Exhale.
The ash-grey half-moon flinches in the sky, looking down. Let her watch. The Wild takes us East with certainty. Her hind legs are as powerful as the thunder chasing after her speeding body. It seems foolish for the storm to think it can gain ground on a Wild who holds no limits of this world.
—the rush of it all.
We run as One.
Everything hums. Vibrates.
Thin shapes follow, nose us faster, beyond comprehension. Everything blurs.
We run. . .
Let the Moon watch.
The storm continues to give chase from the growing distance.
It feels as if the world itself is whispering faster. Faster.
We run with our nose forward, ears down, and hind legs digging ourselves into the ground, creating gouges in the land's surface. We leave our mark where we have been. Deep cuts in the pristine surface—a trail is left.
Lungs are on fire. Still, she pushes forward. Running without fear. Without anyone pulling her back by the scruff. Telling her to stop. The freedom to be who she is without barriers. Without my worries.
. . . the Wild inhales, and so do I.
Breathing as One.
Faster we run.
The world is listening, giving way to our approach.
A test of her speed, I now push her from the inside. Faster, I tell her. Faster she goes.
This is a power that can be fed upon. A nourishment I didn't know I had been without.
Before, I was starving. Now, I will feed—devouring the energy. Ingesting everything. I will consume it all.
The Wild is not my enemy. She is not something to fear. She is me, I am her.
We run.
She gives me all her strength. It feels as if I am the one running now. I am the one with her nose leading, feet pounding into the dirt. The Wild sits back in my mind, allowing me to lead her as she screams...faster. Faster.
Back and forth, we trade within our minds. Trust is forming between us as one thought. One body. There is no in-between anymore.
One soul.
I don't fight the power entering through the marrow of our bones. It expands into the blood and anchors into our chest.
The distant storm explodes behind us, and even the noise seems to say, run. Run. Run.
All the times I've buried myself in the books, in the plants, are coming back to me. Whenever she tried to come out, I pushed the Wild down in another line, drawing a perfect specimen on a journal page.
It was me that I was afraid of all this time.
Afraid of growing into something that was an abomination. My fears of life suppressed the Wild within. I buried myself to escape myself.
The Wild has never been my enemy. She has never been the monster I always thought she was. She has always been here, waiting on me. Waiting for me to find my courage and straighten out my spine. Waiting for the teeth.
. . . we run together.
By the time we stop, it has become too quiet. It's as if everything is watching us.
The Wild throws back her head and howls towards the Moon, crashing through the silence. In response, the long-dead Wilds throw their heads back with open jaws, and I can hear them. The misery of anguish that bones can feel. My throat takes the horror of their suffering. How can the Moon ignore their cries? How can the Moon do this?
The Wild curls herself from the agony as we shift places.
Drawing a deep breath with both hands on my knees, I walk a short distance until I halt my feet in front of the cottage. A place of my conception—my mother's special place. All the Wilds, without their half, press in.
"I can hear you," speaking to them all. Letting my voice gust within the wind itself.
No reply.
"I hear you." I stand in front of the legions of wolves with their glowing eyes and smudges for bodies—not entirely there. Not entirely gone.
The crows are here, fluttering their feathers. Making a scene. Clicking their beaks as if laughing at me. It's a simple understanding. They don't believe anything can be done about the situation. A false hope for the condemned.
"I hear you," I scream in the dark. Giving them my voice so they know someone hears them. Sees them. Will fight for them.
"They don't believe you," a voice says to my right. I turn my head towards the sound.
"The crows are laughing at you." A gust of wind hits the side of my face.
Green eyes blink to blues.
"They are not to be trusted. Your mother was right all along." I realize Nature is standing beside me in her natural form. Tight woven braids pull at the corner of her temples. A powerful jawline waiting to be unleashed.
"Why did you come here?" Nature asks.
"The Wild led me here."
"You trusted her to lead you?"
"Yes." I nod.
There is a silent regard for my structure. An assessment that devours every inch of my body until she peers into my eyes. The Wild snaps at her intrusive gaze. She takes a step back, blocking the door to the cottage.
"Your mother was conceived here." Nature's voice sharpens.
"Your grandmother died here giving birth to your mother." I brace myself into the ground.
"This is where you were conceived."
"I know that."
"Don't you see, you've come full circle. This is your true birth. The Ascension of a Moon." She whispers, looking out over the Wilds that whine towards her.
The crows flutter their wings, and a growl from the center of my chest blows them off their branches. It was easy to do, a thought, like taking a breath and blowing out. I growl again, this time tumbling them into the legions of Wild that snap their jaws at their feathered bodies, but smudges cannot break through the flesh. The crows fly away, cawing. Laughing.
"They don't like weakness." Nature comments.
"I'm not weak."
"Yes, the crows think you are." Nature watches through her shifting green-blue eyes.
"I'm always told what I am. That's going to change." Facing her fully and understanding, I will take her throat one day. That's when she smiles with her long teeth descending. Ancient anger in her eyes that I don't look away from but challenge the very nature of her spine.
The Wild anchors into the bones. Energy pulses—I feed off of it. I have been starved. Not anymore. Never again. My anchors are gone.
I realize now how empty I have been. Always turning to things to fill me up when she has always been with me. Waiting. She's been beneath my skin, waiting. I'm no longer afraid of her. Of us. Of myself.
We are One.
The Wilds look on.
I've been living a life of a smudge. Not really here, not really there. Just existing and letting others tell me who I am. What I am. This has to change.
A warmth in my palms spreads up my arms into my chest. Unmoored, the power flows freely through blood, flesh, and bone.
It's not too much anymore. This is not something to fear.
"You're the weak one. You need someone else to do something you can't do." The truth is profound. I see it in her eyes. The way she averts her stare toward that ash-grey moon.
"You were born to challenge the Moon. I was not." Rigid anger that clamps her body still. I can see the pulse in her neck, beating faster and faster.
"I'm not your enemy, Charlie." Her eyes fall back on mine.
"I think you are. I think I am your means to an end."
"You're right. I want an end to all of this." She tries to reach for my hand, and I recoil from the thought of her touch.
"It's time for you to step into your birthright. Your grandmother and mother's suffering should not be for nothing."
My lungs feel like they could blow up. Something needs to come out.
"I am not the cause of the suffering. I am not the cause," I growl from the center of my throat.
The wind picks up and changes directions. The clouds congregate. My doing.
"Look at all of them suffering."
With their glowing blinking eyes, the smudges of Wilds plead with me for help.
"You need to put an end to this. All of this." Nature's stone voice drops down to the ground. Where once solid, her body now reveals the door to the cottage. She's gone with a gust of wind. Her doing.
In the distance, laughter comes from everywhere and nowhere at once.
©️2023 Rachelle Mills