The Red Wolf

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

It was a perfectly normal day and yet, after this day, nothing would ever be the same ever again. I did not know that a trip to a little shop in town, a new nook in the wall that could promise but a few minutes, at least, of entertainment, could change the course of my fate forever.

How lucky I was that everything shifted beneath my feet.

But perhaps I should back up a little. You’re not interested in the abstract: just the nitty-gritty of how I shed skin for fur.

It shouldn’t have happened: I know this for sure. I had not planned to wander into the curiosity shop – at least, that’s what I think it was in hindsight. I suppose I’ll never be quite sure about all that. Neither does it matter anymore. The scent of incense hung heavy in the air – sandalwood, if I remember correctly. Everything gleamed with rhinestones, falsity in the forefront while the true darkness of the establishment lingered in the shadows, simply waiting on an opportunity to pounce.

A tiny vase, nondescript and certainly nothing that most would have picked up. It wasn’t even large enough to put a single flower into and yet I still collected it into the palm of my hand, rolling the smooth greyness of it back and forth until a spark shot through my hand. It was something like touching a live electrical socket but without the arc of pain that would come with such a foolish action in that regard, but it was more than enough to send me reeling back, eyes fixed wide and unblinking, mouth open in a silent gape.

And that was enough to change the course of my life forevermore. I could not release the vase, my fingers snapping in around it as if I was clutching a firstborn to me, the hairs on the backs of my hands standing up as if I truly had been shocked, yet it was something far, far more potent than that. As the saying went – you were crazy if you had hair on the backs of your hands and all that – it was the hair there that changed first, spreading thick and lush over every inch of my body. It was so quick too, covering me completely in the blink of an eye, a low grunt bursting from my lips, although it really didn’t sound like any sort of noise that I should have been making at all.

My clothes fell away, although I surely would not be needing them anymore, grunting deep in the back of my throat as I dropped to the floor like a dead weight. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, any movements my body made entirely beyond my control as I twisted and growled, eyes wild and burning with the urge to blink – and yet I could not. My body was not mine to command and my bones cracked and ground sickeningly against each other as I was forced into a shape that no human should have ever been able to make.

Yet I was not a human anymore. I would only later see that and revel in the delight of it. Claws burst from the tips of my fingers in the place of nails, that useless make up of my being fading away, and I groaned, my back arching without conscious will as I became smaller and smaller, though my head would have still sat above hip height while on all fours.

Oh, if I could have only understood what I was becoming right then and there – perhaps I would not have been so scared. But there’s so much involved in becoming a wolf as my tail sprouted and tingled, coating itself with red-brown fur, that it would have been hard to keep up even if I’d been entirely within the range of my senses.

My ears were not spared as my faced pulled and bulged, stretching out into a muzzle and a damp, moist nose that was better placed to sift through each and every scent I may come across. Teeth sharpened into canines, lining a muzzle and jaw designed to clamp down, to rip and tear and bite! I gnashed them, a long, pink tongue flapping out over the edge of my lips. I was a predator and I was unstoppable!

There was no restraining a wolf and my body came gently back under my control as if the ability to move had never truly left me. But it felt easier to get up onto four paws as my feet tucked in and fingers became much stubbier toes – not that the loss of being able to grip anything was all that much of a loss truly. It was something that I’d quickly forget about in the ability to stretch out my back and run as I was truly meant to run, tail streaming behind me like a flag to denounce my progress.

The shop keeper sighed and leaned over the desk at me, peering down as he shook his head. I was not yet fully a wolf, whining and bouncing up onto my hind legs in memory of the bipedal form I had once held, eyes shifting to a predatory position. They would, after all, serve me well in the future when it came to the hunt and, oh, it would be no more junk food and takeout for me after I first felt the rush of hot, metallic blood between my jaws.

I had always been meant to be more than what I was. And that showed in the gleam of saliva on my dark lips, fur fluffing out as it coated me completely from head to toe and in just how even my human maleness changed, slinking back into a furred sheath that would better protect me in both modesty and vulnerability.

“There’s another one gone,” the shop keeper sighed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “When will you darn kids learn to stop fussing with things you know nothing about?”

It was not my fault – hardly! – but I could not feel bad about the situation at all, the life behind me shucked from my furry shoulders like a shroud that had only been clouding my vision. I leapt and bounded, barking and darting back and forth as the shop owner sighed again and opened the back

“Out! Out, with you! I’m not having vermin in my shop! Out, out, out!”

Yet my life as a red wolf had only just begun.