Running From The Storm

The girl appears from nowhere as the first yellow light of dawn struggles to make it through the densely clouded sky and the foreboding branches of the surrounding forest. The first birdsong echoes for a moment before it is caught by a wind. A wind that tosses the girl’s dark tresses across her plain, pale face and causes the trees to moan. Slowly, she stands up, taking in everything about her, using her senses to their full extent. Pine, oak, maple and spruce spice the air, while fainter scents of birch, leaves, heat and the promise of rain become stronger in the growing wind. Pine pitch causes needles, leaves and chilled dirt to stick to her bare feet, while new grass and fern try to grow on the littered ground. She sees and hears the songbirds flitting about, hastening to gather food before it’s too late. It is still too dark to be able to see very far and her head aches as she strains her senses further and tries to put together the clues. Then she notices the energy in the sky and air and the eerie shade of green the light has turned. It was going to storm. She stood there contemplating a strange feeling of security, for she didn’t fear the oncoming storm. The wind picked up again and started to howl, flapping her loose garments and hair about her body.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispers to herself, “I do not feel chill at all.” She feels no bodily need and realizes she could actually stay in the storm without shelter.
“Which is good, since it really doesn’t seem likely I’ll find any.” Then, startled, she feels something watching her. The girl’s eyes widen as she turns about, scanning for her watcher. She sees nothing but the forest and as the feeling goes stronger, her spine shakes and she whirls around wildly, frantically searching. She feels the watcher fly at her back, creating a wind to rival those of the storm. And this wind chills her all the way through. Suddenly, she begins to run, her feet moving faster than she ever thought possible. She runs, runs from the watcher ever at her back. She flies over the forest floor at an almost inhuman grace, darting left, then right narrowly missing ancient trees. She leaps over fallen pines, their trunks wider than she is tall, eaten at by moss, fungi and insects.
Somehow she easily evades all the forests seeming traps and thinks, “I can’t do this, how the heck am I doing this?” Suddenly she slips on some moss, wettened by the downpour that started while she ran. Her arms automatically lock out, elbows bent as she tumbles down an eroded hill. Skidding to a stop on a dirt shelf, she stands to see a creek twenty feet below her. The waters are swelling from the rain, rising higher, flowing faster and growing broader every minute. Automatically, as if in a trance, she gauges the distance between herself and the lower opposing bank. Doing a bit of a running start, she leaps into the air and executes a series of midair twists and lands on her feet, arms spread, on the other bank.
“Where did I learn to do that?” she asks herself, staring back across the water where she’d just done an acrobatic stunt she’d only ever seen before in the movies. Movies. That reminds her of… of something. “Damn it! Why the heck is my memory so screwed up!?” Staring down at herself she notices that the rain has drenched her clothing, but not even the rain is able to take out the red mud that had become encrusted on the knees. Dirty pants, she’d always gotten her pants dirty, especially new ones, from playing outside on the grass, dirt and trees, sometimes even in the water. Gaw, her mom sure did get mad about her always needing new pants. “I just had a memory, a real memory!” she whispers to herself excitedly. Suddenly, she feels another set of eyes watching her and she comes back out of her thoughts.
* * * * * * * * * * *
The canine slowly wanders down the worn deer path, her large feet padding silently on the dirt and leaves. The wind of the storm rustles her thick fur, creating ripples on her blue and black mottled pelt. Her eyes and nose are twitching with all the signs around her. Over by a rotted out oak a doe and her twin fawns had rested the previous night and a mouse mother was scolding her young for too rough of play. Her instincts were telling her to go back to her den, but something had chased her out. A something made of wind with an odd scent. The scent was as ancient as the forest were she dwelt and as powerful as the storm. The something had triggered her sixth sense, telling her that it was conscious and…of magic. Magic, an ancient force that is unexplainable. The humans have tried to harness it, some actually succeeded; now they were destroying it. Humans fail to realize magic’s truth…except for one. She hadn’t seen the one in a long time though. And they had been such close...friends.
