Reliving their deaths

A yawn escapes my lips and my body sags in exhaustion. Today has left me beat, I think to myself while idly rubbing my nose that has been itchy and bothering me. 

I've been slowly shuffling my feet towards my room after leaving the Headmistress' Office. Professor Florentino was noticeably tense and left without saying a word, but I shrugged it off, mostly because I'm too tired to worry about what's going on with him. 

I think about grabbing some food for dinner, but when a flash of an image of fur bursting across my arm and disappearing and I remember the feeling of body arched in pain, I think better of it. I'm too upset and don't want to eat right now.  

How does one train to become a better wolf? Especially when Morwenna said that this hasn't happened before...I am unsure of how they know how to help me, or if they can. I run a finger along the edge of my teeth remembering the feeling of my canines. It was only for a moment, but they were there. 

I should put my trust in her, I mean she must be the Headmistress for a reason. In the short time I have known her she seems intelligent and capable.

I make it to the common room and my gaze catches on the roaring fireplace. It looks so inviting, but if I sit down in front of it I am not sure I could get back up, so I walk by it and continue to my room, cursing the long hallway as I go. I eventually make it to my room and am pleasantly surprised to find my door fixed. I'm not sure who to thank for that, but I'm grateful all the same. 

I shower, trying to wash the disappointment of today from my skin and thinking about where to go from here. My mom would tell me that even when it might seem easier to give up, I should just hang on. That things will be much brighter on the other side and I will be better for it. 

'A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence'. She would say. 

I put a t-shirt and shorts on to wear to sleep and walk back into my bedroom. My footsteps stutter and I make a choking sound when I see a sunflower sitting on my bed. The flower of adoration…tears sting the back of my eyes and memories of my mother sitting in her garden and my parents funeral come flooding in on me at once. 

As a normal human, I was surrounded by friends, loved by my family and comforts were abundant. As a werewolf, life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like a flower in the summer that drops petals on the soil beneath them. 

A solitary flower, alone and adrift like I feel at current. I don't know what's worse, to not know what you want to be and be happy, or to become what you've always wanted to be and feel alone with no one to share it with. 

A lone heart will wither if it does not answer another heart. 

The sunflower also reminds me of Ryker's eyes, which brings me out of my grief enough to find a jar to put the flower in with some water. 

When I think of him and our connection, I realize I may not be as alone as I feel. Losing my parents and Javier carved holes out of my heart, but Ryker and some of the other people I've met here like Teo and Calvin, are starting to make my heart whole again.

This isn't just about that though, this is also about survival. I'm learning to adapt after the worst happened and am accepting that the person I used to be is gone now. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

My skin prickles in awareness when I feel a presence near me. A quick glance upwards confirms that the distorted blur of a shape is back in my room watching over me. 

With thoughts of my parents clouding my head, I crash into my mattress. And with a tight grip on my stuffed pig, I drift to sleep. 

It's bright and beautiful out, and I'm hiking on a trail when I get to a small grassy knoll along the side of a steep mountain. In the middle of the small clearing, highlighted by the afternoon sun, are my parents crouched over the ground speaking in loud voices with each other. 

'Daniel, we need to tell -'

'- No, we will protect her. We have so far, we will continue to do so, Sarah.' My dad looks like he has more to say, but halts their conversation when he sees me approaching. 

They are still about 60 meters ahead of me and both are giving me a strained smile, probably because I left them waiting for so long. It's the summer, so my dad has more time to spend with us while school is on break. My parents wanted to collect some new plants for him to study and invited me along for the trip, which I didn't hesitate to say yes to. We had been hiking together for an hour when I saw a tree that I wanted to climb, so I told them to go on and walk ahead and that I would catch up with them shortly. 

Once I made it to the top, however, I spotted bats hanging upside-down from the branches in a nearby tree. I quickly and quietly pulled my camera out, but at the first click of the camera lens, the bats started to stir. With my heart in my throat from being so worried I would scare them off, some of them merely rustled their wings and peeked at me curiously. 

I went into the settings and turned the sound off on the camera and spent a long time taking photos of the bats from where I was perched on the tree. A short while later, I had put the camera down but was still watching them intently when a howl was heard in the distance. 

I frown thinking that wolves aren't known to come this close to the coast, but that thought evaporates when I see the bats all drop at once from the branch. My eyes widen as I watch how they keep their wings closed until the nearly reach the forest floor, before opening their wingspan to its full extent and giving a powerful flap to right them in the air. The bats move as a unit, sweeping low through the forest floor and staying hidden in the darkness the trees provide. 

It was really quite unusual behavior for bats to do that, which is another reason why I took too long to meet up with my parents. I had sat there with my jaw hanging open long after the bats had flown out of sight. 

I continue walking towards my parents, but every step I take closer to them the sky turns darker. An unexpected storm is moving in with unfathomable speed and my parents and I look at each other nervously when rain starts to pour on us. 

I have to keep wiping the water from my eyes so I can see as I try to close the distance between me and my parents. Lightning strikes in the distance causing my heart to race. 

It's too dark now,, this storm is dangerous and we need to leave fast.

They start to walk to me too, so I'm only 15 meters from my parents now when a black blur whips through the air in between us. I stumble and look around to see what that was and I get my answer when a swarm of bats surrounds me and cuts off my path to my parents. 

I screech as I feel them in my hair and their wings graze the skin of my face. 

'Layla, run!' I hear my dad bellow, my insides squeezing in response to the terror in his voice. 

Between the bats and the rain, I can't see anything around me. I raise my arms and try to get the bats away from me but they aren't deterred. 

I feel my knees quake in fear from this sudden turn of events, but a heartbeat later I realize that even the ground is shaking. The ground turns slick with mud and the rocks start sliding down the steep mountainside around me. 

My lips part and I take a sharp inhale of breath as I stand there frozen to my spot in the middle of a landslide. 

The bats fly away and I look for my parents to see nothing but devastation in the place they were standing. 

'Mom? Dad?' I cry, still looking around me, refusing to accept that they are buried under the rubble of the landslide. 

The ground shakes again and I look up to see more rocks falling down the mountain towards me. 

When the first rock hits me in the forehead and I start to lose consciousness, I release a bloodcurdling scream that pulls me from my dream and I lie awake panting in my bed after reliving the death of my parents.