Tva wasn’t sure how long he had been gone, it may only have been a couple of seconds, or it could have been longer, he had no way to know exactly how much time had passed while he had been unconscious, having his very particles rearranged. The sun was much higher in the sky and the air warmer than it had been when he had been taken. Spring, perhaps? He sniffed the air, breathing in deeply through his nose, his breaths out puffs of humid air visible in front of him. The caribou migrations towards the birthing coast had begun, he could smell it miles away now, he knew with implicit precision, far beyond the range of scent he had before his capture by the heavens. Spring then. He took off south, eager to be reunited with his family.
The thrum of his legs pumping beneath him was a steady rhythm as he traveled, his body an instrument, legs percussion and his breath the periodic beat of a drum. He wondered if his family had missed him, what they might have thought happened to him, when he didn’t return home. Had they heard his last cry? That long horrible sound that had been dragged from him, that had swept him into the heavens? The longing for them filled him, for the stability of the pack, the assurance of belonging. He missed his parents, his baby siblings, his aunt and her older daughter. Most of his litter mates and older siblings had split off on their own, or to form their other packs, but he hadn’t yet felt the urge, perfectly content at being a smaller part of a strong whole. His pack. He felt…whole, when he was with them, like he was in his proper place in the world.
Miles and miles he traveled, only realizing when the day ended and night began that he was not tiring, wasn’t even thirsty. Was this another change the transformation had brought on? He felt…stronger somehow, his gait longer, now that he was paying attention to it. He was traveling at a rate that he couldn’t have ever hoped to reach, before. But now the ground flew beneath him, furlongs with every step as he galloped towards his home territory, making the whole trip in a fraction of the time.
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The terrain started to look familiar to him, after a while, though something was different, something he couldn’t quite place. A scent wafted to him, where his parent’s markings should have been, something similar to theirs but not quite right. Had the transformation affected his sense of smell, he wondered, suddenly uneasy. That would be dangerous, he depended on it for so much. But he could smell the caribou just fine, and the other prey he had encountered but ignored had smelled the same as before. A sense of apprehension crept over him, a heightening of alertness for any other small differences that he might have not noticed before. The vegetation looked different, smaller yet older.
He had grown, of course! His new size ment that everything looked smaller, even if it may have in fact gotten bigger with time, he reasoned. Did that mean that enough time had passed that the woods around his home had aged? The apprehension developed into full blown anxiety. What did that mean for his pack?!
He let back his head and howled, desperate enough to locate them that he didn’t even register that this was his first call since the lights had taken him. A chorus returned his greeting, though instead of the welcoming social calls of his family he had hoped to hear returned, the returning choir were unfamiliar to him, replying with a defensive howl intended to ward off strange wolves. Perhaps…perhaps these were just a different pack, perhaps his family had moved territories while he was gone? But the smell of them…they were too similar to his pack. He approached, disregarding their warning calls. He had to know.