Stormfeather

Amy dragged herself inside the house. It was the second day after her recovery. The day before had been spent in her bed either being tended to by Stormfeather or just holding herself against him and listening as he spoke quietly, telling her the things that she needed to know - now that there was some sanity back in her head for him to work with.

When she wasn't doing that, she'd slept. She'd had no strength, other than her will for much of anything. He'd even had to carry her at least part of the way so that she could urinate when she'd finally felt the need to once again. It had struck her as rather odd, the way that he'd grinned then as he'd stood a little way off.

She'd asked him what the hell was so funny, and he'd only grinned wider for a moment. "I am very happy," he'd told her, "if you need to do this, it means that your body has come to accept what it now is, and is setting about, ... "

He struggled for a suitable phrase, "dealing with things such as its own care -- if this makes sense."

Oddly enough she knew what he'd meant. "You mean it's taking care of business," she said, "like settling down to just running itself again."

He'd nodded then, "Yes." Stormfeather had looked away for a moment, as though he was addressing the distant ridge, "I am not enjoying your weakness at all."

"Right," she'd said then as she finished. But it marked a rather different moment to her in that one instant. Amy had felt a strong urge within her for just a second. The only thing which had prevented her from acting upon it was her state of weakness and the floppy way that her limbs had felt to her at the time. For just a moment, Amy had wanted nothing more than to crouch down even lower, feel the dirt between the pads of her feet as she tensed them to spring at him playfully.

It had been the damndest thing.

But the moment passed as she recognized that the state of her ability at the time would have likely had her sprawled out on her face in the dust.

He'd turned his head toward her again and the look that she saw there had made her laugh in spite of everything.

He'd known exactly what she'd wanted to do.

But he didn't laugh or make any sort of fun at her expense. He'd just helped her as she'd hobbled and picked her up to carry her when he'd seen that she was tiring. Amy decided that she liked it when he carried her. Her eye drifted to the places where she'd torn into him deeply in her madness. There was no sign of the trauma that she'd committed on him. He was as invincible, indestructible, and inviolate as ever.

But even in the throes of her previously frenzied lunacy, she'd had enough moments of clarity to see the pain that she'd dealt him. She'd ripped the hell out of him physically and he'd just taken it and done nothing to defend himself. It was the things that she'd screeched and howled into his face which had hurt him the most, and she knew it now.

She'd reached to caress his face then as he'd carried her to the house. "I didn't really mean the terrible things that I said and did to you, Arn. That was just what came out of me and I feel really badly for it."

He'd looked at her as he walked, but she saw no recrimination there, "Sheena, if there is anyone who knows, it is me. You were not yourself. I know this. But you meant everything, because I restrained you and would not let you free. I expected it."

She stretched herself a little to kiss his cheek, "I'm still very sorry."

"I know this too," he said with a warm smile, "I hold nothing against you. You wanted my bite in that way, to show me that you were mine. How can I blame you for the way that you honored me? You were right, and it came upon you just that much more quickly and intensely because of it. I knew that it would likely happen. It was different for me. It took a long time to begin and I watched myself being tied and lashed to several trees long before I changed. I am happy that you are alive, and still have your wonderful mind and you still know and love me after everything. There is nothing to feel badly about."

Amy thought back to how she'd asked to be bitten. She'd wanted to make love with him while he was in the wolfish form that she loved so. Stormfeather had little choice in it after he'd found her against him, pressing herself tightly to the one that she loved and running her hands through the fur and over the ridges of him. She remembered thinking that there was just so much of him for her to explore. As her fingers drifted over his body, Amy found herself moaning softly now and then. The feeling of him against her was beyond her ability to absorb and she couldn't help the happy smirk that she felt with her cheek against his chest as his large pawed hands held her.

The fact that she was his went without saying to her; this was what she'd wanted. She couldn't imagine wanting anything more than this. The reason for her smirk was the realization that she couldn't even define this to herself beyond the knowing of it as a pure fact. But she also knew that she could never explain it to another person. As educated as she was, there was a point on her linguistic horizon where her words would just fail her if she'd even tried to tell her best friend Ximena about it.

