Eclipse Child

I want to

get into my car

and drive until I

find what I am looking for.

Maybe it’s purpose

or maybe

it’s a new start

or maybe

it’s just a sky with

unclouded stars.

-r.i.d.

I had decided to not drive to the mountains.

Instead, I ran.

My clothes were uncomfortably tied to my back leg- securely wrapped around it.

I stopped at Shaldon pack, mom’s homelands that she had grown up in. It had taken me almost all day to run to the destination.

Alpha Jace and his Luna did not ask questions as I entered their land and requested a place to stay for the night.

Not one.

And I never stayed long enough for them to try.

By the morning, after taking several apples from the pack house kitchen and adding the food into the clothes on my legs- I was more than halfway to the mountains.

There were small peaks that ranged close to the Alba Rosa pack, but the ones Schulman had been referring to were farther.

A long day trip by vehicle- but almost a three-day run for wolves.

I had to stop on and off, resting in between my short bursts of speed.

But eventually, after resting at another pack and spending one night within the woods- I made it.

I stood upon the edge of the mountains, looking out at the bleak grey, and surveying the evergreen trees that dotted the landscape.

No wolves.

My thought process had not made it this far.

My sole focus had been upon the mountains.

Reaching the mountains.

Going to the mountains.

But not what happened once I grasped them.

After staring at the landscape for several more minutes, I finally realized that I would have to find the wolves.

A sudden nervousness entered me.

A pack.

A real pack.

With real wolves who lived in the wild.

Not a body that a human could possess.

No, this animal was of its own will.

And I knew nothing about its nature.

Nothing about what went on inside such a creature’s mind.

I take a step forward.

And then another.

Until I’m walking further into the grey.

Losing myself to the mountain’s mist.

I walk for hours.

The light of the day is slowly fading. The short winter sun only shining for a small amount of time- only able to lift itself in the sky for the little hours it could- before the darkness choked out the tired illumination.

Panic starts to seep into me.

“Don’t freak out,” I breathe to myself, trying to reassure the anxious feeling, “you’ll find them eventually. Don’t worry.”

But I didn’t.

And that first night I spent in a silent gloom, as I watched the clear sky- taking in the unobscured stars.