Disclaimer: This story includes sexually explicit content, as well as gore and violence, at times mixed with sexual content. It also contains domestic abuse.
I remember very little from being human.
I was born to winter, I remember that. I remember that the sky was open and blue, and I remember the dancing in the snow to bring the sun back. I was told that my mother died to birth me. I think of her often, when I stare out at the snow and watch the ground scintillate with sun. When all seems like death, and yet, there is life.
I remember very little of my transformation. But I remember coming back, and the fear in their eyes.
I remember being held at spear-point. I remember my father letting me escape. I remember the wails of my siblings: "Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!" I believed them, and so I was.
I do not know the origin of my habits. So much time has passed, it is hard to say what did and did not happen. I remember indignance. Perhaps that is why I began my hunts, chose my prey. But is that all? Now, I can not eat another meal — and I am strong, and I am virile. Could I be, with another diet? I think on this sometimes, as I paw at my meat, and the blood drips down my chin. I do not know the origin of my habits, but my wonderings on this subject are often brief these days — I eat with a head raised high and a gracious spirit.
But in the beginning, I mourned.
I warred with my hunger. I would visit the encampments of man as a stranger, a spirit or a mystic. I would tell them my findings, things one can only know beyond night's safe fires and man's slung stones. I gave voice to the knowledge of the animals as if I knew it, though then I bore only a mockery of what I know now. Perhaps it is better to say that I gave voice to my desperate hopes, my shallow attempts at understanding. Inevitably, I would scare them. Sometimes I would come under suspicion. Sometimes the neighboring peoples would have shared their stories, warned of me. I might leave under the moon's gaze, a mysterious passer, a forgotten or dreamt presence. I might be driven out, attacked, even in my sleep I could be at risk of a strike, but no attempts ever succeeded at slaying me. I sometimes hoped to be attacked, that I may then retaliate, kill and eat, my mind light, my intentions pure, my violence righteous.
The alternative was worse. Some, they would be enraptured. They would think me wise, they would think me of another world. They would invest in me their hopes and confide in me their fears. They would ask for my counsel, listen to my words. But that did not feed me. Some never knew that my visions were only of myself, the dangers I warned of with me as they welcomed me in. I thought it fair to warn, but some did not listen, and I did not say enough because secretly I needed them to let me in, to give me rest, and, eventually, to be my meal.
This was worse.
I would tear myself open to pull their bodies out of me. I would vomit their remains. I would hate myself, as I ate. I would get sick.
"Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!"
I would curse my father who did not kill me, that first night when I was surely more vulnerable than I am now. I would cry and howl, and the stories of my howls were told to the young — they were told in low light and fear, in the dead of winter, the season of my birth, when everything is dead and all seems hopeless. I waited for the sun to rise, and I was stupid with grief. I forgot my dances. I let man do the work, and I wailed.
I could bear it only so long before I forsook the world of man. I became a creature of the wilds — I approached the lone travelers, the separated, the exiled. I found easy prey. I ate those who would have died regardless, the sick and the simple. I detached myself from it, I made it impersonal. Eventually, my stories were forgotten. Some of my etched visages remained, and some of the peoples of man remembered me as a fearsome trickster, a demon, and so I remembered myself as a demon and drove myself out. I only approached those with no stories to tell, I took what little was left in their lives. I told myself as much, and it made me feel better. Safer.
But I was lonely.
Once, hidden in the bushes by the side of a trade road near my homeland, I listened to the tongue of passing men and I could not understand their words. In that moment I realized the gulf between myself and my father, greater than merely the gulf between the living and the dead, the gulf between myself and community and comfort — I could not even speak their words.
I wept, and the traders heard me. They rushed to meet me, and found me in my human form, naked and white with clay and soil. They took me in, speaking in worried tones, wrapped me in blankets, and we rode to a city.
It had been a long time since I had walked into the camps of man. I watched them raise their farms, their fields and livestock, and grow sedentary. I had watched as their walls became permanent structures, tended to by generations that sat in place. When I was still young, there had been only stories of these places, but in my time I saw them become common. This was the first I had entered.