So she'd just stood in his embrace and inhaled his heat and his wonderful scent. Like any other animal's fur, Stormfeather's could and would pick up nuances and traces of the places that he'd been. A dog or a wolf could likely see a tapestry from it in their minds, she had no doubt, but she was only a human female, after all. Amy lacked this ability. But she did have enough in the way of olfactory aptitude to smell the soft scent of the whole.

She began to pick out single things after a little while. She smelled the rocks of the pool and she could get some of the land's scent -- a little, anyway, and the woodsmoke was one of the easiest to come to her mind.

But it was him -- his masculinity and power that she loved the most. There was no musk to it that she could determine. She didn't know a thing about the subtle scents that humans pass to each other and use to flavor their desire in choosing a mate. His scent carried little if any undercurrents. It was just him, a clean, friendly and warm scent. If anything, it alluded to his power as a male without carrying any musky undertones. The whole thing said 'male' plainly enough. There was no need for it to have anything else to it. For a human to pick this warmth up from him, she'd have to be this close, and if she was this close, one look said everything, she decided.

Her hand drifted up so that her fingers could slide into his mane as she looked up into those eyes. The way that they regarded her told her that she'd won something remarkable. She struggled for a moment to think of something comparable. There was nothing even close. She thought of winning first prize at the state fair for something, and it was a terrible and anemic comparison.

It didn't matter. She stood on her tiptoes to nuzzle against his warm throat and her sigh carried to his ears. The center of his maleness rose to begin to prod her belly down low and she pressed herself against it in response. Without will or thought, that part of him was already asking, ... showing it's intent, ... and making its sincere promise to her.

She stretched up further and saw his mouth open as it came to hers. Her tongue teased his, and then it was inside her mouth as she pressed herself as much as she could to him with a whimper that she hadn't intended.

She broke the kiss slowly and told him that she wanted him, and what she wanted from him. The eyes opened a little wider and he protested softly in warning as a last chance to reconsider. At once, she knew that he'd give her what she wanted, knowing that it had to be. They couldn't continue to love the way that it had gone between them for much longer.

This was the next step -- if there was to be one. He knew it and so did she. They'd had this discussion as sanely as they could earlier. He knew it was what he wanted as well, and it was what needed to happen -- for reasons that he was only partly aware of, though wholly cognizant of at the same instant.

Stormfeather wasn't thinking about any prophecy, though he knew there was some vague pull of it in play somehow. This was just the next step.

This was just what had to be.

In some saner moments, Stormfeather had argued against it, but she'd finally argued him down to admitting that if it didn't kill her, the metamorphosis would be quick and powerful. Amy had seen it in her vision, and seen that she'd lived through it, though the change had been hard for her -- just as he'd said that it would be.

And so they'd begun it, a long night of loving between them. They'd both collapsed again a while earlier and held each other for a time. But as the sky had grown lighter, and as the first pink and golden rays of the morning sun turned the sky to flames, Amy felt both her need and her courage rising. She begged him for his bite to hold her still, to take her as his female just as she accepted him.

She'd wanted to be his -- to be just what he was. She'd told him that she wanted this act to be what was the most natural for what they would be as a pair, and so she'd knelt before him and offered herself, knowing that the differences in their size and physiology made this possible. Amy loved how it felt as he pushed himself in deep like this while holding her with his teeth on her shoulder - but this time, she knew that it would be very different.

She'd heard the grunting hiss of his hot breath as he'd pounded into her so that her knees lifted from the bed, felt his fur against her cheek and neck, sensing her blood run down over her breast and belly. He held his female still with his teeth and one hand on her hip to deliver his seed and she welcomed it from him as she bucked back against him with a hoarse and choked cry that contained his name somewhere in it. The pain had been awful as his teeth sank deeply into the flesh of her shoulder, but it had pushed them both harder as he drove her from behind.

