You'd think with her traumatizing experience that she wouldn't dare take one step out of her one-story house. But the world's suddenly too clustered and too tight and her breathing's choked by recycled, conditioned air. The walls and roof aren't a source of comfort, but of claustrophobia. And she needs the exercise, anyway.

She was in her sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt, hair tied back in a conservative tail and face free of make-up.

Now she's covered in fur, sleek with autumn leaf-brown and composed of ponderous paws, heavy jaws, and fleas.

Auuugh, Chloe-wolf grunts, swiveling her head to gnaw at her left flank.

The full moon's up and the wolf's out and about, testing her new skin (or pelt).

intruder

Someone's in the wolf's territory. Something.

The wolf raised its nose to the wind, very picturesque, and scanned the park.

Another wolf.

intruder

The wolf howled, then broke into a run, following the scent. It would defend its territory. To the death.

Not its own death, of course.

Her head shoots up, ears alert and nostrils flaring at the approach of another. And, from the howl and the scent of intruder, danger with a hint of parsley -- they're not as harmless as them fleas.

But chances are, they're just as annoying.

Snuffing loudly, she turns to lope towards the stream.

First, fleas. Battle, later.

Breathing deeply the whole way (always best to know your opponent), the wolf analyzes the scent.

Familiar.

Older, healthy, new. She smells.. inexperienced. And it is most definitely a she.

Cort does not have very good vision. As a result, neither does the wolf. It can make out her shape, down by the water.

The wolf lets out a snarlgrowl, challenging.

minegetoutleave!

Her ears flick at the growl and she whirls around to snap her jaws. She may be inexperienced, but she's hefty in size (something that her human side tries to deny too many a-time).

Padding around, she snarls back a reply that, if reduced to words, would be:


Piss off, jackass. Mine.

Oh no.

How dare this bitch (ha) try to claim the wolf's territory. It was there first, and it will be there last.

None of this circle and snap crap, no the wolf is in no mood.

It lunges, darting toward the intruder.

She stands her ground, limbs locked into a position to hold against the charge.

But she's near a stream, and she knows she's near a stream.

She waits for him to come to her, lips curled back in an all-fangs sneer and ears pressed back to pull away the shadows from moonlight-blind eyes.

The wolf all but runs her over in a cloud of smoke.

SMASH head on, jaws grasping for blood, for (her) death.

She leaps to the side, but she miscalculated her speed. Tripping on her legs and tangling them with the extra set, she falls with Cort into the stream and wrestles against the late-winter slush-and-ice.

The water weighs her down, but it makes her heavier, stronger. Using her body, she squirms from beneath Cort and angles her head to bite into his back.

Crunch.

Too bad he's not human, or Cort would have let loose a string of curses that would have made a sailor blush.

As it is, the wolf lets out a sound somewhere between a scream of anguish and a curse involving someone mother and a pine cone.

Twisting, the wolf snaps at her neck.

She rears back to avoid the jaws, fur tearing at the movement as Cort's fangs tangle with her neck's fur.

She snarls and yips, claws digging against the slippery, rocky banks as she slams her body against Cort to drive him further into the stream.

She kicks and snaps, fangs pearly-white and gleaming as they drill forwards.

There are kicks to being a dentist; healthy, strong teeth, being one of them.

There are perks to being a werewolf for as long as Cort has been, too.

Such as knowing the extent of his body and knowing how to use it.

He bends in an impossible way, using the momentum to push away from her and then makes his way to the shore.

Pacing, he waits. She has to come out sometime, and if she doesn't his work is done.

She goes down and under, yelping as her senses flood with water. Paws scrabbling against the river floor, she struggles her way against the sluggish, biting currents and makes her way to the other side of the stream, snorting and belching water as she does.

Dragging her body out was a pain. Fur soaked with water, she was cumbersome and heavy.

She shakes herself dry and briskly when she reached the other side, snuffing the water out loudly as she turns to give Cort a snarling glare.

Come on.

Why does she smell so familiar?

