Writing down how I feel about what has happened, and what I did, might make me feel slightly ashamed, but is supposedly therapeutic. It all seems juvenile if you ask me. You didn’t, but it’s my story, so you might as well have done so.

What happened, happened, but when I start to feel a twinge of something like guilt, there have been studies of lightening that stress, by writing it down. Gaia’s spit, that is something weak humans would do. When I get some advice as if writing things down will unburden me, does it do any good? 

They can’t know what will be written, or it might be frowned upon, but who cares, they can’t read. If they frowned upon this sort of thing, it would be hard enough to know because they rarely say anything. They could be plotting your death or saying nothing in worry about you plotting theirs.

These things can’t be said out loud because if someone heard me say them to anyone else, to no one, a shrink, a colleague, or if there were friends that even understood, their plans may change.

Some would consider what was done, a betrayal or a terrible thing, against who one might consider family. Were we family, those with whom a life was shared?

For what it is worth, there was some regret. He certainly knows of it, probably. He was one of the good ones, even though the others just didn't understand me, he did his best.

This must be burned when done, if someone took it and had another person or Gaia forbid, another wolf read it. If it is not down on paper, it could bottle up and burst while there is work to be done for the cause… or it could stop the cause in its infancy. 

It is best not to embarrass myself in their eyes, or they might cut ties, and they are my life.

Is that healthy? Probably not…

It is almost embarrassing to remember how weak I was as a cub, but I was reminded of it often during those early years. It knew the best ways to put things into perspective. I didn’t know until it was the right time.

Name   Strength     Dexterity     Stamina     Charisma     Intelligence       Spirit

Runt         2                      2                  1               2                   2                         4

Talents Spirits

Health / Spirit Energy -    20 / 40

1

“Ok, kids, what spirit is the enemy.” The alpha called out to us as teens. Away from the prying eyes of humans, in the middle of one of the few tall forests in the territory.

 “Lado,” we answered as usual. Pronounced Lad-oh it is a spirit represented as a spider with its web attached to everything. Its many eyes watching to corrupt anything natural.

“Why,” the next practiced question in a set. These were indoctrinating questions and answers to keep in our heads. Our alpha, Fox, was a red-haired, short, and tough young adult. His hair made him unique around the area, no one knew of any others around the region with it as a wolf.

Brown-Face spoke up, "It embodies the break-down of life, bringer of corruption, creator of evil spirits and vampires,” B.F. said it with conviction, happy he was able to get one question right today answering before the rest of us. 

He was the beta of our young pack, which did nothing but stoke his ego. His name came up when he tripped and fell in the mud, it happened more than once and that name stuck for him. It was not always fun for your pack-name or nickname to get stuck. He might have been fast and strong, but he tripped often too. It was the one time we could hit him where it hurt, his failures were part of his nickname. It was a common thing in our pack.

“Why do we keep Lado at bay,” another question on the doctrine spouted over and over.

“To protect Gaia and her creation from its wrath,” Tree-shredder answered, the spirit of the land that created the different planes, designed us as protectors, and everything natural. Gaia is most often referred to as a mother. 

 Tree-shredder was Brown-Face’s number two. He lied to the alpha for him, told him that he was right about everything, and backed him up when they were picking on me. His name was because he so often had trouble climbing up trees, but he could with claws in the mild-warrior form. It was strange he had so much trouble climbing trees because he was good at many other things. 

Fox answered, “Correct, and protecting Gaia brings progress, and what spirit signifies that change?” 

The older teen girl spoke up, “Nova.” Monkey-feet continued in her, what some might call, adorable voice, I might be remembering it more fondly than it was. “It signifies change, creativity, and progress.” We all had repeated this line of questions and answers many times during our training. Monkey-feet was an older girl to us as teens and an obvious crush.

Her nick-name was given to her because she was one of the more athletic members of the pack. She ran a lot and climbed easily, like a monkey. Her pack-name wasn’t harsh like the rest of ours. She was good enough that she even jumped between trees showing off more than once.

Nova is a spirit represented as a chimpanzee, innovative and adaptive. Each of these powerful representations of spirits are never seen, only discussed and represented through spiritual abilities or rituals. 

The teacher and alpha paced back and forth in a forest path. He did not smile, or give a gold star to the students. It was based on the expectations of the answers. Different answers were met with scorn.

“Alpha, I still don’t get it,” here came the scorn. Asking questions like this drew the attention of the others, not that there was something else to draw our attention in these sparse woods. My small voice at the end of the line was quiet, yet easily heard in a forest away from cars and other material things. It was hard not to hear my own little-boy voice, speaking younger than my years, from quite some time ago. 

