It was as if I could feel every emotion at the same time. Yet, as was my fatal flaw, I found anger not far from the surface. Convinced that no one would listen to me, even if I allowed my endless steam of confusion to pour out, I bottled it up. Instead of the comfort I craved, I found only poisonous self-deprecation inside my mind.
As a child, I'd been a pent-up pup, broiling with rage. My temper tantrums only deepened the rift between myself and my mom, who favoured my brother over me. Predictably, my adolescence was turbulent and made worse by the fact that I knew I was different from my peers. I could've cared less about chasing skirt... Until Alison... Her kindness and patience were the chances I'd needed. My children gave me a reason to mellow my rage and soften the shell I'd amassed around my heart. They made my dream of normalcy real, but now that dream had left me behind.
Now, overwrought by the aftermath of the burning wreckage my life had become, I was confronted by a man who had been an audience to it all - a stranger, an unfriend. But he was the only one paying attention, which added insult to injury; it made me bitter.
I don't know whether it was my extended silence or the dark and distant look in my eyes that made Hayashi reach out his hand to me, but when he did, I winced.
"Don't." I snarled. "Don't touch me." My lying mind told me he was the last person I wanted putting their hands on me.
"Nate..." Hayashi whispered; his voice was tentative, hushed and balmy as ever it was.
"Don't call me that." I snivelled. "We're not on first-name terms, remember?"
He flinched, startled by my outburst, but I didn't stick around to talk it out like grown-ups. I bolted. The red mist had descended, and under it, I'd stormed off, desperate to get away from him.
How I got to the De'en Charm's nest was a complete blur. When I arrived, my interaction with Lowel De'en was brisk. Unlike myself, I was rude to my host. I didn't even thank him for the room he'd fashioned for me in his home.
With no reason to get out of bed in the morning, I often didn't until the afternoon. When I reluctantly rose, I'd leave the nest in favour of being alone, having convinced myself it was better for everyone if I kept to myself. Into the woods, I'd go. Stumbling around for hours on end. There was nowhere to escape to; the Compound wall penned me in. So, as a caged dog often does when driven to boredom, I'd aimlessly track whatever wildlife had wandered through the undergrowth before me, round and round in a trance.
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Lately, I seem to be trapped in a vicious circle of negative feelings. Anger turned into sadness, hopelessness into self-pity, which transcended to irritability and rudeness. How I'd lost a handle on everything was so shamefully pathetic. Thinking of the old days, how I used to be, and how sweet happiness felt, I'd sit and cry a little. Then, I'd loathe myself and be back to square one, angry and thrashing about the woodland.
My crutch was a thorn in my side and a constant reminder that I might never walk unaided again; my tibia was cracked, and my fibula had splintered in several places. The silver, my unwelcome guest, still lingered and wouldn't allow me to heal as a Lycan ought; I was trapped in the enduring phases of mortal healing.
The full moon was only a few nights away, and where my blood would usually begin to warm up in preparation for the turn, this month, I felt no excitement or anticipation about being under the Goddess's rays. It would mark one month since that harrowing night. For the first time in my life, I dreaded the thought of seeing the moon.
And as I'd find out, my fear was well placed...
***
Bedbound, I'd been watching the storm clouds roll in over the treeline from my room. Beyond the threshold of wizzen elm saplings, I could see through the warehouse's corrugated sliding doors and out into the wood. There would be rain tonight if not thunder. I lay waiting for it; if I couldn't take to the woods and get my fur wet, I at least wanted to watch the sky light up from my bed.
My ears pricked when a low rumble disturbed the quiet of the afternoon before a drop of water had fallen to the ground. It was a voice, and it asked: "How is he?"
"Not good," Juniper answered; her lilting soprano had become familiar to me. "The night of the full moon did a real number on him; he hasn't been able to get up since." The piteous tone her voice took on stung. I didn't want to listen to it but the nest's walls were quite literally paper-thin. Made of plant life and Fae magic. The nest's sleeping cacoons, like the one I laid in, defied gravity, how they hung up in the rafters, stretching outward from the alternative quarters' mezzanine like the nests of little harvest mice. It was a wonder they withstood my size and weight.
"Ah, Hayashi, you're early. Is Kenichi joining us, too?"
Lowel confirmed who I thought the guest was, and so I tugged my pillow from behind me and wrapped it around my head. It was only the delicious scents of dinner that wafted up from the kitchen some hours later that caused me to peep out from my hiding place. My stomach grumbled; I hadn't eaten yet that day. The breakfast and lunch that had been brought to me sat untouched on the table next to my bed. The smell of baked sweet potatoes had me licking my lips, though, and hanging on the promise that June would bring me some supper.
The conversation I happened to hear quickly dampened my mood.
"He's as prickly as a Hawthorne bush these days." Lowel chuckled.
"It's nothing to laugh about, Da'." June defended. "He is starting to stink the nest up, though... The ol' dog could use a bath. And the beard on him! It's a sight to behold..."
That was the last I heard before I buried my head into the pillow again, and now I couldn't stomach any of her false sweetness or her potatoes.