Post by canuslupusarctos on Apr 16, 2007 14:27:02 GMT -3
Chapter Two
Sometimes it’s the moon that howls, not the wolf.
I can’t remember who told me that, but I finally know what they mean. Maybe it was supposed to be some reverse psychology statement or whatever. All I know is that the four or so days surrounding the full moon nearly drive me crazy.
The first day isn’t so bad. I’m just jittery, and my hearing is increased tenfold. In that respect I’m sort of glad that I don’t live among humans. They wouldn’t understand. Someone talking in a normal tone of voice is nearly deafening that day. Even though my senses are heightened, I scare most easily on that day.
Don’t ask me why; I think it’s stupid. But living among my own kind does come in handy those days.
The day after that it gets a little worse. I feel sick all over and I don’t want to move. But at the same time, the moon is pulling at me. That’s the day I get the worst kind of urges to do things that don’t make any sense. And I get irritable. Yet again, that’s the good thing about living among people that are like you.
Everyone stays away from each other that day, so we can’t be at each others throats (literally). I smell things then. It’s strange, smelling someone else’s emotions and knowing that they can smell yours. Every one has a different odor, sort of like spices. They’re the same but yet they’re so different.
The next day after that is the full moon most of the time.
Do I even need to start on that one? Let’s just put it this way: for the whole day until the moon rises, I do things that I’m sure I would never do in my right state of mind. I need things I haven’t needed before, and I feel things I shouldn’t feel. It’s primal.
That’s my least favorite of them all. It makes me ache all over for no reason.
When the moon finally does rise… Hmm. Have you ever had your bones rearranged? Skin growing everywhere at once and sprouting fur? It’s not a very pleasurable experience. Everything shifts. Your bones break and put themselves back together, tendons stretch and mutate. Skin is burning with the ferocity of a forest fire; reshaping itself and stretching beyond the boundaries it should have where stretchability is concerned.
By the way, sprouting fur is the weirdest feeling in the world closely seconded by slowly losing control of your body and your thoughts until you’re forced to sit back and watch yourself go mad.
The wolf emerges, triumphant in its return to govern your senses. I swear that every time it happens the wolf comes back with more enthusiasm. Slowly at first, it begins to feel things. It’s wild, but not in a good way.
You want to run. You want to howl. You want to eat all at once. You’re being torn eight different ways. That’s the insane part. This goes on for about a moment, but it feels like forever when you’re suspended in endless wants and needs.
The human side of you wants to stop. It wants to suppress this beast, this foreign body. But you can’t. Next moment, you do not only want to do everything at once, but you do not want to do everything.
Your human side whispers in your ear “Stay. Don’t run. Don’t let go.”
All the time, the wolf is wanting, “Go. Run! Run! Let me in!”
And both sides are a part of you, so you can’t deny either one.
Then, after a moment of fierce battle between your mind and body, the human subsides. It’s like an unspoken agreement has come between the two halves of you. The wolf pushes its way in violently.
Somewhere in all of this shifting and battling inside, you loose yourself.
After a while, you don’t care anymore. When you’re wolf, then your human side won’t butt in, and when you’re human, the wolf violates that agreement by lurking just below the surface.
It’s maddening, in case I haven’t already said that.
The day after a full moon change is sacred. It’s reserved for rest and fulfillment. Fulfillment, that is, of the carnal urges that still lurk when we become human again. Only after this is done can the wolf be fully satiated, holed up inside your soul, waiting for the next month.
I think the best time of the month is after the change. In that day after, while you’re resting and fulfilling, you can comfort yourself with the thought that you’re the farthest away from the change that you can ever be.
And then it’s back to work.
The second day after the moon is usually when the Omegas arrive. They are usually unconscious and bloodied up pretty bad. In rare and unfortunate cases, they arrive the third day. Then, they’re twice as hard to take care of because they’ve been out for longer and the blood from their resistance has dried.
As I’ve said, it’s my job as fifth in command to watch over them and make sure that they’re taken care of. I just hope that there aren’t more than five of them. That could get hectic.
Not long after the bells wake us up (there is little or no concept of time in this place), they bring them in for me to oversee. I thank the heavens, because there are only three of them this time. I won’t be too busy.
Of course, I should be happy I get to do something. There’s nothing to do in these stone passageways but work. It’s a break from the boredom, albeit a gruesome one.
You think I would be used to blood by now, but I’ve never liked it.
I set them in beds in three different parts of the room. This makes it so that I can get to one without bothering the others. And believe me, I’ve seen enough Omegas in this place to know that they will be either angry or bitter (and sometimes both) when they regain consciousness.
Once the escorts are gone I set to work right away with alcohol and water, cleaning their wounds. I’m glad that they’re not awake, because this would be painful if they were.
By the looks of it, they must have been pretty good at resisting.
I move as quickly as I can, going from a gash on the side of one’s face to a deep cut on the other’s shoulder, from the bleeding rope burns on her wrists to what looks like a stab wound on his left forearm.