Just after her climax, she felt two things; the sweet throb as he filled her with the first of his contractions -- and the onset of the change as what he gave her raced through her system, driven by the wild beating of her heart.

There were no hours spent in sickly feebleness, wondering and worrying. No, the way that they'd done it, she'd been able to close her eyes as she shuddered in his embrace and watch this come to her with the relentless inevitability of an approaching locomotive.

Stormfeather knew it too. At her first tremors, he'd ignored the rest of his ejaculation to slowly pull out of her and force her gently onto her side so that he could do his best to hold her as it began.

The first time that she'd lost consciousness, he'd carried her outside. Setting her down carefully, he'd built the fire that he'd need to chant over. Amy's nose registered the smells which came to her automatically, the aromatic scents that filled the air around them in the dawn, some of them sweet, some bitter and acrid. All of them bringing their effects to her all the same.

Poor Winky had been locked into the house and had watched in paralyzed fear through the window as Sheena ceased to be Amy Monaghan and became something much more primal and wild out there in the dirt. As she writhed, he'd chosen his moment and dragged her as she'd screamed to begin the struggle to tie her up.

The torture of the paroxysmal agony which was her transformation and first few changes took a long day.

It had been just as she'd seen it -- everything -- the pain, the burning, itching, aching madness hitting her full-force as she changed shape and size in both directions, her muscles tearing almost loose along with her joints. Her jaw still hurt from the way that she'd distended it as she'd howled in her agony.

She'd had to get to him. It had been all that held her together, that one singular thought which carried her through this. She'd shrieked and flailed, tearing him again and again as he ignored her demands that he set her loose on the world. He'd wiped his blood from his face and kept lashing her to the poles, one limb aflter another until she was bound.

She'd hurt him and cursed him, torn flesh from him and damned him. She wondered what the hell she'd been thinking -- though she knew that there were no thought processes possible within her then. She screamed out her hatred -- since it was what she'd felt then -- all of it directed toward a seven foot tall beast who'd stood at last watching her with tears in his eyes as he bled from what she'd done to him.

And she still remembered the sweet and gentle way that he'd taken her there after she'd begged him for it. She'd wanted to be fucked apart, she'd needed it so badly, but Arn hadn't done that, knowing what she'd really needed to get through the red fog in her mind. As wild and tormented as she'd been, she'd felt the way that he'd loved her, the crazed beastly bitch hanging from the poles out in the sun.

Neither of them had come, but that hadn't really been the point. She'd rolled her eyes to look at him as he'd held her jaws away from his own throat while she'd tried to get him to hump faster. He'd been languid about it, quietly crooning that he loved her so. It took a while, but she got it when she wasn't straining against the things that held her. Her eyes were still wide, but he saw that she knew what he meant and she settled down in spite of everything as what he did calmed her.

But she'd still needed to get to him if it was the last act that she'd commit on this earth. As she hung completely spent early in the evening, he'd cut into her bonds, she'd seen it. He'd stood there waiting, knowing that she'd finally weakened enough not to be able to tear them through more than one at a time -- and that required thought. It would prove to him that she was passing through this. She'd begged for his help, but he'd shaken his head and told her that only one at a time was the only way, starting with her feet. It had taken her strength directed by her thought to do it because she had no fine motor control to use in untying anything then.

When the last one was off, Amy had fallen onto her face in the dust, sobbing. She pushed herself up to look at him, and that was the moment that they both knew. Her first movements were only to draw herself together, and then she'd crawled, and tried to stand, and fallen, and crawled again. But at last, what had been Amy now stood shaking on her own unsteady feet, the most beautiful she-wolf that there could possibly be in Arn's universe.

As she'd collapsed into his arms, she'd only managed to get one thought past her lips, and with that, his Sheena had declared her love and lost consciousness once more.

