FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

CHAPTER FIVE

Consequences

It's impossible to predict the consequences of our actions without three essential things: knowledge of how we arrived at the choice, evidence of where it might lead, and the wisdom to resist the path that ends in regret. Of these, I only had one: the evidence. And even that—the so-called evidence—was already beginning to unravel before my eyes. I had thought myself a monster, a creature of a new world that was destined to join it at its most primal level. Yet as I fought to assist Sandy in her time of need, I was pushed away by the very forces I had believed were my destiny.

“Let me help her!” I roared, the voice of my new body etched with a primordial growl and low baritone so opposite of the one I had before. I was facing off with the Alpha at the rear of the supermarket, near the double doors leading to the back. Inside, the Matriarch had taken Sandy and the Alpha refused me entry. His growls were lower than mine, more sinister and unforgiving, almost demonic in the nature they were conveyed. “Let me in!”

I rushed against him for a second time and, like the first, the barrels of our chests met as my brown chestnut fur impacted his greyish fur. It was a rough impact, loosening my breath as my hind legs struggled against the impossible strength of an Alpha specimen. He was surprisingly restrained as he merely growled as our forelegs gripped the others—no claws, just pure grip and will of force. In the back of my mind I was surprised I was even able to counter him equally, but something told me it was the Alpha that was holding back, not myself.

My head was lifted as I bared my teeth partially, while he looked down on me with his greyish-alien eyes that sparkled with a hint of awareness. He doesn’t want to bite or fight me, I realized as he finally used more of his strength to casually pushed me backward. He’s intentionally holding back.

“Please!” I begged, though I knew he couldn’t understand, some part of me told me he couldn’t. He merely huffed in his growl, casually forcing me back with an extra kick to his push. I almost toppled as his momentum nearly crumbled my hind legs with its force. My forelegs impacted the broken epoxy flooring as I slid back a foot, and the Alpha merely shook his head as if brushing off a bothersome fly.

I heard Sandy’s loud whine from within, and the instinctual part of my brain reacted faster than my awareness did. I rushed again, trying to maneuver past the Alpha with my smaller frame; my attempt would be a mistake I would regret. The consequences of it were swift as I felt a large paw impact the side of my head. In quick succession my vision blurred as the front end of my body tumbled in the direction of the impact, while my rear flipped out from under me and I slid against the floor. My body slid back a few feet before I could even hope to catch my breath. I gasped and whined in a way I never had, the pain seering and deep as my brain fought against the mild concussion I no doubt was delivered. I tried to stand and a great force held me down.

The Alpha’s forepaws, both of them, were now on my barrel as I lay helplessly on my side trying to recover from his strike. He hadn’t used claws again, much to my relief, but his strength was enough to deliver the fatal blow to my attempts to get in the back. He leaned his body down, jaws slightly a part as he growled close to my face. My eyes diverted, my body in submission to the greater strength, and it was clear now what he told me: you’re not getting back there.

I felt his weight slightly lift off my body, it had already been near crushing my ribcage. My lack of action proof enough of my compliance as one paw lifted, then the next, and he took a further step back. He huffed again, shaking his head mightily as a lion might after a fresh kill. I didn’t dare look his way. There was another great whine from within, and all I did was look toward him. My one eye facing met his two, the stare he gave me daring me to react and face his wrath again. This time, I wisely stayed down.

Why is he resisting me entering the back? I wondered then, diverting my eyes toward a broken piece of shelving near an aisle ahead of me. The thing inside me doesn’t give answers, and all I know is I have the medical supplies necessary to help. Yet he resists my advances to help, as if I’d be a problem rather than a solution. I don’t understand.

You’re not required to understand, came a voice from very deep inside me. It was the alien half of me, the part of me that was both its instincts and, what I interpreted, its new form of consciousness. You’re only required to obey.

The words coming across were clearer than before, more fluid and enunciated. I even heard a difference between its voice and my natural, human self that I was used to in my thoughts. It sounded very similar to the new voice I uttered each time I talked in this new beastial form, but deeper and, dare I even recognize it, more primal. There was a clear distinction in its purpose and presentation, separating my own will from the formation of its own. In effect, I slowly recognized, it was its own developing personality.

