Violet
The forests of the neutral zone swallowed us whole.
One mont we were following a narrow dirt road, and the next, we had veered into dense woodland where the leaves of high trees filtered the sunlight into scattered fragnts.
The journey had been quiet. Corin and Bei especially acted as scouts while Ana maintained a careful distance behind . Their footsteps were so quiet sotis that I would have forgotten they were walking with if I couldn’t see.
Over the next few days, we made brief stops, with them setting up camps, including one for .
Bei would chatter cheerfully from ti to ti and I would find myself smiling despite the oddness of our situation.
For so reason, it seed as if she was carefully trying to bridge the gap between and the others.
It was no secret to anyone now what I was, and I had taken upon the decision to practise a brief distance from them as they wouldn’t let out of their sight. Corin and Ana had remained cautious, surprisingly sowhat afraid of while Bei had simply been carefree.
She especially had other skills the others didn’t seem to have.
She had brought tools with her. A whole lot. Many of them made out of a strange material she had called silver. She had shown so fascinating items, along with how they worked, particularly using a small round wooden object with a needle floating in strange clear liquid which she called a compass.
Bei also kept notes along with Ana. They had maps of the world, along with smaller maps of regions and borders between territories.
The next few days passed more easily.
Whatever barrier that had existed between us slowly started to crumble. We fell into a rhythm that felt almost natural. Wake up at varied hours, sotis at dawn, and at night. Eat a quick al, pack up camp, walk until the sun began to set or rise, make camp again, eat, sleep, repeat.
The landscape changed gradually around us from ti to ti. The trees beca more varied and we passed through a stretch of woodland where the bark on every tree was pale as bone, their leaves a silvery-green that shimred in the breeze. Then into a valley where a river cut through the land, and its banks were covered in smooth stones worn round by centuries of water.
They were very beautiful sights.
Bei proved to be an endless source of stories. She had travelled widely in her years as a tracker, and she seed to have an explanation for every type of terrain we crossed.
Ana, once she allowed herself to relax, had dry humour that caught off guard more than once. And Corin, though still serious most of the ti, occasionally offered so assistance and help.
After a while, Ana taught how to identify edible plants and poisonous ones using certain categories like their colours, how the leaves were shaped, and the textures of the plants itself.
While my abilities and how I learned worked differently from normal wolves, Corin had still showed how to mask my presence the way he did, though not completely. But it was nice combining what I had learned from Kael and his to co up with sothing of my own that was more stable and effective.
I thought of Kael. A lot.
Along with the lingering guilt of the ss I had left for him to take care of.
And I missed him.
By the third week, it felt like we had been travelling together for months. But at tis, I would find myself thinking about how strange it was I was starting to befriend them. These were the sa wolves that despised just because I was weak. While I would forget about it at tis, it didn’t prevent the bitter taste that filled my mouth whenever this thought slipped into my head.
And I didn’t know how to feel about it.
Would they still be this open or nice to if I was still an Oga?
[ - ]
The pull in my chest remained consistent as we kept moving.
It was like a thread tied sowhere behind my ribcage, tugging gently but insistently in a particular direction. Sotis, we would co across paths we could not cross, but the maps were a good guide of ensuring routes we could take to get to the direction I wanted us to go.
"Do you feel it getting stronger?" Ana asked .
We had stopped for a brief rest beside a stream.
I looked up from the water, turning my attention to her and a bit surprised by the question.
Bei and Corin were busy filling up waterskin bottles with water.
"Not really no," I answered. "But I do feel we are going in the right direction."
I would be severely uncomfortable if the feeling ever intensified in the first place.
The eclipse was a grim reminder of that.
"I see..." Ana then pulled out a worn leather journal from her pack, flipping through pages covered in neat handwriting and sketched maps. "I’ve been conducting a bit of research. Madam Tow told Corin and I of old stories about Lycans having an innate connection to certain places. Sacred sites, gathering grounds, that sort of thing." She looked up at . "Maybe that pull you are feeling is drawing you to one of those places."
"Oh..." I blinked.
They had earlier ntioned being prepared by Tow, but this was so information I had never learned.
Then again, I hadn’t studied much on the books they had about Lycans.
I wished I had.
Bei stood up and walked upstream to et us, holding two heavy sacs filled with water.
"Are we talking about the Lycan civilisation theory?" She smiled, her eyes beaming. "Because I have been thinking about that."
"A theory?" I asked, confused.
No one had ntioned any theory. Maybe they had believed I already had knowledge of this.
Bei dropped the waterskins into one of the bags she carried and turned to look at us, her eyes alight with excitent. "Well, with what Ana has said, if you think about it. You had this pull when your abilities fully awakened during the eclipse, right?"
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