They have found two females and a male this time. The numbers they are bringing in are decreasing each time, and I think that maybe the Dark Lord has almost got us all. I also think that he’ll have one massive revolt on his hands if we ever come into contact with him, which is probably why he never comes down here.
Sodding coward. He just knows he’ll be ripped to shreds whether he has his magic or not.
Of course, he sheds us of our magic. He snaps our wands in half when he catches us, and makes it forbidden. And yet he wields it against us.
We keep our magical herbs though. I guess he doesn’t think we’re skilled enough to use them.
After all the blood is washed up, I go to the storeroom and get the healing salve. I smother their gashes and cuts and burns with this. It’s perfect for healing these hurts.
It takes a while to do this, because some of the wounds this time are rather large, and there seem to be a lot of them on this batch.
Soon, though, it’s time to bandage them up. I think that this may be the most time consuming part of the whole fiasco because everything has to be exactly right. I’m a stickler for proper bandaging.
My first round of Omegas I had to care for were a lot worse off than this lot. There was a critical wound in one’s shoulder and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I remember taking off the bandages and putting them back on thousands of times, trying to get the pressure exactly right.
I had lost that one because of the amount of blood he lost in the time it took me to get that bandaging right. I told myself I would never be stupid like that again. The nice beating that I got after that one didn’t help with the convincing at all.
I thought that in wolf packs, the healers were showed gratitude. Apparently, since Voldemort didn’t care whether we lived or not I was wrong. At least we weren’t in the lowest bracket.
By the time I had finished bandaging the last one up, the bell had wrung for us to go back to bed. The only reason (in my opinion) they kept an organization style like this was because we would be constantly killing each other if there wasn’t. At least they fought to keep some shred of humanity, right?
I made sure that they all were set for the night and retired myself. They would probably wake up tomorrow, and then I’d have to deal with the anger and the bitterness and the explanations.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day. But then of course, It’s always a long day when you can’t see the sun and your life is haunted by the moonlight you once thought was so brilliant.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hm... I am content. I was in such a tizzy (does anyone actually say that anymore? Ah well.) because for the last couple of days I couldn't upload documents, so I couldn't post (. That was, until by good friends Merc and Anne informed me that all you had to do was export a chapter from something you've already done and erase everything. I was sooo happy. I didn't want to leave you guys hanging, you know.
So, now I'm sharing this information with the rest of the world. Enjoy.
Oh, and Kudos to my THREE reviewers! You guys rock.
Sometimes it’s the moon that howls, not the wolf.
I can’t remember who told me that, but I finally know what they mean. Maybe it was supposed to be some reverse psychology statement or whatever. All I know is that the four or so days surrounding the full moon nearly drive me crazy.
The first day isn’t so bad. I’m just jittery, and my hearing is increased tenfold. In that respect I’m sort of glad that I don’t live among humans. They wouldn’t understand. Someone talking in a normal tone of voice is nearly deafening that day. Even though my senses are heightened, I scare most easily on that day.
Don’t ask me why; I think it’s stupid. But living among my own kind does come in handy those days.
The day after that it gets a little worse. I feel sick all over and I don’t want to move. But at the same time, the moon is pulling at me. That’s the day I get the worst kind of urges to do things that don’t make any sense. And I get irritable. Yet again, that’s the good thing about living among people that are like you.
Everyone stays away from each other that day, so we can’t be at each others throats (literally). I smell things then. It’s strange, smelling someone else’s emotions and knowing that they can smell yours. Every one has a different odor, sort of like spices. They’re the same but yet they’re so different.
The next day after that is the full moon most of the time.
Do I even need to start on that one? Let’s just put it this way: for the whole day until the moon rises, I do things that I’m sure I would never do in my right state of mind. I need things I haven’t needed before, and I feel things I shouldn’t feel. It’s primal.
That’s my least favorite of them all. It makes me ache all over for no reason.
When the moon finally does rise… Hmm. Have you ever had your bones rearranged? Skin growing everywhere at once and sprouting fur? It’s not a very pleasurable experience. Everything shifts. Your bones break and put themselves back together, tendons stretch and mutate. Skin is burning with the ferocity of a forest fire; reshaping itself and stretching beyond the boundaries it should have where stretchability is concerned.
By the way, sprouting fur is the weirdest feeling in the world closely seconded by slowly losing control of your body and your thoughts until you’re forced to sit back and watch yourself go mad.
The wolf emerges, triumphant in its return to govern your senses. I swear that every time it happens the wolf comes back with more enthusiasm. Slowly at first, it begins to feel things. It’s wild, but not in a good way.
You want to run. You want to howl. You want to eat all at once. You’re being torn eight different ways. That’s the insane part. This goes on for about a moment, but it feels like forever when you’re suspended in endless wants and needs.
