Chapter 18 #2
I try to look down at myself and my perspective is all wrong.
My eyes are positioned differently on my face, set more to the sides than straight ahead like human eyes.
My field of vision is wider but shallower and it takes my brain several long seconds to adjust to seeing the world from this new angle.
I can see my front legs extending from my shoulders, can see the fur that covers them, and in the moonlight filtering through the trees the fur gleams silver.
Silver. The color registers and sends a spike of pure terror through me that's almost as intense as the shift pain.
The fur shimmers like mercury in the moonlight, catching and reflecting light so brightly it's impossible to miss for any other color.
I've seen other wolves before at the Academy, seen their browns and grays and blacks and occasional reds.
This is nothing like that. This is something else entirely, something that marks me as different and could get me killed.
But before I can fully process the implications of my color, my senses explode into something completely overwhelming.
My sense of smell hits me first and it's so intense I actually stagger sideways.
Scent isn't just something I notice anymore, it's information flooding my brain in ways I don't know how to process.
I can smell pine sap and snow and earth and decomposing leaves under the snow and each one is distinct and sharp.
I can smell the rabbit that passed through here earlier, can track its path through the underbrush by scent alone even though I've never tracked anything in my life.
I can smell my own fear-sweat even through the fur, sharp and acrid and overwhelming.
I can smell other wolves somewhere in the direction of the Academy buildings, three distinct male scents that I somehow know are male even though I shouldn't be able to tell that from this distance.
The scents have layers I've never experienced before.
The pine isn't just pine, it's sap and bark and needles and the insects that live in the trunk and the birds that nest in the branches and the squirrels that climb it.
Every smell carries information I don't have words for because humans aren't supposed to be able to smell things in this much detail.
My hearing is just as overwhelming. I can hear everything and I don't know how to filter it.
The wind moving through individual pine needles sounds like rain on a tin roof.
Small animals are moving in burrows under the snow, their tiny heartbeats distinct from the sound of them tunneling through dirt.
My own heart is thundering in my chest and it sounds different, faster, stronger than my human heart ever did.
Water is running somewhere underground, maybe from snowmelt, and an owl is hunting maybe half a mile away.
I can hear the soft whoosh of its wings cutting through air.
The sounds layer on top of each other like someone turned every dial up to maximum and I don't know how to sort through them, don't know how to pick out what's important from what's just noise. Everything is too loud, too immediate, too much information hitting me at once.
My vision has changed too. Colors are muted, blues and greens especially, but I can see better in the dark than I ever could as a human.
Shapes stand out more sharply against their backgrounds.
Movement catches my eye from the corner of my vision and I realize I can track it without turning my head, my peripheral vision so much better than it was before.
Everything is sharp and clear even in moonlight and I can make out individual textures on tree bark ten feet away.
It's all too much. Too loud, too bright, too intense.
My wolf instincts are screaming at me to run, to hunt, to howl, to do something with all this energy and fear and confusion pounding through me.
But my human mind is drowning in the sensory overload and all I can think is that I need to hide before someone sees me like this.
But my new body doesn't respond like my human body did. Nothing about how I move makes sense anymore.
My legs work in a pattern I don't understand.
Four of them instead of two, and they don't move how I expect them to.
When I try to take a step forward, my front right paw moves but I don't know which back leg is supposed to move with it.
I try front right and back left at the same time and my body twists sideways sending me stumbling into a bush.
My balance is completely different too. My center of gravity is all wrong, front-heavy and low to the ground instead of centered over my hips like when I was human. When I try to compensate for the weird weight distribution, I overbalance in the other direction and nearly fall over.
I try again, forcing my legs to move in a pattern that might work.
Front right, back left, front left, back right.
The rhythm feels foreign and awkward, like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach at the same time except a thousand times harder because all four limbs are doing different things.
I manage three lurching steps before my front legs tangle with my back legs and I go down hard, face-first into the snow.
The impact should hurt but my wolf body is tougher than my human one and I barely feel it. That's almost more disorienting than the fall itself. My sense of what should hurt and what shouldn't is completely wrong now.
I scramble back to my feet, all four legs moving in different directions, none of them coordinated, and try once more.
This time I make it five steps before I crash sideways into a tree.
My shoulder takes the impact. I ricochet off the trunk, lose my balance completely, and end up in another tangle of legs and snow and pine needles.
This isn't working. I can't run if I can't even walk properly.
The graceful wolves I've seen in videos and at the Academy make it look effortless, but I'm stumbling through the forest like I've never had legs before.
I trip over exposed roots that I should be able to avoid but my depth perception is wrong and I misjudge distances by inches that matter.
My paws catch on undergrowth I thought I was stepping over.
When I try to duck under a low branch, I don't account for the fact that my body is longer now and my hindquarters crash into it.
Every movement is a battle between what my human mind thinks should work and what my wolf body actually needs to do.
My instincts are screaming at me to just let go and let the wolf take over, to stop thinking and start feeling, but I'm too panicked to trust that.
What if I let go and I can't get myself back?
What if the wolf takes over completely and I lose who I am?
I hear voices in the distance, getting closer. People calling out, asking if someone heard an animal screaming. Footsteps crunching through snow from multiple directions. They're coming to investigate and I'm a silver wolf who can't figure out how to move in this body properly.
I need to shift back. I focus on my human form, trying to remember what it feels like to have hands instead of paws.
I think about standing upright instead of on all fours, about my human face instead of this wolf muzzle with its too-sharp teeth.
I picture myself as I was an hour ago, brown eyes and brown hair and completely, normally human.
Nothing happens.
I try harder, concentrating until my wolf head hurts.
I imagine my bones breaking back into human shape, my fur retracting back into my skin, my paws becoming hands again with fingers that can grip things.
I picture it as clearly as I can but my body doesn't respond.
My wolf form stays exactly as it is, locked in place by something I don't understand.
The panic rises higher because what if I can't shift back? What if I'm stuck like this forever? What if my human body is gone and all that's left is this wolf that can't even walk properly?
The voices are getting even closer now. I can smell them clearly, three wolves all heading in my direction with purpose.
Three distinct scents that I somehow recognize even though I shouldn't.
I force my legs to move again even though they don't want to cooperate, stumbling deeper into the forest and putting distance between myself and whoever is coming to find me.