They called me Runt for many reasons. As a quiet, small kid, my voice meekly asked questions hoping not to offend anyone. Getting pulled muscles often even waking from a restless sleep, my early years were rough. My muscles were weak compared to the others, we practiced and trained daily building our strength, but my body stayed the way it was, weakened.

Foolishly continuing, “Why do you keep saying that Lado is the enemy? Wasn’t Lado created by and made the world with Gaia?” If eye rolls could be heard, it couldn’t be more obvious that everyone including Fox was rolling their eyes.

“Gaia’s spit Runt, not this again...” Brown-face lightly elbowed Tree-shredder and pointed at me, they both giggled as Fox attempted to answer the same type of questioning yet again.

Our alpha breathed deeply and answered with a heavy sigh, having answered it and other questions like it many times before, “Yes R… I mean, yes,” he hated calling me by my pack-given name, but it was the only signifier for me. “We have been over this, Lado created the world with Gaia, but turned on her to become that which decays and breaks down, leading to death,” he has said the same thing many times to me, the youngest of the pack.

I spoke more quietly still, “Yes alpha, but isn’t that….”

“Enough,” Fox growled a bit louder than needed through the forest, as teens we shook as he continued. “Lado is the enemy, and it is the way of things. We hunt the creations and corruptions of Lado and keep Gaia strong.”

Feeling the other’s gaze on me, I tried hard not to curl up into a ball and coil in on myself, they just didn’t understand. 

“Today,” continued the alpha, “you will chase,” we all groaned.

“Not again alpha, we can never catch you,” Tree-shredder moaned out, even Monkey-feet moaned in her tiny voice, producing a giggle from the rest of us.

“You have caught me before, you will again. Practice makes better,” the alpha said, yet again, one of his mantras. Taking our shoes off, we all repeated his saying, “Practice makes better.”

“Can we at least do it in running form,” a hopeful question comes out from Monkey-feet. Our heads rose hoping for, yet not expecting, a positive answer.

“No, you will run on two feet till you can catch me, then maybe if I feel generous, you’ll get to chase me as a wolf. Eventually, you’ll get used to the war form and then we’ll try as the beast.” A smile came out from all of us. Not that we thought the chase might be more fun as a big huge warrior of towering height and sapling-sized muscles.

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He finished with the rules, “Ten seconds head-start, no shifting forms, no shoes, if you catch me, you get to do fun things the rest of the day.” 

Brown-face and Tree-shredder both jumped up and down and did a few jumping jacks to get their hearts pumping. Monkey-feet and I stretched forward and backward to limber up a bit.

The alpha counted down, “Three, two, one,” he darted out with the speed of a starting pistol, ten seconds was too long for us to wait. At six seconds, Brown-Face and Tree-Shredder sprinted after him, at eight seconds, Monkey-Feet and I got tired of being goody-two-bare feet and ran after the rest of them.

This larger forested area was where we trained, for the most part, some open areas, but trees to run around, and climb. When we got to go into the spirit realm though, that was lively stuff, there was always something interesting that we learned about up there.

In the regular material world though, we had to run and keep ourselves calm in human form chasing our alpha barefoot in a wooded area. Stepping on twigs and into holes stopped us for a couple of seconds each time, hopping up and down as though we stepped on a caltrop. At any time if we were not close to our alpha, we always heard him laugh. It was not if, it was when, it happened often and it was easy for us to hear in the quiet of nature.

When he did laugh though, it gave away where he was and we were able to know what direction to run. The chase wasn’t just a game of catching him, he turned back towards the pack of teens often to get us to dive after him as he ran around a tree, or on the rare occasion when we worked together, but that happened less and less over the months.

After a couple of months of trying to catch him though, all of our feet had calluses and blisters that made us hurt less and less. With bad feet though, I was having a rough go of it all trying to catch up to the rest of them. The others had been chasing Fox for close to half a year by the time I was old enough to join them. They didn’t want me in their pack, but the kids were not asked. Fox brought me in because he had the compassion to try to help me gain strength and be a strong warrior for Gaia.

My legs and feet took quite a while to build some additional muscle, and blisters did not heal over like the rest, but just hurt and would bleed more often than build strength. Rarely, if ever, taking the chance to dive for Fox thinking I’d miss, or hit my head or arm on a tree. We all have dove for him before, but when I tried, I more often dove into a tree and didn’t hear the end of that for a week from Brown-face. B.F. had done it two days before, but he felt it was ever so much more fun that I did the same thing.