The human side of you wants to stop. It wants to suppress this beast, this foreign body. But you can’t. Next moment, you do not only want to do everything at once, but you do not want to do everything.
Your human side whispers in your ear “Stay. Don’t run. Don’t let go.”
All the time, the wolf is wanting, “Go. Run! Run! Let me in!”
And both sides are a part of you, so you can’t deny either one.
Then, after a moment of fierce battle between your mind and body, the human subsides. It’s like an unspoken agreement has come between the two halves of you. The wolf pushes its way in violently.
Somewhere in all of this shifting and battling inside, you loose yourself.
After a while, you don’t care anymore. When you’re wolf, then your human side won’t butt in, and when you’re human, the wolf violates that agreement by lurking just below the surface.
It’s maddening, in case I haven’t already said that.
The day after a full moon change is sacred. It’s reserved for rest and fulfillment. Fulfillment, that is, of the carnal urges that still lurk when we become human again. Only after this is done can the wolf be fully satiated, holed up inside your soul, waiting for the next month.
I think the best time of the month is after the change. In that day after, while you’re resting and fulfilling, you can comfort yourself with the thought that you’re the farthest away from the change that you can ever be.
And then it’s back to work.
The second day after the moon is usually when the Omegas arrive. They are usually unconscious and bloodied up pretty bad. In rare and unfortunate cases, they arrive the third day. Then, they’re twice as hard to take care of because they’ve been out for longer and the blood from their resistance has dried.
As I’ve said, it’s my job as fifth in command to watch over them and make sure that they’re taken care of. I just hope that there aren’t more than five of them. That could get hectic.
Not long after the bells wake us up (there is little or no concept of time in this place), they bring them in for me to oversee. I thank the heavens, because there are only three of them this time. I won’t be too busy.
Of course, I should be happy I get to do something. There’s nothing to do in these stone passageways but work. It’s a break from the boredom, albeit a gruesome one.
You think I would be used to blood by now, but I’ve never liked it.
I set them in beds in three different parts of the room. This makes it so that I can get to one without bothering the others. And believe me, I’ve seen enough Omegas in this place to know that they will be either angry or bitter (and sometimes both) when they regain consciousness.
Once the escorts are gone I set to work right away with alcohol and water, cleaning their wounds. I’m glad that they’re not awake, because this would be painful if they were.
By the looks of it, they must have been pretty good at resisting.
I move as quickly as I can, going from a gash on the side of one’s face to a deep cut on the other’s shoulder, from the bleeding rope burns on her wrists to what looks like a stab wound on his left forearm.
They have found two females and a male this time. The numbers they are bringing in are decreasing each time, and I think that maybe the Dark Lord has almost got us all. I also think that he’ll have one massive revolt on his hands if we ever come into contact with him, which is probably why he never comes down here.
Sodding coward. He just knows he’ll be ripped to shreds whether he has his magic or not.
Of course, he sheds us of our magic. He snaps our wands in half when he catches us, and makes it forbidden. And yet he wields it against us.
We keep our magical herbs though. I guess he doesn’t think we’re skilled enough to use them.
After all the blood is washed up, I go to the storeroom and get the healing salve. I smother their gashes and cuts and burns with this. It’s perfect for healing these hurts.
It takes a while to do this, because some of the wounds this time are rather large, and there seem to be a lot of them on this batch.
Soon, though, it’s time to bandage them up. I think that this may be the most time consuming part of the whole fiasco because everything has to be exactly right. I’m a stickler for proper bandaging.
My first round of Omegas I had to care for were a lot worse off than this lot. There was a critical wound in one’s shoulder and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I remember taking off the bandages and putting them back on thousands of times, trying to get the pressure exactly right.
I had lost that one because of the amount of blood he lost in the time it took me to get that bandaging right. I told myself I would never be stupid like that again. The nice beating that I got after that one didn’t help with the convincing at all.
I thought that in wolf packs, the healers were showed gratitude. Apparently, since Voldemort didn’t care whether we lived or not I was wrong. At least we weren’t in the lowest bracket.
By the time I had finished bandaging the last one up, the bell had wrung for us to go back to bed. The only reason (in my opinion) they kept an organization style like this was because we would be constantly killing each other if there wasn’t. At least they fought to keep some shred of humanity, right?
I made sure that they all were set for the night and retired myself. They would probably wake up tomorrow, and then I’d have to deal with the anger and the bitterness and the explanations.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day. But then of course, It’s always a long day when you can’t see the sun and your life is haunted by the moonlight you once thought was so brilliant.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hm... I am content. I was in such a tizzy (does anyone actually say that anymore? Ah well.) because for the last couple of days I couldn't upload documents, so I couldn't post (. That was, until by good friends Merc and Anne informed me that all you had to do was export a chapter from something you've already done and erase everything. I was sooo happy. I didn't want to leave you guys hanging, you know.
So, now I'm sharing this information with the rest of the world. Enjoy.
Oh, and Kudos to my THREE reviewers! You guys rock.