Perception

by Girl, Breukelen

  My sister Bodil shape shifted when she was thirteen, even younger than me. My oldest brother Aksel shape shifted when he was the same age. He had our father help him through it. Not that much help was required apparently. Aksel’s shape shift was about as smooth a shift as you could ever hope to experience for the first time. Markus shape shifted three months before me at age fourteen. Markus claims it wasn’t so bad.

  My father insists on pairing someone with me to help me. It’s usually Bodil. I always insist of doing the shift myself, without assistance, help, or anyone looking over my shoulder at me.

  Smooth my shape shifts are not. Probably because unfortunately every time I’ve shifted since then, and tried to shift outside of a lunar week, my mind remembers what’s locked in it, taunting my memory, refusing to go away.

  My mind takes that thought and holds it firmly in place. Stressing me as I try to calm down and assure myself, that everything is okay. That I’m okay and I can shape shift like a werewolf should, easily.

  But being a werewolf isn’t all just shape shifting half your life away once a month, for the rest of your natural life. That’s what I’ve come to realise since the shape shift. It’s kind of like a curtain was lifted after that and I got to view the world in which I’m a part of in a very different manner.

  I see more now, when people don’t think I’m paying attention. When they pass me over is when my ears really prick up.

  I’m underestimated even though I’m a werewolf and a shape shifted one at that, which I thought somehow would bring some sort of level of admiration and respect with it. Because that’s how I used to view the older kids in our pack around Bodil and Aksel’s age, who had gone through this process before me. It turns out, it doesn’t. At least, not for me.

  Which is why I wasn’t seeing the point to a birthday party. The purpose of a birthday is to recognise and celebrate the day of your birth. The person you are. It’s supposed to be about you, solely.

  Well I’ve had my share of focus on me. Too much focus of poor little BG. And they’ve got it wrong about me.

  Perception is like a third of the truth you know.

  5

  Lunar week for me is like running a gauntlet, that I’m never sure I’m going to be able to complete. But I run it anyway. Well I get put through my paces on it every time. Wether I want to or not. Having a say in doing the most basic werewolf urges, like shape shifting at this time, is not an option. So much as it’s a requirement.

  My father has tried to stress to me, that shape shifting during this time is a must. Especially for a young pup like me. He’s also tried to get me to have assistance with the shift. Which I’ve so far refused.

  I got through it the first time alone. There was no one there to keep me calm, focussed, to help me through each phase. And I’ve managed to get through it each time since. I refuse to talk about it with him.

  So far he’s backing off and letting me do my thing in terms of dealing with the shape shift. But he keeps pushing. Guess I should’ve expected that. Alpha’s are not known for accepting an answer that is not the one they want.

  The range of conflicting emotions and superior sensations I go through are confusing and consuming. It can be hard to focus on what I need to do, to make this easy on myself.

  I mean, I don’t really know what I’m doing when I shape shift. I kind of just get naked and let it take a hold of me. And even that’s not completely consensual. There’s always a knee jerk reaction to fight the first dislocation, to push the broken bones back into place.

  I’m just not really used to this phase of my life yet. Having my own body invert on itself without exploding and pushing forth the form I was born of but with into being.

  We used to do this differently. We, the Breukelen pack used to be able to do this – entering into the shape shift phase of our lives, differently. There was a routine in place for helping pups like me handle what would happen, how to get us through it.

  A big part of the procedure in place was being surrounded in a natural, not artificial element. Kind of like immersing the werewolf’s senses in what it expects to find, nature. Not some scarce room that smells of disinfectant and dust.

  But that was before. Before I fucked it up for everyone it seems. Me getting attacked at our camp ground put a holt to all that, instantly. We had to change up our routine. So for now, I keep getting told it’s just a temporary setback, we do not frequent the camp ground. We do not go, as we used to say “country” for lunar week.

  My hand snaps backwards. My body follows through with an ugly hyper extension from the wrist. I’d scream but the ability to make noise, has left my body. But my sight is still good for now. I am still given the ability to see the horror I’m being put through.

  And will again, each night this week. Because it’s lunar week and that’s how it goes for this beta werewolf. There is no shortcut to instantaneous freedom in fur. There is only the lethargy of order. My body needs to make it’s way through. Has to figure out for itself, how to live these literal two halves of me, together.

  The sound of contortion is as uncomfortably excruciating as it looks. Like having a fetish desire to pain myself repetitively.

  I can feel my claws forming and with them an assurance of something flows through me. Levitates some of the anxiety going through me. This is the werewolf coming into my consciousness.