A fear rose in my chest as I remembered my last encounters with man in their homes, but my loneliness was stronger. I let them take me inside. They bathed and fed me. I ate what they offered although it made me sick. When once they sounded like they were debating my worth, I sang. A melody I had hoped one might recognize. None did, but my ancient tongue renewed interest, and they brought me before their mystics.
I was questioned things I could not answer. The painted women took my arms and studied their thickness. They housed me when the men no longer wanted me. Still, one of the traders made regular visits. Perhaps because he was a spiritual man, perhaps for worship. But each visit, he made it a point to find me.
With him and the mystics, I learned language anew. They were akin to my words, but they had changed. My voice did not agree with them — I was chastised for my ineptitude. But not by the trader.
I was asked to study the stars. It was during these studies that the trader found me. He began to aid in my study — he named the constellations, and told me their stories. He told me of the great fires, of smoke. He told me of man being molded by clay. He told me of the gods in the sky that were my gods by different names. He told me how the sun chases the moon, like a hunter chases prey. He told me I was beautiful.
By then, I realized I could not stay in the realm of man without eating properly once more. I was nearing the end of my reserves, and winter approached, a time of hibernation. My instincts were to indulge and make stock.
But I had spent so long in solitude. I was just regaining my capacity for language, and it was my indulgence in company that had let me live through the hunger pangs. I felt I needed something more before I departed. I went to the man who loved me, and we had sex.
I felt, in that moment, that we had shared something untouched by the passage of time, something immutable and true. And I saw in his eyes that he knew me. At our orgasm, he named me, and it was a beautiful, reverent name. A name that evoked the sun and the stars, the hand that slung the sun as a stone across the sky. He named me a child of winter, and then I knew he knew me.
I hadn't planned to tell him, but at that moment my hands trembled, and my voice waivered. I told him that I would not see him again. That winter was coming and I was being called. He told me to stay. He told me to marry him. I told him I couldn't. He told me he needed me.
I ran away that night, tears in my eyes. I howled, loud and long, an inhuman sound that captured feelings no human words had named. I was ravenous. Starved. Before I was beyond the walls, I ran into a street walker. He startled at my appearance, and by instinct I silenced him before he could sound any alarm.
Flames were lit in the nearby buildings, and shouts sounded. I dragged him off, the guards at the walls running from my visage and allowing clear passage.
And on the hills there I howled and I ate, and eating made me no less sick, and that realization made me howl and cry. I bit at myself, licked myself until I was rubbed raw, and licked and bit myself more. I mixed my blood with my victim's, and I tried to scream my sorrow at the world. I wanted to be in the world of man. I wanted to sing and dance to raise the sun. I wanted the stars and moon to be enough for me. I cried until I had no more tears to cry, and then I drank blood to replenish the tears and cried more.
I told myself I would never go back, but I found myself stalking the roads in and out of the city. I would hunt the stragglers, the lost, and the exiled. I would capture them first, and ask them about my lover. Few knew anything.
I watched the coming and going caravans, scanning their crews for my beloved. I struggled with my carnal desire to have him. At nights, over my meals, I would howl my loneliness, and the fires of the city would be lit, and the people would come out with weapons at the gates in anticipation of my approach. I would try to see him in the crowds. I never did, and so I cried and howled again. The city knew and feared me, and I took their fear and hatred into myself. "Cursed!" I would cry, in my new words and my strange accent. "Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!"
Two winters passed this way, my sorrow deepening and my will to survive dwindling. I thought of the terror I brought to the people in the city's walls and I wondered what my purpose was. I thought of my lover and I cried because he would find me ugly without my human guise.
But they slowly forgot their fear, as my howls continued and they did not sustain another attack. Instead, they found anger, and they sent hunting parties to chase me down. Twice, I evaded some parties that came close. On the third, I gave into anger myself, and took the excuse to have a full meal. But once I approached the party, my fangs bared and my claws holding fiercely to the rocks, one called my name. The name he had named me. My lover.
My head rose up, and we held each other's eyes. His companions faltered, bewildered at the interaction. They asked him what he knew and what I was, but he did not answer. Impatient and opportunistic, one loosed an arrow. I tore him down, and then the others. All the while, my lover knelt and did nothing. It was in this mess of blood and meat that I circled him, and he said nothing, though he looked at me, and there was sadness in his eyes.
