United Again

Chapter 1

"Gaven, honey! You're going to be late. Again!" The short, stout woman called up the stairs to her 16 year old adoptive son.

She was rather concerned that he had been spending so much time in his room recently. He had also been late to school the last few days. "What are you doing up there? It may be your birthday, but you're not staying home!"

Gaven stepped out of his room, his backpack clutched in his left hand while his right arm wriggled its way through the long sleeve of his blue plaid button down.

"I'm coming, Joline! I had a little bit of work to finish before school!"

He sighed softly and slung his bag over his shoulders, coming down the steps and going right to the front door. He stopped short of the door and patted himself down, "Phone, Keys, I.D..." he muttered the list to himself before glancing back to his adoptive father.

Mike had his hands on his hips. "You're trying to get out of here awful fast." The rather large man crossed his arms and shot Gaven a playfully accusing glare.

Gaven rolled his eyes. "I have to get to school," he said, smiling and casting his adoptive father a playful glare. "And besides, you don't want me here anyway. Don't act like I don't know what goes on when I'm not here."

The two adults exchanged semi-confused glances. "What do you mean, Gaven?" Joline said, voicing what was also her husband's thought.

Gaven laughed, speaking to them over his shoulder as he walked out of the house, "All you two ever do when I'm not here is clean!" He closed the door behind him as he left the house behind him.
He walked away from the quaint home that his foster parents had owned for what seemed like his entire life. The music playing through his headphones melted away into background noise, and his mind wondered about himself. His adoptive parents had always told him his parents died in a car crash, and yet he always wondered. Wondered where he really came from, and who he truly was.

Gaven had always felt somewhat off. He felt like he didn't really belong in the rather mundane life that he currently existed in. He could do things no one else could. Weird things. Of these, his favorite by far, and the only one that he did often, was becoming a wolf. This he did with a fair bit of regularity. The mark on his shoulder would glow a faint blue, and then suddenly he would feel more free than he had ever been.

As Gaven walked, his feet hit the ground and made a rhythmic plit-plot, plit-plot, plit. His mind drifted to that mysterious mark. He looked over at his left shoulder and tilted his head slightly. He couldn't see it, but he knew it was still there. That ever-present black mark.

It was shaped like a wolf paw, with all the requisite pad shapes. On the central foot pad, there was a design. Gaven thought that the mark had to mean something. Was it a family mark from his birth parents? Was it something the government did when he was in the system? Or was it something else entirely?

The design on the central pad consisted of a circle, bordered by what looked like sun rays on a little over half of its of its circumference. The rest of the border was clean and round. The edges of the first and last rays were connected by a curved line that outlined a crescent shaped piece of silver in the sea of gold that was the rest of the circle. It looked like a crescent moon within a sun, set into a deep black sky.

Gaven continued to walk, his strides long. His feet hit the pavement in an almost perfect 4/4 time. Plit, plot, plit, plot, plit. It reminded him of the military cadences you see in movies. Left, right, left, right, left. He decided to take a shortcut today. He really didn't want to be late again and spend part of his birthday in detention. Typically, one might avoid walking through the woods to get to school. Gaven had no such need. Inside... he was a wolf.