  The werewolf is willing me out of it. At first this seems gentle. In thought but not in theory.

  My body is still on auto pilot. My calf muscle is pulling taunt till my knee cap is flexed more than straight. It’s pushing down, snapping off it’s joints to move around.

  Morphing from one body to another. And even though there is a cloud obscuring the moon tonight, I feel it’s presence dance along my skin like a caress. Willing my werewolf to keep coming out of me.

  To be one with the moon and night sky and be a creature of the night. To drown the girl who holds it at bay. Throw her away and enter into the world at night, as I’ve always intended to be.

  The werewolf side of me, doesn’t exactly understand why there’s a girl attached to it I think. But the girl gets the werewolf side of her life. Because the girl, me, knows it’s coming.

  The full sensation of the shape shift. The strength of the werewolf in me, flows through my limbs and my eye sight blurs. It’s won’t be all that long now till the shape shift is complete and the werewolf is out.

  I am close to the end of giving myself over to the werewolf within.

  6

  When my brother Aksel found out I was having weapons training with martial arts weaponry, he wanted to take part.

  Not because Aksel needs additional help at fighting, or being physical. He’s an Alpha werewolf who has an all too natural ability to fight and fight well. Some things just come easy to some people.

  Aksel’s one of those, everything he does is a bit like he’s a natural at it. Especially anything associated with physicality. He just thought it would be cool. Something to do. Another skill to have. Something else for him to be good at is basically what it came down to.

  When Markus found out I was undergoing weapons training, he got quite angry. Not at me. At our father. He sees weapons, all man made weapons, machines and the like, as violence.

  His argument was along the lines that werewolves were made to handle violence in their nature, not to incite it or go looking for it. He said at fifteen, that his little sister shouldn’t have to know violence. Especially the kind that occurs in werewolf world. Markus is always looking out for me.

  Of course, his impassioned plea with my father to just let me be fell on deaf ears. You don’t get to be a leading pack alpha by giving in all the time to emotional blackmail or desperate pleas.

  My father argued back to Markus that he was letting me be. He was letting me be better. Stronger and fiercer by equipping me with even more power than my natural werewolf abilities would allow. Of course, who knows what abilities I will have since I’m only fifteen a
nd I’ve only just shape shifted? Maybe it’s a progressive thing.

  Bodil was of the opinion that it would also be good for me to undergo the training. She said to me “Father is a very smart man, trust him, he knows what he’s doing.” She is such a pack wolf. Joss of course is too young to know any better and is being sheltered from being exposed to what has gone on and continues to go on with me.

  “Do you know how to fight?” My instructor asks me on my second so called lesson with him. First lesson all I did was get used to the concept of having weapons. Feeling them in my hands and being okay with them. We didn’t even do anything. My instructor barely spoke to me. Talk about gently does it and taking baby steps!

  I eye him suspiciously, my mind already mapping out my exists and likely scenarios should he charge at me or try to jump me. I’m not alone in this dojo. My own personal body gaurd is patiently sitting in a corner of the same room as us.

  But I’ve already resolved with myself, that nobody is ever going to touch me without my permission. “It’s why I’m still here.” I throw back at him before wondering if I wasn’t supposed to flippantly reply about him being here to teach me that.

  He nods his head in understanding of the gravity of my comment. I wonder how much he’s been told about my situation. Even I haven’t been completely honest with my father about what happened to me. I left out some details because I just didn’t want to revisit them.

  “Do you believe that was more survival instinct and reaction or your ability to fight for your life?”

  I want to ask him what is with the philosophical introspection. But I bite my lip. If this is some sort of cheap tactic to get my anger going. It’s working. But I refuse to let him have that power over me and know it.

  I will not let him or anybody else have anything of me that I do not want to give of my own accord. Again I wonder what was said about me, when asking for this private training to happen. What was asked and how was I talked of?

  “Can’t they be the same thing?” I ask him back as he produces the sai.

  “They can be and often are. But to equip yourself with the ability to fight is to give yourself the advantage to get past the panic, to be one up on your attacker.”

  “To give myself a better chance.”

  “Right.” My instructor agrees with me.

  “What’s a better chance than surviving an attack?” I ask before I can stop myself. Wondering if

  I’ve given too much information already about myself away to him. It’s not like I want to speak of what happened.

  “Living without having it hang over you. Stopping it before it can happen.” He answers simply holding out the sai in his hands to me. I wonder how commonplace this is. For fathers to load their daughters up on self defence training, after an attack. Without thought to doing it prior to what happens to them.