There was sadness in mine as well. His frown deepened as he saw it.
Sensing I could not speak, he asked me again: "Marry me." He said that he could tame me. He spoke to my worries, my sorrow. He told me that he could give me a place in the world of man.
I took my human guise, and I looked at him, blood covering my body. I told him he did not want me, that I was cursed. He told me I was wrong. I told him I could not stay in the city, I told him I would have to eat, that nothing else sates me. He told me he would risk being my meal every night if it meant he could lie by my side.
I had no more defenses for him. I said yes. He took me to the river and bathed me, and after returning to the city in feigned shame at having lost his opportunity to slay me, he snuck me in the next night, and lay me in his home.
I lived there, avoiding the public eye for fear of being recognized, but that was an easy task with a home to come back to. The only people I regularly saw were my sister wives. They eyed me with some suspicion, but were customarily adherent to our husband's judgment, and left me be at his suggestion. Still, we lived in the same household, and curiosity got the better of them from time to time, and I, starved for attention, would not turn down an idle conversation. We became friends, though there were questions I had difficulty answering.
Twice or thrice a moon, I would have to hunt. I put off the first, fearing for the judgment of my lover, but he dismissed my worries and bid me to go. He looked so incredibly sad, every time he watched me leave, but he never stopped me.
I attempted discretion, feeding mostly on the transient population or visitors and traders from other peoples and cities, though in the winter when travel was difficult those were relatively few. Though without place, missing homeless would still be noticed by those market stalls that they frequented or the other poor who slept near and with them. A paranoia ran through the city, until one of the errant screams caught the attention of a nocturnal citizen who caught sight of my retreat.
All at once, the alarms were sounded, though they never found me. I took my prey, snapped at the neck to diminish bleeding, back to one of my lover's abandoned stables, where I would feast at such a pace to reduce them to bones. I would bury the bones in the dirt and hay, and then I would cry. If my lover did not see me leave, he would know the night's contents by the tenor of my grieving, and we would meet and copulate. In these nights, he would be passionate, overpowering — at times violent. He meant to subdue me. I wanted him to.
The city became racked with terror, for which I felt incredible guilt. It came to a point that city guards interrogated the folk. They explored our home and questioned the women while I hid away under the floor. My sister wives made no mention of me.
In the spring, our husband made to leave on a long trek, another journey with his traders. He asked me to come with, but I refused, knowing that if the killings paused with his absence and resumed with his return then he would be suspected. He understood, and he departed.
It was in late spring that I was met with a startling and worrying sight, returning from one of my hunts to the stable. One of my sister wives had waited for me. Instead of notifying the city guards, and instead of recoiling from my gruesome figure and bloodied jowls, she stood and witnessed me, and smiled. She knelt all of a sudden, and expressed reverence and deference. I was taken aback — I stood motionless and huffed. She named me, leaving me no disguise, and titled me: "Great Spirit."
At this, I laid down my prey, and returned to my human physique. This seemed only to excite her more, but before she could speak, I corrected her. "I am no Great Spirit," I said. Her smile faded, and suddenly she beheld me like a mother beholds their child, an expression that left me shaking and weak. The smile returned, sad, and I will never forget her words. "Oh, sister wife, how horrible, to be what you are and not know."
She swore to secrecy, and I accepted her company. Though I never informed her, she seemed always to know when I had left on a hunt, and would await my return at the stables. Over my meals, she would praise me, which nettled and stung for I felt it was fake, perhaps a ploy to keep her safe from my wrath by staying in my good graces. Over time, I understood it to be a genuine expression, though it confused me still.
Over time, I engaged her in conversation. I learned that she was not born to the city, instead from a people far downstream of the same river this city had civilized. She was given to our husband in trade for some new fishing technique to aid in a shortage of food. She said this was why she understood me. I asked her what she meant.
She told me I was a Great Spirit of the Wilds, here in the city to keep man from becoming too complacent — an answer to the people who would build walls and fish from within them, who had lost sight of what it meant to exist on the plains and in the forests, among the inhuman peoples of the earth. She said I kept humans from becoming lazy and disconnected from the world. She said these things with fire and passion, sometimes taking hold of me to communicate her devotion. It became clear that she worshipped me in a way that allowed little companionship. Still, her words filled a hole in my heart. She talked like I had purpose — that the fear I inspired was itself a worthy cause, that the hunts I undertook were themselves a calling to answer.
