For those recapping, or reading for the first time, I've come to realise that between 2 years ago (when I actually wrote this) and today, I've gotten better at writing, and I've gotten a few people telling me of late how good it is. So I'm now editting it, and making it better, hopefully to entertain past readers, and those who float on by :)
Allia
All I’ve ever been able to see is black, white, and grey, and I don’t recall a time when I didn’t. I’ve come to accept it, and realise that I was born into this world seeing it in it’s truest form, cold, cruel, and colourless. I used to have siblings, and parents, but I’ve since forgotten their faces, and all my memories of them have long since gone, but I still have a family. I won’t say they’re your average family, though. The not-exactly-human-kind-of-not-average. I have a brother, and two parents who couldn’t care more for me if they tried.
My brother is the same age as me, I think, or his mental capacity is around the same. He’s also very… very protective, think father with a shotgun and you get half of the protectiveness he holds over me. My parents obviously didn’t give birth to me, if you saw them you’d understand, but they love me as if I was their own, and treat me the way they do my brother. Over the many years I’ve spent with them, I’ve learnt much, and become stronger than a “normal” girl, I can’t really imagine how I’d be alive today without them. My name is Allia, and this is the story of my pack and I.
Gunshots. A single metal jacket whistled past my ear, taking strings of my unkempt hair with it. I knew I needed to cut it, but it was like chores, you just don’t want to do it. I rolled my eyes up into my head for a split second, telling myself that I should slash it off to mid-arm length, once we made camp at nightfall. A husky male voice range through my head,‘This is the fourth bloody hunter after us this week! Where are they all coming from? I wouldn’t be surprised if the next cluster of trees we pass has a “WANTED” sign pinned to it’.
My brother and I have always had… a ‘link’. I don’t know how to explain it very well, but since I saw him I could communicate with him, through my head. It wasn’t instant with my parents, but it grew over time, and during the time we couldn’t communicate, well it was like walking for the first time. I could read my brother’s feelings, almost without hesitation, if he let me, and it wasn’t like feeling them from an outside perspective, it was strong enough to feel like they were my own. Having the ability to talk to my family seemed impossible, but it was amazing, and poetic in some kind of abstract way. It was like having a second voice in your head, but without the schizophrenia.
I furrowed my brow, realising what my brother had actually said, ‘We better not...’. We looked at each other through the treeline as we sprinted through the undergrowth, and I noted the worry burying itself in the lines on his beautiful face. As we ran, legs pumping, hearts racing, taking up both past the speed of the average human, approaching the physically impossible, the hunters tailing us broke their stride, and slowed to a stop meters behind us.
‘Ha! Tired already? I could go on all night’. My brother, Kai, said cockily.
I looked at his disapprovingly, noting the subtle innuendo, ‘Don’t make fun of them… They’re only human, after all’.
The upturned creases in his face and the feeling lodged in my gut, that I knew not to be my own, gave it away that he was cracking up inside. My nose screwed up as the silent, teasing grin sat on his face like a fat bird on a wire, and his left brow raised in smug questioning.
‘Okay, you know what I meant, asshat, I’m a ‘special’ case’. His face went blank for a split second, before both our sides split in a fit of laughter, and I doubled over, barely holding myself up. I needed that, something to let my mind wander away from the thoughts of people who wanted to put my family and I in a shallow grave.
We slowed to a stalking pace as we padded through the undergrowth, I nodded solemnly at Kai, and the hunters became the hunted. As we pursued them, the life of the forest seemed to cease and soon all I could hear was my own heavy, short breaths. I wasn’t as agile, or as fast as the silky wolf beside me, and soon after my breath gave in to my exhaustion, so too did my feet and I began to stumble.
Kai stepped up beside my drained body, and nudged my shoulder gently, urging me to climb onto his back. I swallowed my pride, and clambered up his muscled body, I really didn’t want to give our whereabouts away. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t a wolf, I knew I could do better than I had. I needed to get better, not only for myself, but as a pack, we couldn’t afford a weak link, if we wanted to survive, that is.
I gripped Kai’s snow white fur like my life depended on it, which it may have, as he cut through the air after dinner. As we strode soundlessly towards the men, I could finally catch a decent look at them. Bulky, undoubtedly hunters, heavily armed, but not the brightest tools in the shed. I whistled a high-pitched, eight note tune, and out from behind the trees, roughly 20 yards away, and gaining ground fast, was our parents.
Karnel, Mum, with her silky coat and soft eyes that you could fall in love with over and over again. She seemed so graceful, even when her features expressed her deep desire to rip the life out of anything and everything, with the wind blowing back her fur. Next to her, Lykaios, Dad, so beautifully built, but menacing all at the same time, with eyes that could burn holes through steel. As they approached, I couldn’t help but feel inadequate in comparison.
