Pity.
#1 of Pity, Mercy, Anger and Pride
"No.... no! Don't you come any closer, you sick bastard!"
The wolf was screaming in fright, backing up against a tree, his fangs bared in the light of the moon. They shone like glistening pearls.
"Don't you touch me-- I killed you. I KILLED you! I ripped your throat out myself! I--"
The forest was silent for a moment. Then, the sound of vomiting, and choking. The wolf bristled.
"Do you think that's funny? You DESERVED it! You deserved it for being a fucking weakling! Lower wolves like you get raped all the time, and you don't see them... crying."
The wolf spat blood on his attacker. His words were angry, but his voice was cracking like a frightened, beaten pup. His body quaked in fear. Good fear. Sane fear. His eyes widened. They were as round as the moon.
"Don't! Please, don't!" His voice was pleading now. "My mate, she's pregnant, she'll starve if I-- I--"
A fountain of blood poured from his mouth as his insides were torn from his belly. The smell of his fetid flesh filled the forest. The wolf could see himself. His last memories were of claws and blood and red all over his perfect white coat. And the paws that tore the life out of him?
Well, the black demon didn't spare anyone. His eyes were fire and his muzzle was blood. They howled his name in darkness.
And he answered them with screams.
---Three months Earlier---
I crawled away from the fire. My injured leg was hurting a lot, and I thought it might do me some good to drink a little water, since it was getting late, and it had been a while since I had had a drink.
It had been almost a year since I had left home. At least, I think it had been. I remember leaving, hurt and afraid. Of course, that was how I spent most of my time-- being hurt and afraid.
This most recent injury I got from a sick buck that I had tried to take down. To be fair, I was starving, and hunger makes me slow. I remember that, usually, and I plan ahead, because I'm a fairly smart wolf. But this time, I screwed up, and he kicked me, right below my knee. It would take months to heal, but I hunted alone. It would take the buck a month or so to run out of meat. Even if it got rotton after a while, I cooked it. I was civilized right? I could cook. That's what fires were for.
I was glad to remember how to make a fire, honestly. When I woke up that night, I didn't even remember my own.name... I still don't know what it is. In this lonely and awful place, it doesn't really matter what you call yourself, as long as you call yourself.
That isn't to say I howl alone.
I just... don't howl. And I call myself Sashev, because it was the first thing that came to mind when I looked at myself in the mirror reflection of a still pond.
It was the same pond that I was drinking out of now, as a matter of fact. The water felt good in my throat.
Well, maybe I should explain myself? Like I said, I'm Sashev, and about six moon cycles ago, I woke up alone in this forest. The first night I spent there was frightening, the forest was... unfamiliar. It wasn't MY forest, that was all I knew.
And it was warm. The tail end of summer, and such a night... ah, it struck me as beautiful at the time, and I got the sense that I was seeing something for the first time in my life in a new way. Of course, I had no idea what the rest of my life was like, but these feelings persisted.
I am a free person. I knew that much. I wondered what I had escaped... my body had been abused. As if I had been crushed by a thousand hooves, trampling all over. I was able to survive by catching rabits and sleeping by the pond every day for a month, but then it became colder, and the bitter winter winds sucked the life from my body.
That was a hard winter... well, THE hard winter. I'm rather fast for my size, and I'm very smart, so I was able to stay alive by hunting. I would see a situation, and plan it out in my mind instantly. What would work, what wouldn't, how I would do it all on my own....
I got the sense that, before I left, I was a thinker. I thought a lot, so all the introspection and solitude really wasn't a big change for me. It was a blessing, in a way.
In fact, I got the feeling that I had always been alone. Wolves are supposed to travel in packs, and I was a wolf. A lone one, no pack.
I never had a pack. Of that I was absolutely sure.
Winter had come... and winter was gone, now. When spring came, I burnt a rabbit because I was enjoying the weather and not paying attention. I couldn't be angry, though. It was just a sacrifice to spring, in all its glory.
And now, summer was here again, and I was hurt. I'd been hurt for a little while, and my leg still twitched with pain every now and again. I grimaced, and touched the wound with my paw.
Christ, I hated being hurt. I could only hobble as it was. There was an art to survival like this, and it mostly involved chasing rabbits down holes that were dug with your own paws.
I had caught my dinner that way, and the thrill of the hunt always made me feel better. I snapped it's neck with my teeth. The sound was deliscious, too. I've learned to enjoy prey with all my senses, the smell, the sound, the taste... the touch. The blood ran in rivulets down the little thing's body.
It made me nervous, in a way. Jittery. It made me want to... play with myself, just a little. I needed to cup my heavy balls, slide my claws up my fat sheath, slide one around the lip. It made my toes curl up thinking about it. After a hunt, I would sit down on the forest floor, my legs spread wide for the empty world to see, and I would put my paws everywhere they wanted to go, until my wolfhood spilled out of it's sheath, heavy and thick and throbbing.
I can never help it. It's what comes with being a predator, I suppose. There's something sexual about hunting, and I didn't have a mate to fill, so my paw would have to do. One paw would rub my tailhole and one would take the tip, pinching it lightly, smearing the transparent goo around, slicking up my penis.
I would start at the shaft. The feel of prey between my legs, behind me, over me, in my mouth, in my paws, my arms. I caught prey, and I tore it asunder, so I WAS prey. I pumped my hips instinctively, sliding into my paw with sexual force.
The taste of blood on my mouth, it was so erotic. I find this part... hard to explain. I have a hard time deciding what my fantasy is. Half of me wants to exert this sexual power on someone else, to feel them screaming from the depths of their soul, begging me to do something, anything, as long as it ended it. And the other half of me wants to be held down and consumed like a doe, forced into love, thrusting and shaking and shivering and howling into the night wind.
My paw is stroking so fast now, and the other is buried inside of me, and both of them are working so well. It fills me with pride, and love. I always cum violently, thick, hot ropes spraying onto my chest, my muzzle, my ears and even my food sometimes. I don't mind, I lick it off. It makes perfect sense: dust to dust, ashes to ashes. And I rest for a little bit, contemplating who I am and what disgusting creature I was to have thoughts and desires like that.
I don't even know anyone in this empty, hollow forest. There isn't anyone to know. I am everything in the forest, except the prey. I am everything. Preditor. Consumer. Judge.
I draw the line between the quick and the dead. Am I sick? Or just.... alone.
But that was all the introspection I could take. My body was tired, and now that my thirst was quenched, it was time to sleep and wait for morning. The night had fallen like a blanket, and my ears were graced with the soft early-summer winds as a lulliby.
The sound reminded me of... nothing. Which I liked.
And then... every night, the dream. The wind howls, and I howl too, because it's dark and I'm truely alone. It isn't like the day, when my lonliness is comforting.
I am staring at myself, but I'm not myself anymore. My eyes are the same, but my coat... Had I always had white fur? I ask myself this question every night, and every night, the figure I'm watching nods. I nod yes, and I blink.
It's like staring into a mirror, I copy myself, and both me and my other self place our jaws around our necks, our paws linking up. It smells like fire for a second, and I can feel it burning behind my eyes.
And my mouth fills with blood, and so does my other self, and we spit it out upon the ground and grin to each other, our bloodstained muzzles stretching out wide across needle teeth and blood-stained razor claws.
We've killed someone, and I suddenly feel this great remorse. The blood on my muzzle doesn't belong to this person, I feel. It's as if they died because of our killing, but we didn't kill them. Not us. Never us
I wake up screaming for my mother. Always. I don't know her name, so for an hour or so, I weep like a puppy in the dark.
Every morning.
On every day.
I'm gald it's summer again.