I believed myself a punishment, then, to humanity's hubris. With my sister wife's rapturous attention, I came into a new interpretation of myself, and my hunts became more gruesome. I no longer idealized stealth and quiet. I would eat where I killed, and leave the gore where it would be public upon discovery. I was less selective in my victims, more opportunistic — hunting those that would be missed seemed to give more emphasis to the point of my existence. Of course, leaving such mess meant I consumed less of my victims, and the frantic retreats I made from close encounters meant I was expending more energy. I needed to hunt more.
I would howl to instill horror into the city. An unstoppable force, a Great Spirit of the Wilds. I wasn't sure I believed I was, but this was the first I was told I could be something good, something right. I hungered for that just like I had hungered for company — I needed it. So I took it. For a moment, I was no longer cursed — I was the curse.
Though my reverent sister wife kept quiet, my emboldened demeanor must have revealed the truth to my other sister wives, as they began to fear me. Soon enough, they too would meet me upon the returns from my hunts, and they would make offerings of bones and jewels in beds of branches, herbs and greenery. With no reason to keep myself hidden from them any longer, I remained in my beastly form even at home, and made a den of my quarters which became a kind of shrine. I only returned to a human figure in rare cases, to speak and to escape from the guards, who had become vigilant and vicious.
I was ecstatic. I was manic. I followed my most basic urges, and was rewarded. I exaggerated those urges, and was rewarded more — was told I was powerful, that I was great and sacred. I was informed that fear was a kind of respect, that even if the city hated me they respected me. It silenced the voices in my head, the screams of my siblings, the stare of my father.
And yet I was lonelier than I had ever been.
I had not found my place in the world of man — I had found my place aside it. I was worshipped as a force and not a person. My company was afraid to dally in my presence, except perhaps the first sister wife, but she made for poor conversation as she took my word for sermon. Deeper yet was the anxiety, growing with each passing day, of what my lover would think of me, if he would take me when he returned, if he would want me or if he would consider me lost.
This anxiety and yearning fed into yet more malicious and gruesome fates for my prey, their screams and flailing filling me with a fever that could burn out these visions of the future, fill the holes in my chest with blood and meat.
This was the state of things when my husband returned home at the height of summer.
I met him outside the manor in my human form, dressed for the first time in over a month, and begged that he not enter. I could see in his eyes that conversation with the guards and locals had told him everything important that had happened. What I saw was heartbreaking — a fear, there, not of the beast I had been, but of me. He did not speak as he attempted to move past me and into the house, and I attempted to block him. We fought, briefly, until he began to overpower me. My instincts took over, for I knew how to win this conflict. A claw grazed his thigh.
As his pants became red with blood, he looked at me. Not pained. Disappointed. I lost all willpower to fight him, and stepped aside, my head hung low. He limped into the house, while I stood outside, stationary yet trembling. I steeled myself for our eventual conversation.
He yelled. I heard no responses — the wives, silent, perhaps caught in their own embarrassment. When he came outside, I expected him to finally address me. Instead, he grabbed my arm, and wrenched me inside, bringing me to his room. There, he laid me. There, just as it had been outside, he allowed no conversation. He asked me nothing. He was angrier than I had ever seen him — he made his dominance over me clear. He did not kiss me. He did not take his eyes off of me, even as I cried and squirmed. And when he was finished, he did no favors for me — he left, and as he did, he spoke his first words: "Stay."
I did. I do not remember how long I stayed, but it felt interminable. He spoke little, but when he did, he made his intentions clear. He told me he had tried a patient method, but th at my sickness was clearly too great — he said that he would find the virtuous spirit within me if it existed, and that I would die if it didn't. In aid of this, he starved me, and I let myself be starved. I believed him — I was deeply ashamed that when he had left me to my own devices I had given in to my worst nature. I believed myself worthy of this punishment, and so I did not fight it. We had more sex then than ever before — nightly, and viciously, sometimes he would strike me and yell. I took it as my penance. I wanted it. I wanted to believe that he could implant in me a seed of good.
