World of Darkness World of Darkness: Attrition - Reclaiming [Fin]

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

[nearly midnight, 22 Oct 2008]

The night was beautiful, crisp and clear; a world full of the sharp scent of fallen leaves, cracking underfoot to release the scent of October as Sarah walked through her chosen land. A chill wind tore handfuls more of the multi-hued wonders from their moorings, spinning down in a ballet as each one ended its brief hold on life. Above, the moon shone bright upon her, old Mother Luna seeming to smile upon her lost child. And looking up, Sarah smiled back.

Tonight. It happens tonight.

Such certainty had been an elusive thing in her scant quarter century of life and death. One way or another, Sarah had been at the whim of fate and chance for so long that any kind of real hold on her life had slipped her grasp like loose sand.

The Wren family's promise of a meaningful life, torn away by genetics.

Shane, seperated by that same promise and never to be seen again.

Medical school, ripped from her by her own father.

Her very life, sapped away by the hated sun.

Juan, torn assunder by something that should never have walked this world.

The long hunt, lost to her own qualms and Amber's refusal.

The pack, taken from her by that same xenophobic fanaticism.

The litany went on and on, things that had been denied Sarah by twists of fate and hate. Everything that held meaning wrested from her life one way or another... and she'd let it happen, she knew now.

"Who you chose to believe is irrelevant when compared to what you choose to believe." Maybe Lucien's words had been laced with subtle magicks. Maybe they were just words. But either way, a spell had broken in that moment, a spell woven around Sarah's mind through two and a half decades by her own lack of self-worth.

No more. That curse - the one true curse of her existence - had shattered as surely as the waterglobe in his hands. There would be no more faint hopes, no more begging for scraps. What she wanted was in her blood. And tonight - not pleading on hand and knee as she had a thousand times before, but standing straight and tall, Sarah would have it.

[Sarah Dead-Wolf]

The Dead Wolf took a deep, unneeded breath behind closed eyes, released it in a slow whisper, then focused on her outstretched hands. The blood within her roiled at her call, diffusing some small portion of itself almost as a mist throughout her body, and the familiar black points appeared at the ends of her digits - bare dots of ebony at first, but lengthening to glistening claws after half a moment.

This was the point at which the wonder usually stopped...but tonight, Sarah would not let it rest as such. She pushed, forcing the blood out toward to the surface of her skin, visibly shaking with the effort. A clamminess came to her that she had not fully felt since leaving her old life behind; only belatedly did she realize that she was sweating vitae from her pores, a slight sheen of it soaking into her clothing. In her mind's eye, she could see what she wanted to be, could feel wind on fur, could almost taste the scents of the forest.

And there, in that moment of focus and desire, the barrier was finally crossed. Her blood-soaked clothing drew tight, denim pulling against - and then into - her skin. Her back arched, and she fell forward, hands splayed on the ground while her feet felt grass and dirt through leather boots that were no longer there. Sinew shifted and reformed as muscle and bone were radically transformed, and her vision went to black and white behind eyes that were now yellow on deep, deep black. There should have been pain - she knew this, in the part of her mind that was still thinking on a rational basis - but there was none; only deep elation as fur caught the wind and as scents came to her as vivid and clear as a portrait.

She drew deep breath, then let fly a howl that made clear to every creature - alive or otherwise - within range that there was a new predator here; that a new wolf walked the land.