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Mute by TeknicolorTiger

Mute

TeknicolorTiger

A change is a catastrophic event. It's... indescribable, really. When it happens it feels bigger than you, bigger than your whole world. Worse, it's the force that shapes it. Change is both a thing and an action; it does and is. But once it starts, it can't be stopped. You feel like the rocks in the tides, only what the surf takes millenia to do to a shoreline, only takes the change moments to do to your body.

Some people think it's just your body that changes, you aren't aware of it as you slip away as though caught in a violent current.

But you know.

You're aware of everything. You're aware of that hard, grinding feeling in your bones, the taste of blood and dirt in your mouth, like being dragged against pavement. Your body is cruel, it keeps your mind trapped within it because it doesn't want to be left alone with the pain. You cry out, but you find that your vocal chords have paralyzed as they, too, twist inside your throat. And for all of a few seconds, which can feel like a few days, the wind has been forced out of you because you try so hard to let the world know. You're left alone with the squelching, organic ensemble of bones shifting, muscles stretching, and nerves firing. The static in your ears is deafening and you nearly rip your own skin off trying to tear it out of your body.

And the only solace, the only rush of blessed relief you receive, is when that last bone slips into place; that last nerve shorts itself out. Only then can you see what this change is all about.

Some people may say change is good; that it feels good. Power flowing through you, light shining inside of you like a nuclear generator. Maybe. It can feel like that. If you don't fight it. But most of us do, because we don't like change. And to those who call for it, embrace it as a gift, relish in its symbolism, I say, let their muscles twist like taffy, let their bones feel like its stretching out your skin like a sheet on laundry day, let their vocal chords freeze. I say, let them stay mute.

Autumn, the main character in my book, is very uncomfortable with what she is for the first little bit. She's very cynical. Transformation in my story isn't really a beautiful thing, but a lycanthrope's body does get used to it after a while and it becomes less painful as time goes on. Some characters describe as a "beautiful pain".

...One of these days I swear I'm going to do werewolf art without blood. I actually tried to do this without any blood, but I felt, not only did the red help balance out the composition, but also complimented the theme. I'd almost imagine that you would probably be losing a lot more than just blood if you were transforming as violently, but any more graphic and it would detract from everything else, methinks.

Autumn Isen © Cassandra Aponte 2012

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