All the while I became more and more sickly. My gratuity had given me reserves to draw on, but as those began to dwindle I became thin and fatigued. It was in this fugue that I would spend most of my time, sitting on the bed or lying on the floor, thinking of the state of things and of the horrible beast that I was. I stayed in human form, attempting to forget and dismiss my bestial nature. I ate only human food, and I vomited most of it back up. The room began to smell like sick. My husband would curse me for the smell when he returned home. I did not see my sister wives. I did not have company or conversation.
Then, one night, he did not return, and there was a ruckus in the house. Shouting I had heard, but this sounded violent.
As terrified as I was of its source, the commotion gnawed at my will — it asked me to engage, it started my mouth salivating. That alone was enough for me to swear off investigation. I told myself I could not feed the beast.
Until there was something, a decisive blow, and an ensuing silence. Footsteps, occasional. But nothing else.
Then one of my sister wives opened the door to our room. I shied from the light of a lantern in her hand. I had only caught glimpses of my sister wives as they left me food or water during the day, but there she stood in the doorway, eyes fixed to me.
I told her to leave, I asked she not look at me. I told her she was not allowed in this room. She did not listen. Instead, she said that I was free. I paused. I could not understand her words, so I asked her. She invoked my name, that which not even my husband who named me had used in so long. She knelt, in that worshipping pose she and the other wives had assumed in my presence at times, and she told me that my imprisoner was dead.
As the words made their way through my head, so did a quiet horror.
She took my silence for something else, and began to explain at length the events that had taken place while I was confined to this room. She explained that our reverent sister wife, she who had first identified me, was brought forth to the lord of the city by our husband and tried for my crimes. He had told our story, mostly true, but substituted her for myself, stating that she must have been given as a trap by the fishing people she was from. In our house, he had used her being put to death and the militia sent to her home as a warning to the rest of his wives against further subversion against him and the city. This, while he confined me to a dark room, and attempted to exorcise me.
My anger was placeless, my sorrow overwhelming. Over the course of her explanation I had changed, and she had begun to shake with fear, yet continuing in her explanation and remaining kneeling.
Perhaps I had underestimated the bond that I had created with my sister wives, because when I stalked towards her, my salivating maw at her forehead, the stench of my bilious breath hot in her nostrils, she told me the direction to that fishing people. I walked past her, and left.
I was starving, sluggish, but fueled by indignation and rage. This proved enough to carry me through some days and nights, catching small animals just to chew on them and throw them away to trick my body a day longer, until I caught up with the militia, returning to the city.
Though I could not bring myself to slay my sister wives, it was their faces I imagined on the soldiers as I ripped them apart. I ate more than my fill, and I sustained many wounds for my troubles. Peppered with arrows and laden with slashes, I dragged my meals to the riverside where I bathed myself. I lay there, harried at times by wild animals who questioned whether I would survive.
I mourned, though my mourning was at times overpowered by the relief I felt at finally sating myself. As I lay there by the river, I had time to think of my circumstances. I knew I would not return to the city. There was nothing left for me. I cried at the opportunity lost — I cried at the death of my salvation, at the snuffing of my lover. But as I lay there, I felt less and less. I became quite calm, as I waited for my wounds to heal.
By the time I was ready to move again, I knew my destination. I went to the fishing village, my sister wife's home, to see the damage.
It had been annihilated. No structure left standing. Animals had encroached and feasted on the remains, stains on the ground where men had been cut down but tarried no longer. I saw the grasses twist in the wind without care for the lives lost on this ground. I smelled the old blood and the rot, mixing with the upturned dirt and char. I paced through the ruins, and I spotted a singular hut beside the river.
I strode towards it, and when I peered inside, I was met with the figure of a son, too young to have muscle on his bones, brandishing something too small to be a real weapon — a surgical tool, I deduced, by the image of his mother, pale and unmoving, breaths shallow in her chest, laying at the back of the structure. I stared into the boy's eyes, and he did not budge, did not break eye contact, sweat drenching his brow.