It was good that as werewolves our bodies were repaired as we ran and chased, all of the scrapes and bruises we would get would have a long wait to heal if we were human. It wasn’t that my body wasn’t repairing like the rest, it just took nearly double the time to do the same as it took the rest of them. When stubbing a toe on a tree root and breaking a toenail, it wouldn’t fix itself for nearly a day.

Not today though, today I would not embarrass myself. I was behind all of the teens then, Monkey-feet having passed me shortly after the start as usual. Still trying to catch up, but losing my breath, I slowed down even more just so that I could try to last longer. Since we have been at it for months, I knew Fox did new things every day.

Fox turned back after about three minutes of running but darted at an angle back, and gave himself away after Tree-shredder stepped into a rabbit hole. He was in between the groups, front and back, but he was nearly a hundred yards away in another direction. This put him almost at an equal distance from all of us.

We all took the bait, running after him, as always I was slower than the rest. Fox took to running toward us to give us a bit more of a workout. He bobbed and weaved around us and the trees, and we chased him, laughing sometimes, at other times we yelled at him to slow down, which made him laugh harder. After nearly a minute of running though, he lost track of Tree-shredder, the other three had been chasing him in one direction, then the other. 

Fox was mist in a storm, each time we reached, he wasn't there. Twenty seconds after the other three realized Fox had darted off in another direction, Brown-Face looked over at me, “Stupid Runt, if you only were fast enough to keep him here, we would have had him.”

Monkey-feet and I had no idea what was going on, in a tell tale look on her face. She asked, “What are you talking about B.F. you weren’t even close, and neither were any of us, any of the time.”

B.F. smiled and said, “Oh yes we were, T.S. was in the tree above over there.” The three heard the thud in that direction, and T.S. ran over to us. 

T.S. asked, “Why did all of you stop?” B.F. answered him, “Because these two dummies didn’t go along with the plan.”

Wanting to scoff so badly, it was hard to do so inwardly, knowing the scolding I’d get. M.F. had no reservations about saying something though, “Plan? PLAN? You didn’t tell anyone else about this plan, how were we supposed to know? Plus, how did T.S. stay up in that tree?”

B.F. raised his hands and shushed her, he looked around and whispered, “Shhh, it was my idea, he grew claws and climbed while the rest of us distracted him, he was ready to pounce if you two were fast enough.”

Tree-shredder’s face was losing its hair and muscle, his teeth lost their sharpness, and his claws shrunk back down to the size and shape of hands. He tried to hide it, but it wasn’t something that was just hidden, it was obvious to us all that he was shifting back into plain human form.

M.F. tried to slap Brown-face, but he saw it coming and grabbed her hand out of the air, but it made him flinch anyway. She whispered back as menacing as she could, “The alpha said no forms, if he knew…”  

B.F. shot back, “Well, he won’t find out now will he?”

She continued, “That is a stupid dummy plan, if he jumped out of the tree and caught Fox, he wouldn’t have gotten away with it anyway, you both are dummies, come on, we are still chasing him. It would have made more sense if you B.F. climbed a tree in human form, and we all chased him to you. IF you two were smart enough to let us in on the plan, we could’ve helped. Stupids!” She ran off after the alpha to try to catch up.

Brown-face looked over at me, “If only you were faster, we could’ve caught him today, I wanted to go swimming, stupid Runt.”

Tree-shredder chuckled as usual and mimicked his friend, “Stupid Runt, you ruined the excellent plan.” They both ran off after Fox.

Finally catching my breath, after everything so far in the last few minutes, the day had to be like this, it was always so much more fun in the spiritual realm. Spirits were always so much more interesting, even as quiet as they were. Their realm could be made up in any way they designed, by the right designer, or by the right spirit with the pull to change an area for us to do different things.

When we were able to run around spirit-created areas, sometimes a city without people or cars, or a forest with trees to climb or rip apart with our claws, those were fun exercises. That built our stamina and dexterity trying to catch the fastest man in our own little world. We didn’t just have huge areas where we could practice and be ourselves without worrying about humans, but we could practice almost anything up there.

The spirits had representations of so many things in their realm, a marketplace in most territories, the spirit banks, gyms, pools, technical schools where we could pay some spirit money to learn all sorts of things, electronics, survival that we might not learn from the alpha, it wasn’t a place where you’d learn business or economics, but you could even learn computer stuff. The computer itself could teach you how to use it correctly, or how to do nasty things with it. As long as it wasn’t dealing with just talking and being smart, you could learn how to open a vault safe, pick locks, how to handle a human gun, or archery.

It was often a dream of mine to get rich and buy spiritual help, nifty weapons, and armor. The spirits are so cool. Making magical stuff they also showed us how to do it right, and I was so excited to be able to do more when we did more than just train.