  “Right.” I mutter taking the sai out of his hands cautiously. “Stopping shit that is outside of your control from ever happening.”

  “Putting the control back in your power position.” The instructor corrects me. “You hold the power, you have the control and sway over anything that comes at you. You can be what nobody knows to see. That’s what lethality really is.”

  Then it clicks with me. My father doesn’t want me to be weak. He doesn’t want me to think of myself as weak. He doesn’t want others to think I’m weak. So he’s trying to give me a sense of self, by giving me back the power to control what happens to me. That’s what this weapons training is about. He doesn’t mean to turn me into a some sort of martial arts killing machine. He’s trying to empower me, again.

  Because he wasn’t there for my shape shift, when I should have felt the true power of being a werewolf come into being. Like my highly confident siblings did. It’s why they think shape shifting is a piece of cake that can be endured. Because shifting makes them feel empowered.

  Because they have the knowledge and understanding of the essence of what they are, which makes them, who they are. They experienced the shape shift the way I was meant to.

  My father means well. Really, he does. But he’s a werewolf. Softness and subtly are not his specialty. Out of his two daughters, I’m the one that’s not the tomboy.

  7

  There are never any news reports on lycan attacks. Or for that matter, werewolves attacking humans and turning them into potential lycans. It’s always rather hush-hush. Which I suppose is the best form of control, of an already bad situation, that both sides have.

  By both sides, I mean humans and werewolves. After all, we live together in the same world. It’s just, as a werewolf we see the world differently because of our capabilities, and to a degree, needs. But we attempt to abide by the way of the land. The law ruling us all and we agree to be governed by those that know us, our packs and pack leaders.

  So with that in mind, werewolf attacks shouldn’t by right happen. Shape shifted werewolves are taught ways to deal with the constant sensation of the wolf inside them. They’re given resources to control themselves and to condition themselves to have a better handle on that pesky werewolf part of themselves.

  Therefore lycans should not be either. But as it is, they exist. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s only a minimum few. Lycans do not frequent the world of werewolves if they can help it. So keeping tabs on them is hard to do. And as result, nobody really has a proper idea of how many lycans are around and how big the werewolf attacks and lycan problem is.

  Living in a city as big as New York, should also lesson the chances of werewolf. Because werewolves are not traditionally city dwelling creatures. It’s the reason we used to go country to shape shift and get through what we call lunar weeks.

  The week leading up to the full moon when all werewolves of age, are compelled to shape shift. But it was by going country that saw me attacked, tortured and held captive by lycans. It’s because of me, that the Breukelen pack are re-thinking this strategy.

  It’s because of me that my friends no longer come around and hang out with me. It’s because of this happening to me, that they don’t talk to me.

  I’m like the werewolf equivalent of failing.

  But I shouldn’t feel too bad. Because being a werewolf is rarely dull. There’s talk of something big having happened in Brooklyn recently. In Breukelen werewolf territory, my father’s territory.

  So maybe this will take the spotlight off me and I won’t be considered such poison by those outside of my family.

  I know whatever has happened is a big deal, because I know what my father is like when he’s presented with a new, unseen problem. It’s not stress he carries, it’s tension.

  “What can we do?” there’s a Breukelen pack wolf from my father’s hierarchy talking to him in our house. “This isn’t our doing and it’s done already. There is no need to claim responsibility for this.” This guy sounds like weasel. I’m hanging back in the kitchen, far enough away to be out of sight and yet still hear their conversation.

  “It happened in Breukelen territory, all that comes under this territory in that name, is my responsibility. Including this.” My father responds back at his colleague.

  “But we didn’t do it. At least, there’s no way to lay proof to that. It’s just an unfortunate circumstance that it happened here. But it could’ve happened anywhere really.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  “We police lycans in this borough, thoroughly. You know that. This is not a reflection back on the work that me and the others do. Couldn’t possibly be.” My heartbeat is racing at the mention of the word lycan.

  I had no idea there were lycans in Brooklyn. Hell, in New York for that matter.

  “There are no lycans in Brooklyn. I make sure of it.” The Breukelen werewolf I don’t know states at my father. But his words do next to nothing to make me feel calm.

  Brooklyn is my home. I’m supposed to feel safe here. I’m not supposed to feel like the terror of the attack on me back in those woods, can follow me back here. That’s not ri
ght. Brooklyn is my heart. My safety. Brooklyn is untouchable. I’m supposed to be untouchable in Brooklyn.