I left them, and I ventured deep into the wilds, with no particular destination in mind. I had seen the work of civilization, and I had attempted to find my place. I was rebuked. I was destitute. I could not think of anything to do except return to my old habits — of hunting stragglers and loners, of spending my nights in caves, under canopies, or in stolen dens. I had no more tears to weep. I was confused, and I had no energy to give to thinking. I sulked off, the image of the burnt village in my mind, overlaid as it was with the passionate voice of my lover, promising me he could tame me. Naming me a child of winter, a bringer of the sun.
It was winter, and so it rained. I lay one night deep in a cave I had discovered, and woke to the sound of scuffing feet upon the stones. My ears perked up, and I raised my head. There was light and voices, though I could not yet see the encroaching figures. As they rounded the corner, they saw me, and I made eye contact. One held a torch, the other fell behind. They gazed upon me and they tensed — but neither held weapons. I felt no fear of them, and made no move. They spoke to each other in low voices in a language I did not understand nor recognize — common, now, because I had moved a great distance away.
As they watched me, they relaxed, though never taking eyes off me, and sat down. We had come to a wordless agreement that we had no reason to fight each other. They proceeded slowly, allowing me plenty of time to voice my distaste in anything they may do. It had been a long time since I had company, and my heart fluttered with their presence. They lit a fire, and I approached. They tensed, but I merely laid near it, enjoying its warmth. They spoke, and eventually they had loosened enough even to laugh.
I closed my eyes and enjoyed the tones of their voices, and the presence of humans in my cave. Eventually, they laid out their bedrolls, and they fell asleep. I never did.
Once I was sure they would not wake, I rose, and I strode towards them. I was hungry, not for meat, but for their touch. I paced over top of them, and I watched them sleep, smelled them. Their scent delighted me, so I stood there for long hours, taking them in, not daring to touch them, to wake them and break the spell.
Nonetheless, one did wake, when I placed my muzzle too close to his face, and startled back, producing one yelp before falling silent. His partner stirred, though only to turn over and fall back asleep.
We stared at each other, and though he did not relax, neither did he move. He seemed to consider me, and I him, for long moments. Desperate, wondering when next I would have the chance to have human company, I took my human form. As I changed, so did his expression. Lit only by refracted moonlight, he could see little of me, and I little of him, so I approached, and he let me. I leaned into him, and he let me. I took hold of him, and he let me.
We copulated, there, silent as to not disturb his sleeping companion, and I felt a light inside me be rekindled. I felt an answer to that darkness in my thoughts. I saw, in the darkness there, my husband's face overtop of his, and I felt my urges placated, my hunger lessen.
He told me many things, murmured in his language that I did not understand, and I told him just as many, thankful for a reason to use my voice again. We chuckled to ourselves, sharing our one-sided conversations, occasionally succeeding in the communication of something — enjoying our intimacy, each other's touch. Eventually, as I lay atop him, he fell back asleep. I left, just as twilight entered the sky, telling of the coming sun.
From then on, I hunted for two things — I hunted for meat, and I hunted for company and sex. In the wake of my killings, I often yearned for that passionate, taming presence my husband would provide, that promise of an end to it all, the safety in submission. So I substituted him. I found suitors. As I became braver, more comfortable in my human presentation, I would even brave settlements to find them at times. Language was rarely a barrier, even if we could not understand one another. I thought of it as reclaiming my humanity, of reinstating my civility and humility, after so unbecoming an activity as the killing of man. Sex gave me brief relief from the belief that I was lost and listless. Though I was a terror to some, I was a pleasure to others. In this, I found some balance — I could tell myself I was not only violence and death. I needed to believe that dearly, and so I would have sex even when I felt no carnal urge. It was merely my payment to mankind, my token support of fertility and life. I believed, in my own way, that it was my dance, it was my way of bringing back the sun.
In this way, I led a perfectly joyless existence, enjoying neither the hunt nor the sex. Occasionally, I would find it within myself to take pleasure in something I did, but I would have to fight past guilt self-loathing to achieve it. The moments were short. I rationalized to myself, told myself life was not about joy or passion, but submission. I submitted to the greater forces around me, balanced scales, and I felt purpose in attempting invisibility, a neutral impact on the world.
I lost myself, and forgot my name, in the process.
It was in this long season of nothingness that I was awoken by a particular sexual encounter.