This morning, she'd gotten it into her head to see to her mare. She knew that it would be a long challenge for them both. Winky sat with Arn on the porch as Amy tried and tried, but her horse was intent on not being anywhere near her, no matter how she looked. It was only in the afternoon when she'd made just a little headway. The mare was confused, nickering and whinnying her fearful uncertainty, knowing the sound of that voice, the shape of her friend, but struggling to accept what her other senses told her. It was just what she felt that frightened her. Amy likely could have used a bit of her new strength or her speed, but she knew that it would likely only make things worse. It was the trust that had to be seen as unchanged between them. At least the horse allowed herself to be led now, though very nervously squealing and nickering the whole time.

Amy walked wearily from the stables, and found Winky right there with her, as though she'd been waiting patiently the whole day for a little attention. Amy laughed and they went up the rise together, Winky bouncing around, and Amy half stumbling to get to the stream and the pool to wash off the dust. It wasn't until they walked back down that Amy noticed that he'd been busy. The smell of roasting pheasant filled her nostrils and she realized that now she had another hunger, though it was at least an old and familiar one this time.

She was a little astonished as he served her dinner and she said so, as if this feast had sprung up out of the ground. He smiled and shook his head, "You were very busy. I took our friend for a walk, though I brought my bow."

He watched her eat with more interest than he allowed to show, still concerned for her. Winky was very happy, liking the taste of the meat and the vegetables, though she'd have preferred a bone to gnaw on afterward, though she supposed that it didn't matter. They hadn't forgotten her and that was what counted most of all to her.

"What will you do now, since you now have what you wanted?" he asked.

Amy shrugged, as though it was the lightest thing to decide, "I guess I'll spend my life with you, Arn." She nodded toward the top of the rise, though it couldn't be seen through the wall of the house, "I know that there's something that you need to do up there. I have only one thing - other than the two people in my life back in Santa Fe to think of.

If I could, what I'd like is to serve one school year as the headmistress of the school that's done so much for me. If I left them now, they'd be in a real fix. After that, I'd go whereever you want to go." She looked at him a little searchingly, "Or is time important for you?"

He smiled and shrugged, "I do not think it is," he said, "but I know that there is one who we should ask."

He set the remains of a drumstick that he'd been working on down and wiped his mouth with a cloth, "When we began this change for you, I watched you with such fear as well as fascination, seeing how this comes to another for the first time. Before I tied you to the posts, I knew that we were not alone. I looked up, and saw the silver haired one at the top of the hill."

Stormfeather looked distant for a moment, remembering. "He has always been so calm, the times that we spoke together. Yet as you rolled over the ground in your pain, he looked upset, nervous and troubled, almost as though he wanted to come down here. When you threw your head back and howled for the first time, I heard him begin -- as though he wanted to join in and come here to you."

He shrugged, "But he didn't. He saw me and thought better of it. I guess it would have been pure murder if he came. I snarled at him and he stayed where he was."

Amy tilted her head, not understanding, "Where would the murder come into it?"

He looked down, a little embarrassed, "You must try to see it from the view of a male. It is likely stupid, but it is there nonetheless. When we are like that, we can think -- most of us, I guess. We can feel, and we can even speak. But underneath, there is the wildness. Like that, I am a male. I hope that you can understand it, but even though you were in the change back and forth, I was there watching over you," he said, looking ashamed and remorseful.

"At that instant, no matter what his intent, I was ready to kill for my female."

He looked down instantly; ready to hear her harsh criticism of a very primal form of behavior on his part.

But it never came. He heard it as she set her knife down and then her hand was on his. He looked up and she was smiling at him. "I understand you perfectly, Arn. Don't look so ashamed. You can't know how good it feels to hear you say that to me. Now that it's done, I can see it clearly. So what do we do now? I mean, about him? About what you were told?"

Stormfeather looked thoughtful for a moment. "I think that we should go and speak with him. The moment of your struggle is past, so I want to see if these ones there in that place are all thinking and feeling ones or if they are just beasts who can talk."