A crack of thunder causes her to snap back to the task at hand. She is now walking on a shelf parallel to the creek below. The pouring rain has soaked her to the skin and made her great ruff cling to her chest. She would have to turn away from the creek before it rose too high and caused her shelf to erode. The dirt had by now turned to mud, and even her feet which allowed her to run across the top of snow were having a tough time finding purchase. The rain washed away the scent of the world around her and the wind carried different scents from far away swirling everywhere. Lightning flashes made eerie shadows from the trees and the thunder was so incredibly loud to her sensitive ears that it made her jump. Then the wind brings a new scent to her nose. A familiar scent of an ancient power. She snarls, lightning flashing off her teeth and making yellow-green eyes glow. Then she feels that strange wind pushing at her flank and she can’t help but to run. She wishes to turn around and fight it, but instinct forces her flee from such a great power so she contents herself by continuing to growl as she runs. Then, suddenly the strange wind is gone. She stops running and turns about in a circle, perplexed. Her prick ear stands high and her tulip ear goes back, trying to pinpoint the strange wind, but she can’t, it has vanished yet again. She stops turning and finds that she has run to the top of the ravine, above the creek. Before her, the ground declines on a steep slope for a long distance, then flattens out into a valley. The creek is surging higher onto the gently sloping valley with inanimate ferocity. On the opposite side of creek is a vertical wall with a shelf about twenty feet above the water. She notices something on the valley. A movement, some sort of creature. Her ears perk forward, her nose twitches and her neck extends as she slowly steps closer to the edge, all of her attention on the figure below. The wind refuses to bring her a scent, so she uses her eyes, ears and canine sense to gather all the information on the figure as possible. The rain and wind whips about her and the figure, as if they alone could stop her curiosity. Then the storm subsided for but a moment, just between her and her subject of interest. A wind blows from the figure to the canine and it carries the information that she needs. A scent. At the same moment, an eerie green lightning cracks in the sky above. Nearly yipping aloud, she realizes the figure is a young human female. And her scent is familiar. The scent of a determined individual not yet appreciative of the full power she could yield. The canine shakes her head; the human’s scent is so familiar to her. The scent of trees, of energy, various animals, carbonation… She knows of only one human like that, with that scent, but she hasn’t seen the one since…
* * * * * * * * * * *
The girl takes a deep breath and vainly tries to push her hair, which has gone darker in the rain ands clings together in the forms of twisting eels, out of her face. The wind howls in her ears and the rain hits her skin like pellets shot through a straw. She stretches her shoulders back, making her shoulder blades emanate cracking sounds against her spine. As she slowly turns around, her eyes search the surrounding forest and her senses strain to discern who, or what, her watcher might be through the savagery of the storm. Suddenly, the storm dies down, in a straight path from her and towards the crest ahead. Then an eerie green lightning flashes across the sky and she sees…an animal. The lightning makes the creatures’ eyes glow a wild, yellow green.
“The silhouette looks…canine. A wolf?” the girl thinks to herself.
She stands stock still, trying to think of what to do next. Ticking off a wolf isn’t on the top of her to-do list. She stares at the wolf and a strange feeling comes over her, a feeling of familiarity-she knows that wolf. She tries to remember more about the wolf but fails, and sighs. She watches as gradually the storm fights through the calm and takes back its territory. The feeling of familiarity grows stronger and draws her toward the wolf. She goes slow, not wanting to frighten it-her.
“Her?” she asks herself, taking another look at the wolf atop the ridge, “Yeah,” the girl remembers, “she’s a her.” The girl keeps walking towards the wolf, still trying to remember more, and still failing. She is now only forty feet away from the wolf.
The wolf turns her head as the girl comes onto the ridge. They watch each other at a distance, unsure of what to do next. The girl takes notice of the wolf’s features. At the shoulder the wolf stands about three feet tall. Long, muscular legs lead to huge paws. Her whole body is muscle, poised for fight or flight. Her thick coat sheds off the rain like water off a raincoat. On her neck grows an abundance of fur in a protective ruff. Her face has an alert and wild expression. Her marbled yellow and blue (giving the impression of green) eyes slant down to her nose. Her left ear is erect and black while her right ear is partially erect, with the tip hanging forward and blue in color. Her coat is blue with black patches all over.
“Merle, that’s what the pattern is called,” she thinks to herself, “but that means…she’s not a wolf, but a hybrid.”
The hybrid reaches her long neck forward, sniffing the girl. Her tulip ear flicks back and forth, showing her deep thought. The girl holds out her hands, showing no ill thoughts. The wolf takes a step forward and tentatively wags her plumed tail. The girl kneels down on the wet earth; the storm is still raging. The hybrid stops wagging her tail and gives the girl a quizzical look. Then the hybrid’s tongue lolls out, she whines in her throat, her tail whips about so that its white tip is plainly seen and she runs over to the girl’s embrace.
“Hi,” the girl says, beginning to smile.