I forget how we met exactly — I have forgotten many things from this time in my life, as I felt no particular importance in any act that I did and hurriedly buried any passion — but we had fallen into each other's embrace beside a fire atop a hill at night. I often found myself leading these sexual encounters, but he was fiery and did not allow me. He pinned me beneath himself and performed little leadup to our intercourse — even in his foreign language, he did not ask anything of me first. And so I submitted to him, and I saw him gain a kind of fervor in this. It was not long before he became violently passionate, holding me with grips that would leave bruises on more human skin than mine. In this moment, as he drew out of me long sighs and strained moans, I imagined my husband, by that point so long in my past I could not recall his name, and the violent taming he attempted of me, his efforts to seed within me something good and right that was missing. But past this imagining of mine, I saw my partner for what he was — I saw him brutish, I saw his assumption of ownership, and I remembered my mission of submission, my desire to be brought low before the whims of something greater and more powerful than I. In this moment, I had no guilt to fight past to enjoy our encounter. More aroused than I had been in some time, I let him keep me. He did not let me go, for one thing — though I knew that I could leave by my own power any time I so chose, he did not know the full breadth of my strength and thought he had cornered me. I let him think that, as he repeated these acts — pinning me, entering me, staring me down. He spoke, he whispered angrily, words for which I only knew the intent — berating, teaching, taming.
And I hoped to please him, I hoped to be tamed, and so I let him, as fire filled my gut and a hole in my joy was plugged. And I wondered, idly, why I had not enjoyed my other sex — why this should be so important to me. I wondered, again, if joy was truly a meaningless thing. I could not shake the feeling that I had been lying to myself: that I could maintain such balances, such gifts to life and death, and enjoy them.
I would like to say that it was in this moment that I awoke to a yet greater truth, but I was young then. Old in human years, but too young a creature to know what I was, what I was meant for and where I fit into the world. He, coming from the lineage of humans, could be thought of as older than I in that moment — he had the cumulative years of the generations of men behind him, men who had learned and taught what to be and how to be, while I, lying beneath him, the lesser being, was altogether new to this world, my centuries of life to his millennia of fathers. In that moment, I wanted him in an altogether different way. As he planted seed into my womb another time, I could no longer contain the desire, and I changed before his eyes.
My legs and nethers remained in human guise as my torso and arms grew fur and twisted into beastly shape, muscles wrapped tight around new extremities. I saw his eyes widen in fear and awe, and he spoke in a tone wrapped tight in horror and reverence, yet not retreating from my embrace and my vagina. And from that position, my claws around his back, my head stretched upwards towards the sky, I bent down, and I tore into the crook of his neck.
He screamed, briefly, but the life went out of him quick as I separated flesh from bone.
I would like to say that it was in this moment that I awoke to a yet greater truth, but I did not. Instead, it was merely an encounter with that truth — a moment that I would replay every night for the next century. I did not know, then, the emblem of reality it was, the wisdom in the act of life and death entwined with one another, the sun rising from the snow in winter.
I now know the synergy of life and death. I know one does not oppose the other. As a child of winter, I am a bringer of death, a culler, a trimmer. I am a check on the unwatched growth of civilization. I am not a punishment, but a gardener. I am not cursed, but blessed — blessed in the same way all living things are blessed. Blessed to live.
I could not know this when I drank his blood, but a hint of it was enough to make me cry. To remember my father with fondness. In this moment of sex and death, I felt that my siblings had meant something else. Not that I was cursed to be this, but merely that I was cursed to be so young, so unwitting. I saw the sorrow in my father's eyes, not that he should want to kill me and couldn't, but that he wanted to teach me so much, and yet he had nothing to teach.
I wept for I was the only one on my path, and the only teacher I had was myself and the earth that lives all lives. Slick with his blood, his penis still inside of me, I cried and howled, and I began, if only in part, to forgive myself.
Sometimes, when I hunt, I think of my mother — of the lives given so that I may live. And I feel, in my own way, that the hunt is my love song. As my feet hit dirt and grass, as my legs propel me, in those moments as my prey darts and swings, I feel that we are engaged in a dance, the patter and pants are our drums and song, and we are bringing back the sun.