The wolf runs through the possibilities it knows: friend, foe, prey.

Prey? Maybe.

He continues to pace; he's not about to put himself at the disadvantage of jumping in a river.

Chloe-wolf gives her shaggy body another good shake, cold still seeping through her brown pelt but at least there's no fleas.

She barks at the other wolf as she matches his pacing. Inciting, taunting, there's an almost childish (or pup-like) jeer in the snaps of her jaws.

She pauses for a moment. Sneezes.

And then she's off like a bullet, darting down the river, still in Cort's territory, and flaunting it.

He follows her, watching her, not about to let her run free in his territory.

Then again, he's not going to jump in the river. Too easy to be jumped on, dragged under, and the wolf doesn't feel like dying.

((bah))

And Chloe-wolf knows. And she flaunts this.

Bushy tail wagging, mouth panting steam, she looks like a runaway, furry, dog-sized train.

She's reaching towards the shallow end, where the slush pile onto each other into a semi-solid thickness that maybe a frog or some other light-weighted critter could hop over.

And on that tangent, she's hungry. And hunting right about now sounds like a good plan.

She changes direction and darts deeper into the woods. Squirrels? Squirrels will work.

Her back is turned. The water's shallow.

He braves it, leaping as far as he can, running the rest of the way.

Solid ground.

He's lost her against the background of dark. If he were human he would have damned his eyes. Shoving his nose to the ground, the wolf sniffs.

There.

He follows.

There. Behind the tree. Something furry and something that reeks.

She snuffs in dismay, the sting of decaying flesh peppering her smell. Not food. But unusual. It asks to be investigated.

Padding over, she sees the dead body. It looks grotesque, but familiar -- elongated body, naked, pasty skin, blood. She knows blood, detects it.

But it's not food. She moves on.

Something catches her eye, though. She pauses, back stiffening, nose unable to make out the scent against the dead and so she uses her eyes to find out the stranger.

Food?

She waits.

Not food.

He loets out a growl from the darkness and lunges yet again.

minemineminemineminemineminemine!

The smell of dead flesh overpowers most other things in the area, and he is essentially blind.

He manages to smash her into a tree.

She yelps at the impact, something pounding into her side; something pounding her into her back -- she's sandwiched and she has no idea what's going on for a split-second.

She snarls, twists her body, twists her head, clamps down her jaws towards his neck to deliver a heady, solid crunch.

Get off!

getout!

Flailing, he frees himself. He also frees a chunk from his neck, one that Cort will most certainly feel in the morning.

Once freeded, he bites at her muzzle, leaving a bloody trail.

outoutout!

She whines at the blood -- her blood -- filling up her nostrils and causing her to snuff and sneeze.

No! was embodied in a bark and a lunge, heavy paws out, wrinkling muzzle bleeding and fangs bared for another bite to the front leg.

OFF.

Yelp!

He again uses the advantage of size and smashes into her again, following up with a snap at the spine.

He's feeling quite monstrous.

Cort may be younger, but Chloe's heavier. Her bones are thicker, her age at her prime where her body is fertile, thick, and sturdy.

She wasn't able to escape the jaws, but she follows up her bite with a snap upwards and at the neck.

She wants to sink fangs in blood, flesh, muscle, and bone.

Cort is saved by a nice ruff of fur at the neck. Not quite lion-quality, but enough.

He jumps back and stalks, watching, waiting.

getoutgetoutmineminemine

She growls back a challenge.

Makememakememakeme.

She tires, though, so she steadies herself against the tree, claws digging into the dirt and legs locked into position.

If she notices the skies, she would see the night's dark ink softly bleach into dawn's periwinkle-gray.

Cort doesn't notice the subtle signs of dawn, mostly because of the dead flesh. That and the immediate danger to his territory.

He growls, pacing, trying to look stronger than he is. Blood loss and hunger are not a good combination.

It isn't until the wolf starts feeling the dawn in its bones that it realizes something is wrong.