So it’s true then, I thought to it as my body lay, my breathing calming and my ears flat against me. Despite the persistent whines and growling pleas I heard, I felt it keep me down. Its own will enacted over me, simply by the permission I had given it before. I will become you, and you will become me.

It doesn’t have to be that way, it said back, its voice tempting like a demon, hidden in the shadows of the border of my consciousness. We don’t have to fight each other. I am you, and you are me. Isn’t that enough?

Was it enough? I deliberated for a time as the echoes of the whines were drowned out by my mind replacing my surroundings with my inner self. In a way, I was entering a form of meditation, far displaced from the troubles of the present, lingering on a cliff I never realized was there to begin with. I felt myself, as a human, sitting there.

Everything around me faded as I felt my eyelids slowly close. My head was still spinning from the impact of the Alpha’s paw. My inability to register anything else beyond me forced my awareness back into the deepest recesses of my being as dreams overtook me.

~~~***~~~

When I opened my eyes, I felt a gentle breeze cross over my naked form. I felt the ground beneath me holding me comfortably as I sat upon its surface, my human knees drawn up to my chest as my arms crossed in front of them. My chin lay between my knees as my eyes focused forward, around me tall grass swaying in a field that seemed neverending. The sky, if it could be called that, was a mixture of the blues of midday and the stars of deep midnight. I felt a presence behind me then, the wind slowly picking up in intensity as the grass reciprocated to its sacred touch across its tall stalks; like ocean waves responding to the pull of the gravity of the moon.

I blinked once and the reality of where I was struck me gently. I picked myself up off the ground, the only space in a thousand miles that was absent of the tall grass. A circular depression was around me of brown earth and soil. As I stood, naked and unabashed in my most sacred place of my soul, I turned to see a wilting tree just a foot away. It was tall, thick at the base and trunk, thinning as it spanned toward the heavens in multiple branches that shot off in all directions. The leaves of it were falling, wilting before my eyes, making the old and ancient tree barren of the green that had once spoken of it flourishing.

Beside it was the beast, standing on all fours. I looked upon it with slight envy, despite the alienness of it. It stood on all fours roughly around six feet with its head held high, its fur colored a beautiful chestnut brown that encompassed it in a gentle layer all across its form. Its mane was a beautiful raven-black, comprising most of its neck as its rich fluff flowed freely in the ever increasing gale. Its eyes were even and set equally near the front of its draconic-like head, a beautiful hazel that revealed an intelligence far beyond the one I had. Its long, tagless ears raised and alert, wherein between them its horns, a faded white in texture, emerged from the skull and flowed evenly back a few feet matching the tip of its mane in angle. And its draconic tail, almost in equal length as its height, gently swayed behind it as if curious to what it looked upon.

I’m beautiful, I felt compelled to think, and the thought was true I realized, because what I saw was beautiful. It was me. I saw the snout of the beast, roughly around two feet in length, moved towards me gently. The velvet lips lifting in a gentle smile, not entirely revealing the teeth, and not entirely threatening. Its forelegs began to move, the muscles clear and taut despite the fur-covered skin, as the strong hind-legs joined in the gait. It approached me, towering over me somewhat, as it lowered its head where its muzzle could be only a few inches from my face.

Behind it, behind the tree, was a light I couldn’t identify. It provided an almost awe inspiring backdrop as the gentle illumination lit everything around us. I did the first thing that came to my mind, I lifted my hand up and began to gently caress its strong cheekbones. The beast reciprocated by pressing into my open hand, its eyes never leaving mine. I stared into them as I pet along its lush and gentle layered fur, both reverence and appreciation expressed on my human face. And I spoke the first thing that came to mind.

“Are you really, truly, me?”

I heard it laugh gently; an alien laugh produced from its throat and chest, emitting as a mixture of a soft thrum and purr. Its eyes considered me, flickers of intelligence so pronounced in their depths. “In a way,” it replied, and the alien voice it produced so similar to my own yet so distinctly different, sent goosebumps across my entire body. “I am what you are now, and you are what I was to be. I’m sorry it had to be this way, young David.”