Kai’s fur was a jet black, and he looked very much like I would if I had been a wolf. Long black hair, large blue eyes, or so he tells me… He’s also told me it was unusual for a wolf to look like him, most of the Mavro Canis Lupis had been shot, and killed for their fur. To the human eye, I was indeed very beautiful, but it didn’t matter to me, I knew nothing of the world outside of our dense forest, with the river running down the middle like a python. So, this was my family, tried and true, hunting dinner together like families should.
We bolted through the woods in top gear, Kai carrying me, my hair flying wildly behind us, along with Mum and Dad, covering us from either side. Without a single glance behind us, we moved through the forest silently, under the cover of the brush, with the thoughts of a fresh meal in our minds, and hunger in our eyes. Without having to think, as it came to us like a second nature, well for me it was, to them it was first, the pack took a surrounding formation around the hunters. Mum and Dad circled around until they were in position, and stopped, invisible, and awaiting the signal.
Kai and I also came to a halt, just behind the treeline of the small clearing in which the two hunters had set their camp up in. A tent sat in the center, the hunter’s belongings spewing out of it, while smoke rose from the recently burned wood just outside. I knew they had no clue we were sitting right outside of their not-so-safe haven, and it was going to stay that way until we chose to strike.
The smaller of the two men sat on a hollowed out log, his back to Kai and I, and I couldn’t help but feel the maddened grin on my face begin to widen in excitement and anticipation. The other hunter stood next to him, leaning his right side against a tree, completely unaware that he didn’t have long to live. As soon as the thoughts of a quick and easy meal flowed through my head, and my mouth began to water, the two hunters drew guns from inside the wooden trunks they were situated around. A shot came rushing in our direction, and I leapt off of Kai’s back, and skid behind a tree, praying I was safe. I drew in a sharp breath, ‘I think they know we’re here’.
Kai looked over at me from where he was crouching, his friendly banter hiding his pain that I could clearly see in his eyes, ‘They must’ve known… You were drooling over them’. I wanted to punch him in the gut, but instead I leapt across the gap between the trees, dodging another oncoming bullet by sheer luck, and pounced onto the smaller hunter. Hysteria washed over me like a tidal wave, and like the aftermath of one, I caused severe damage to the man. I ripped the gun from his hand, tossing it away like paper, and as the other hunter watched in shock, and fear, I tore my fingers into his throat, and ripped out whatever I could.
Blood streamed down my arm, and I left the guy there to drown in his own blood, and the other to be finished off by my parents. ‘It’s okay Kai, they’re dead, you’re going to be alright’. As I approached Kai, who was laying on his side in pain, I instantly inhaled the familiar chromy stench of blood, but it wasn’t human. A small patch of fur just below his chest was dripping small streams of blood onto the forest floor. Kai whimpered in pain, and through tears I coaxed him into the forest, to a place I knew he would be at peace.
Human technology was still a mystery to me, but if I knew anything about it, it was their weaponry. Being hunted constantly has advantages, apparently. From Kai’s symptoms, I knew what he had been shot with. The last bullet you’d ever need, and appropriately named the RIP bullet, it opens up… I couldn’t bring myself to re-cap what it did, but I knew it was the RIP bullet, as 8 other patches of his fur began dripping blood as we entered a small clearing.
It was our place, our special place, where nothing else mattered but us. I walked him into a clear patch of grass surrounded by trees, and when I was certain we were safe, and hidden, I helped him onto his side. The world outside faded, and became meaningless, and empty; there was just me, and my brother. Everything fell deathly silent, and all I could hear was my quick, sharpened sobs, and his slow, shallow breath. I was in denial, I had read him all wrong, it wasn’t what I had initially thought, he was going to be fine. He can’t die, he’s Kai, fun loving, cocky Kai. I told myself he was going to get up, and laugh at me for falling for it, and tease me for crying over him. But in reality, he wasn’t going to get up, ever again. If he moved, it was highly likely his internal organs would explode, and depending on the force at which they did, he could easily kill me along with himself. We still risked it, just to spend those last moments together. Knowing all this, I felt like I was going around the bend, insane, completely and utterly crushed mentally. I can’t lose my brother, my lifelong companion, relative, and friend… Kai’s breath fell to a whisper, and I was fully alert again.
‘Kai?’ I whispered in his ear.
“Allia… Listen… Closely.’ If he could, Kai would’ve gestured for me to move closer, and I did, intently listening to the sound of his voice drifting in my head, his breath barely audible. ‘I’m going to die, if not from blood loss, than the bullet in my chest will make sure of it...’ My cheeks flushed and new tears formed, flooding my vision. ‘But, before I die, I have a request’. I blinked off my tears, and looked at him shakily, seeing the colour slowly draining from his face. ‘And that is…?’
With his pale face solemn, and his eyes closed, he said a single word that sent shivers down my spine.