World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - Uncomfortable in Her Skin [Fin]

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

[4:00 AM, 24 August 2008]

For what seemed like the thousandth time, Sarah tried to be the wolf.

It was a natural thing, after all. A natural hope and desire and goal for one who had spent her entire life watching things with two legs turn into things with four.

The Wren clan had been anything but shy around the unfortunates of their line. Everyone had their uses, even if only to breed, and the extended members of that tangle of backwoods genetics were not spared the mind-wrenching sight of people rippling with impossible transformations into beasts both normal and not. For most of the wolf-bloods and lesser offspring, it was a vision of terror, something to be endured until they either Changed themselves or died. But for Sarah O'Neally, it had been - even as some part of her brain scrambled for a flight response - a wondrous thing forever barred her, a birthright denied that burned with a white-hot envy deep in her soul.

Finding herself brought into unlife should have been a sort of coda to her mortal existence, a requiem of her life as it was for the rest of her kind. But not for Sarah. As she watched the lifeless thing that created her shimmer with his own powers of transformation, shifting to become the sacred and beloved form of the wolf, Sarah's soul grasped at what was once an impossible hope and never, ever let it go again.

But for three long years now, the change wouldn't come. This night was no different. In the depths of her claimed park, crouched on all fours beneath the starry sky, the strain of desperate effort brought her muscles to quivering. Rubies of sweat formed on her brow, tracing downward in crimson streams as every fibre of her undead being strove to become the wolf. There was, as always, the smallest measure of success - sharp fangs reaching out to surround the hoped-for first howl, ebony claws stretching from fingers and toes to grip the earth in a would-be first run. But no matter how she tried, how she pushed, how much of her already dwindling reserves she consumed and burned and just plain perspired in the effort, the change would not come.

Finally exhausted, Sarah collapsed on the ground... knowing that she would try again the next night, just as she had known a thousand nights before.