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it’d been said before that traveling is a poor wolf’s medicine. if that were true, daevi would have walked far enough by now to have been cured of every ailment a wolf could possibly have. yet still her stomach clenched with hunger, and her paw still ached inexorably where she had hurt it before. walking miles each day had worked wonders for her emotional health, but wreaked havoc on her unaccustomed body, which throbbed at the end of each day in places she’d never hurt before. still, it was worth it; she took the pain as a trophy of her achievements, the tiredness in her bones a reminder of how far she had come. her home was long gone now, having slipped past the horizon long ago, disappearing forever. even the sky looked different here, taller, larger, more open, accepting. she didn’t know how far away she was, but she knew she couldn’t find her home now even if she tried. the thought was terrifyingly elating, and she tried to hold on to the feeling as long as possible. soon she knew this place too would become old and boring, and the pounding feeling of excitement in her chest would become nothing more than a vague twinge of curiosity. that was the problem with life, she thought: it was all used up too quickly, and then there was nothing new left. just the old, recycled and repackaged but still essentially the same.
it was a cold day today. daevi liked the cold, liked the way it stung her eyes and nose and mouth and crept in and under her fur and made a home there. she felt renewed in the cold, cleansed, like the transfer of heat was a sterile, purifying process that left her clean and crisp and new. when the breeze tickled through the trees and breathed a soft sigh over her, she drank it in, let it penetrate her insides in a wave of icy cold. she didn’t need much more than this, she’d decided, the grass, the trees, the cool air, soft clouds overhead. anything more felt greedy. her family was greedy, desiring for more wolves, more land, more food, more this and that. always more, never less. never something different. more, more, more (a funny thought for a girl so deeply unsatisfied with life herself that she’d felt the need to leave her entire life behind to experience something more. but such was the mind of a young woman; naive and without an ounce of introspection. for this, we must forgive her hypocrisy). she curled her lip in vague irritation, picking her way over to a small creek that lay bubbling to her left. she drank it up in small, quick laps, feeling it crawling down her throat, soaking up the feelings of disappointment in her family. they should have come. they, too, would have felt what she did, she knew. even now - the sunlight was fighting against the clouds, casting speckled rays of light down upon the land that shifted and morphed with the breeze. daevi sat back on her haunches, giving rest to her hurt paw. before her, the creek rolled gently over the land, glittering in the fighting sunlight. the trees beyond waved softly to her, and she could see in their leaves small signs of life: a glimpse of a furry tail, a quiet cackle, fluttering of wings. it was free. why did wolves need packs and rules and marriages and traditions when one could simply forego all routine and just truly be free?
after a while, the woman stirred again, snapping from her trance. it was peaceful here, sure, but it was difficult to drag her mind from the future to the present for long. she could feel the beginnings of hunger in her gut, and she’d need somewhere warm in the trees to hunker down through the chilly night. so with some difficulty, daevi pulled herself from where she was and headed toward the trees. surely there’d be something she could snatch up and eat in there - or, even better, maybe there’d be someone else in there who could get her something to eat so she didn’t have to. wishful thinking, but she’d gotten lucky before.
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