sensation of homecoming was bittersweet.  The long grass tickled her belly and stroked her legs and made her feel as if there was nowhere else she wanted to be.  The scents were familiar, the sights just the same.  Everything was the way she'd left it and she embraced the sensation with everything in her.  She ran through the night, beneath the stars, until her lungs felt as if they were going to collapse.

She'd had to leave, she'd been forced to return... she had found a way to be happy anyway.

The demons fell before her strength; no longer was she weak, no longer did she struggle.  Through the tribulations of her life, she'd found the strength within her and brought it to the surface.  Now there was nothing she feared.  Nothing.

With the last barbed wolf fallen, she turned towards the trees and stopped, immediately.

Him.

The one she'd never forget looked back at her.  The meeting she'd been avoiding, dreading - the one thing she still feared, though she denied it - was at hand.  The hair on the back of her neck bristled.  Her lips pulled back into a blatant snarl.

He whined.
~*~


The young woman napped by the lake shore, alone and content to be that way.  The argument had been bitter, and her friends had left her behind.

Some friends...

Scowling, she'd turned her eyes to the nearby cliffs and tensed abruptly.  Shaggy, mottled fur in browns and blacks left him almost entirely invisible, but she knew him anyway.  She'd know him anywhere, even if she couldn't remember why.  Her wolf.

Her heart soared and she extended a hand, inviting... hoping that he'd come nearer.  His low whine filled the air and for the first time she could ever remember, he let her bury her face in his fur.

~*~

The shock of memory brought about by that lonely sound sent a shiver through her and chased away more rage than she'd known she had.

Settling onto her haunches in the grass, she waited.