Pants and the ruffle of fur against winter wind was all that Chloe's capable of sensing. Her body suddenly feels heavy, cumbersome, like water drenching her fur down, only it's in the bones.

Hunger's suddenly taking a seat in the backburner of her mind; the other wolf is still in view, but exhaustion is seeping in and although she can fight Cort off, she can't fight sleep.

She snaps her jaws, suddenly, trying to physically jolt her awake.

The wolf is willing to take this fight to Cort, let him destroy her in a weakened human state. Whatever it takes to get her out of his territory.

Nevermind the fact that Cort, too, with be ina weakened human state.

He snarls at her, his pacing becoming more urgent, less calm.

Chloe's wolf trembles against weariness, limbs quivering as they battle against the approaching sun.

Daylight breaks with the first, tentative splashes of sun.

The wolf spasms and falls, unused to transformation and unwilling to shift.

Cort, very much used to the change, lets out a grunt as it hits him.

He can feel the sloshing, the churning, the twisting of his insides becoming something else.

It's not pleasant, and you never really get used to it.

He sits, waiting for it to happen, unwilling to show the weakness he feels in front of an opponent.

Chloe's wolf doesn't mind; she's writhing in pain, fur melding into flesh, shifting and bristling. The wolf's fighting against the sun; doesn't want to leave, doesn't want to be rendered back into its useless, harmless, naked human. Her jaws open with a voiceless cry of pain; her feet pawing at the ground and whining iron-hot heat course through blood.

She's not sure if she'll ever get used to this. And before long, there's a naked Chloe, pink-pale, fleshy limbs curled up in a fetal, shivering position, blood caking her bare skin and dirt and snow matting her brown hair.

And there's naked Cort, panting, bleeding, and otherwise in a Bad Mood.

"You," he pants, covering himself. "You."

Its all he can manage to get out.

Chloe whimpers against the cold, confused, and weary, and very much naked.

Wincing and telling herself that this was all a very bad dream, she curls up into a tighter ball and tries to sink back into what she presumed was sleep.

That was before she heard Cort.

Her eyes flick wide open, brown eyes staring at a bleeding and equally naked Cort.

Chloe would take the moment to wonder why Cort looks so damn familiar if she wasn't too busy screaming at the top of her lungs.

Feeling that this is all entirely her fault, Cort walks over and smacks her in the back of the head with his foot.

"Shut it." He's all about short, clipped imperatives this morning.

The screaming hurts, not to mention calls attention.

Cort's only worried about the hurting, though.

Chloe does, bewildered and shocked into silence at getting hit so suddenly.

She has half a mind to pound a good punch into Cort's foot if not for the fact that any movement would expose her very naked self. And having been brought up in a well-to-do household, Chloe's conditioned to meeting strangers with clothes on. Chloe's also conditioned to having no-one save her mom, dad, and maybe her grandma see her in the buff.

Chloe wants to cry. But she's too flustered at the situation to work up enough tears.

Her anger hones in on Cort.

"You fuckwit," she snarls, reminiscent of her wolf. "What the hell did you do?"

"Hey!" Cort struggles over to a tree and rests against it. "I didn't do anything. You're the one that wouldn't leave."

He remembers that much from the night. The wolf was very careful to make sure he remembered that.

"If you had just stayed out of my -- stayed away from here, none of this would have happened."

Chloe doesn't explode so much as she implodes, shaking with a speechless indignation and voice too tight to get any eloquence out.

"So you're saying that this is my fault?" she says, voice high and thin like a stretched out rubber band. "I don't even know what the fuck is going on and, and --" She sputters, at a loss, too off-balance at the guy's sheer nonchalance. As if waking up, bleeding, cold, and naked in the woods happens every day.

"You bastard," she whisper-says, feeling emotional breakdown #5 of this week curling in her throat.

Not every day; once a month. For nearly two years.

"Bitch," he shoots back. "What's going on is you are trespassing. It's also cold, and you're naked. The smart thing to do would be to get up and go home before the city starts waking up."

Yes. Get her out of here.