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Obigor sniffs me, pressing very close to my body. He seems to know it is still me inside this strange form. He might be the only ally I’ve ever had. Obigor’s love is pure. He asks for absolutely nothing besides my presence. I nuzzle him with my muzzle, and he licks underneath my chin. I feel a welling of warmth toward him, and for the first time I am able to lick him back without it being gross at all.
He closes his eyes almost all the way, lifts his head, and sits perfectly still as I clean him, the action soothing us both. We stay like that for some time until we are calm and Obigor is asleep.
I get up, quietly. I need to move. I need to stretch. As I get up for the first time on four limbs, I realize my leg doesn’t hurt anymore. There’s no pain, no grinding, no limitation in movement. I try a few steps and find that my new body is absolutely replete with power. I am lithe and I am strong. As a human, I have felt distinctly average almost every day of my life for as long as I can remember. As this wolf, I feel brand new. I feel strong. I feel…
Before I know it, I am running. I have not been able to run since I was shot, but now I bound through moonlit fields, full of a particular joy I never thought I’d experience again. I am free. Completely free. I am not a woman. I am not a human. I am not anything besides what I am. I run for hours, covering vast distances, stopping to drink from rivers and to hunt small prey.
I am careful not to go too far, in case Obigor needs me. I know where my pack is, but there is a great deal of territory to explore in his radius, and I intend to cover it all.
It is so much easier to be an animal. I have nearly no concerns. I’m not worried about work or rent or money. The concept of money now seems funny and pointless to me. Why did I spend so much time trying to gather bits of paper when food and shelter was all around me completely free? I could have gone to the wilds and survived there. Why didn’t I do that? Why did I stay locked to a world of people who didn’t care about me anyway? Why did I make so many efforts to fit into a world that never wanted me?
As night wears on, day begins to creep around the edges of the world. I sit on the edge of a small hillock and smell the sunrise. The world is made fresh and I breathe in clean air and the calm presence of the present.
“TESSIE!”
I’m faintly aware of someone shouting for me. The sound is distant, but it is carried on the wind and my ears catch it easily. I recognize the voice after a moment or two, once it has time to wind its way through my mind and reach the place that recognizes things.
My master is calling me.
Master.
The word feels different than it did before. It feels more essential. More real. There’re no human objections in the way.
It’s Order’s voice, and to my surprise, it means something. I feel strength in it. I feel warmth. I feel belonging. Hearing him call me creates a need in me to rush toward him as fast as I can. I come to a sliding halt on the wet grass and turn back toward the den I am no longer allowed to be in.
I didn’t realize how far I’d run from him. It takes quite some time to return at a full bolt, but I run at top speed the whole way, my back legs reaching forward and even in front of my front at the apex of my motion. This feels so natural, and yet I’ve never done it before. I am like the wind. I am the air and the soil. I am nothing at all, and I am everything. It feels so good to have lost the burden of a sense of self. All I know is that I have to do what he says, because doing what he says makes him happy, and making him happy makes me happy.
I see him now, standing with all three sets of arms perched on the sides of his body. A flash of worry makes me think he might possibly be angry at me. I couldn’t stand it if he was angry at me.
I run straight at him, slamming on my foot brakes at the last moment, skidding to not quite a halt as I leap up against him, my paws big and muddy against his chest. He reaches out with all six arms and hands and gives me the best cuddle ever. Every place his hands touch, I feel sheer happiness emanating throughout my body.
“Good girl!” he praises. I hear warmth with a touch of surprise in his voice. I can sense that he thought I’d run and run and never come back. I feel him now in a new way. I feel how strong he is, and how much he loves me. I feel his possession and his care. I feel my belonging to him, and a new, deeper yearning for his approval. I pant happily as I lick his face, narrowly avoiding licking several of his eyes. My master smells like power and safety, love and concern.
“Good girl,” he repeats, driving me into an even more intense frenzy of excitement. When he verbally approves of me, I feel my entire body charge with happy energy. It’s like a shot of a drug I’ve rarely experienced before.
“Alright,” he says. “Now how about you change back into your human form.”
I have no idea how to do that, and even less desire to. My human form was always in pain, one way or another. It was difficult and broken, and I was always confused as to how I felt and why I felt it, and whether or not I should feel that way. I was conflicted, and managing my brain was a full time job all of its own. I don’t feel that way at all in my wolf form. Everything is clear right now. I know exactly who I am and exactly what I want.
There’s no way to communicate any of that to him, besides in a soft whine.
“Alright,” he says. “If you can’t do that right now, we need to go.”
He opens the car door. My car door, though it doesn’t feel like mine anymore. Everything must belong to master now. I couldn’t drive a car anyway with these paws. Or could I? Obigor is asleep on the front seat. I am supposed to go in the back, I guess.
“We need to leave,” he says as he watches me hesitate, working these things out in my slightly simpler wolf mind. “I organized a distraction with Justice to keep Stealth out of the way, but we don’t have much time. Come on. Get in.”
I do as I am told, leaping into the back seat. Obigor wakes up, eyes wide and starts yapping at me, standing up in the front seat and shrieking at me until I lean my head over and lick him. He tastes like Obigor.
* * *
Order is driving. I don’t know where we are going, but I know I definitely want to hang my head out the window. And I do. And it’s just as amazing as I thought it would be. Wind buffets my face, drawing my jowls back. I can snap at the air and I can feel my ears sort of flapping behind me.
I love this. When Chief Connor first bit me I felt nothing but betrayal. Now I feel like he’s given me a gift. A wonderful, amazing gift. He has freed me from my pain and shown me a whole other way of being.
“Tessie! Get your head back in!”
I do what he says, because he is master, but I do it reluctantly. I take up the entirety of the back seat. This is a small car, and I am a very large animal. I’m a bigger wolf than I ever was a person. It takes me a while to get comfortable. I have to try quite a few positions, getting up and then down, putting my head various places, including Order’s shoulder and the center console between the driver’s seat and passenger seat.