Often werewolves could learn rituals and spiritual abilities from their alpha and pack spirit, but they can be bought for the right price as well. Spirits sell things, just were sometimes vague on the cost of using such things. They'll tell you what something is, and the price, but not the cost to your body or mind.

Being more excited for that than any of this stuff, I tried so hard to build muscle. Working out often, and trying to run around the reservation every day, I ran till my heart gave out, and healed, then I ran some more but it rarely got me anywhere. It had to be what happened to me as an infant.

 For now, we were chasing the alpha, and I had to catch up to the rest. Five minutes of running later, I didn’t know where the others were. Stopping to calm my heart from popping out of my chest, I listened to the forest to see if it would tell me anything.

The forest didn’t say anything, but I heard someone screech out, and Fox laughed again. Doing what I could to at least stay in their area, I jogged closer. Stopping to breathe and listen a minute later, I heard some rustling in the trees less than fifty yards away.

Quietly climbing the closest tree, it took longer than usual. Lowering my head, I asked any spirit that would listen if they would lead Fox to me under the tree. Starting to believe that they had done just that, Fox moved like a snake through a nearby set of trees. A smile found its way to my lips, the first one this week.

It looked like Fox was looking more on the ground floor and he crept closer as silently as a wolf. Without rustling the branches any more than needed, I silently asked the tree to hold me just a little longer without betraying me. Just about to jump, Fox walked ten paces in another direction, fouling my plan. He stopped around one side of a tree where I watched, and without looking up, he said fairly quietly, "That was pretty good Ru... I mean... boy. I didn’t hear you, but as soon as I smelled you I knew you were up there. You did that very well though, not everything is about being stronger. Practice makes better."

Shaking my fist at the ground, Fox dashed away. I might have been caught, but my lousy luck won out again. The rare bit of praise was new though from the fire-haired alpha. Fox ran off in another direction, probably where my pack-mates were running, also likely they were running in the wrong direction. Fox did have a knack for keeping us in a tighter area than we realized.

After another fifteen minutes, almost a total hour of running, trying to catch the alpha, and failing, he ended the chase. The pack gathered around and Fox called out, "You didn't catch me today, but you will again one day, practice makes better."

Wiping the gross sweat off of our foreheads we breathed heavily. We groaned in close unison, "Practice makes better."

Fox told us, "Ok, let's get back to camp, we can see if someone caught some food or if it might be fish stew again tonight, I might be able to finally show you how to skin something other than peeling the scales off of a fish. There may be some rabbit stew on the horizon as well, they are growing well after the last batch of them escaped.”

Brown-face interjected, “They didn’t escape, Runt let them loose, he doesn’t want to eat them. I mean, sure the meat is pretty lean, but it is still tasty. Are you going to be a vegetarian your whole life, Runt?” Both B.F. and T.S. snickered.

I slowly leaned my head down from the gut punch that I had just received yet again. 

Fox continued, “Since I won the chase today, B.F. you will clean the rabbit farm, M.F. you will meditate and talk to the spirits for guidance, the boy will go work out, and Tree-shredder, you will dig the tribe’s next dump hole. You will all do these things before dinner."

We all moaned and ugh'd our way back toward the tribe area, we had miles to walk back. B.F. and T.S. scoffed at the injustice of it all. Brown-face asked, "Why do I have to do the rabbit dirty work? That barn smells so gross, how do those furry little food-balls smell so bad? All Monkey-feet has to do is talk to spirits, and the Runt has to work out? What sort of punishment is that?"

Fox answered, "I don't remember asking what you wanted to do, but ok, let me explain myself to you. You earned your chore today, Tree-shredder earned his chore today by shifting forms when it was against the rules, Monkey-feet is bad at dealing with the spirits and they make her nervous, and the boy needs to lift some more weights."

Brown-face asked, “But, how did I earn my chore?”

Fox replied while growling, “It is quiet out here and I… have… excellent… hearing?”

Brown-Face gulped… but then he threw his good friend under the bus, “It was Tree-shredder’s idea, he said it wouldn’t be against the rules if he just used his claws.”

Fox looked over at T.S. not looking like he wondered even for a second whether he thought it was the truth. Fox said, “I change my mind, you will join T.S. digging the new tribe hole for our dumps, then when it is big enough, both of you will clean the rabbit farm, do you wish to keep talking?”

B.F. shut his mouth and shook his head.

Fox called out, “Shift into wolves to make it home, I’ll put your clothes in my backpack and bring it. I know you might not be in a rush, but B.F. here,” he said, patting the young wolf on the shoulder, “wants to rush home to start his chore, and I don’t want to disappoint him. You can walk all you want, but it will still make it faster.”