Iron Wolf

She wasn't always a wolf. He wasn't always a tiger.

Once upon a time, there was an angel, and there was a devil.  

We met on a beach. It was beautiful. The sun rained down on me with a smile from his perch in the sky. The ocean tossed and turned before me in a vast wasteland of blues and greens, and the clouds looked like cotton candy. I sat with my hands and toes burrowed in the sand, my ancient iPod classic in my lap, watching a Hatter, holding onto a little girl's hand. Together, they wandered across the great blue Wonderland overhead.  

I know what you are.  

The familiar scream of Matt Tuck's harsh vocals shrieked above the roar of the waves. My clothes were damp from the salty sea spray but I ignored their uncomfortable stickiness, instead choosing to focus on the horses prancing about in the foam, unseen by most. I knew he could see them, too. No, you don't.  

He chuckled.  

It wasn't long before the spark ignited. I knew from the first twinge in my belly that I was in trouble. We were teenagers, and, most tragically, shifters. Then there was the prophecy. It spoke of a pair of twins, identical: one born at the end of December, the other born on the cusp of spring. The prophecy said it would bring peace to our people. They were to be the greatest shifters known to our tribes. 

 

To tell you the truth, giving birth was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Before that the only time I danced with death was when my parents had tried to drown me in the bathtub after they discovered what I was capable of. That Fourth of July, sitting captive at home folding an endless tsunami of what were once my own baby clothes, I reminisced on the feeling of my mother's pocket knife cutting pretty patterns into my skin. I wondered what my tribe would say. I had decided that I was about as dead to the world as I could possibly get without literally being dead.  

But now in between my water breaking, the oddly calm task of making me comfortable in the tub, and the sudden realization of what was about to come, I quickly realized that this is where the real fun begins.  

I was lost to the pain. I knew I was in a tub, but I couldn't feel anything except for the tearing of limbs. My howls blended with the roar of the wind outside in an eerily harmonic tune. I scratched and screamed, clawing frantically at the porcelain tub, but there was no release. It only took minutes for the blood to stain the pristine white walls of the tub and turn the water pink.  

It took forever and a moment for him to find his way into this life, and when he did, I named him Noah.  

Monster.  

When the moment was over, whatever little humanity left in me died, and the wolf within whimpered and whined. In a matter of moments she leapt out of the bloodstained tub and greeted her equal by baring her teeth, emitting a throaty, inhumane snarl.  

She is me.  

And I am her.  

She lunged. 

Author's Note

This is my entry for the Shadow Scale contest on Figment (http://dailyfig.figment.com/2015/06/04/shadow-scale-contest/). Feedback would be greatly appreciated.