I gasped softly at my name coming from its lips. I could feel an awareness between us, like my mind was between two places at once, yet a barrier existed that prevented me from understanding the complexity of it. When it spoke my name, I felt as if I had spoken it, but at the same time something else entirely had identified me.

“I don’t understand,” I replied, tears forming at the edge of my eyes. “I don’t understand what happened to me, and why.”

It softly huffed in understanding, for the first time closing its larger eyes and nodding as its head still leaned gently against my palm. “I know,” it replied, opening its eyes slowly. “It was never meant to be this way, David. I promise you that.”

“I don’t understand,” I said again, and this time tears streamed down my cheeks. I was crying, I slowly realized, not because I regretted what I had become, but because I never got to experience the pure bliss of this moment before.

“Yes, you do,” it spoke gently, lifting from my palm as its broad tongue gently shot out and licked the tears from my cheek. It then pressed its snout into my forehead, like a cat butting the head of a beloved owner. “You understand far more than you let yourself believe. It’s only because of your understanding that I was allowed to awaken inside you.”

“You mean, my instincts?” I asked, both my hands now raised and rubbing along its pristine fur along its snout and head. I couldn’t help it, I needed to touch it, to believe it was real. And I did believe, I felt it beneath my very fingertips. “You mean when I relented myself to you?”

It nodded softly, smiling as it did as it accepted my positive ministrations. I then asked the only other question that came to mind.

“Do you have a name?”

The beast considered me briefly, eyes locked to mine as I could see, could feel, it was thinking. I didn’t know what it thought, but I knew it was, and once again I felt goosebumps across my entire body.

“Names are special things,” it said, its voice gentle and serene despite the animalistic nature of it. “I had one once, but no longer. I do not even remember the life I might have lived before. All I know is that I’m supposed to be here, with you, both in this place and without. I am as nameless as you are within my body.”

It was the first time I felt the very real differences between us come to fore. The way it identified itself, and its bodies, as its own, shocked me to the core. A distinction had been presented that established for the first time further proof of what I had thought before. That there was something else within me, and that this something else belonged more to the body I had become than what I once was. Did my belief that I was surrendering to this alien concept give it life within me? I wondered idly as I continued to stroke its strong jaws and through its mane. Was my ability to recognize those differences a doorway to what I’m experiencing now?

The way its eyes moved then, staring but not, distant but there, signaled something to me. As I ended my thought, I realized then that it could hear my mind; it could hear our mind, our thoughts. What am I saying? How do I know this?

It chuckled again. “David, I am you, as much as you are me now, and I hear every word you utter in your mind as clear as if you spoke it aloud,” it explained gently. Then, with a tilt of its head, it asked, “Can you not hear the things I think as well?”

“No,” I revealed truthfully.

For the first time I saw something else other than serenity in its gaze; doubt lingered there, a realization of possible trouble and something else. It lifted its head away from my hands, taking a step back. “Listen to me carefully, David,” it said as it sat on its haunches in front of me. “For this to truly work between us, there can be nothing hidden. I am an open book to you, just as you allowed me to be. It is you who is preventing the entirety of me from entering you.”

“I—,” I began, then my voice faded, my eyes for the first time looking away in doubt. “But I’m human still, aren’t I?”

A flicker of understanding crossed its eyes when I looked back. It nodded its head gently, pondering me. “I see now,” it said, its smile returning. “You still think there’s a way back, don’t you?”

A look of bewilderment fell upon my expression. “It was a sickness, a virus!” I said, my voice louder than I intended. “I was changed, altered against my will. If my body changed because of a virus, there must be a cure, right? I.. I had so much going for me in my old life. Then the world changed, everything changed. I changed.”

The winds began to calm around us as the light shining behind the beast dimmed in intensity. The swaying of the grass calmed as I felt the turbulence from before dwindling to nothing. The beast cocked its head to a side, looking down as it raised its paw and examined it, flexing the claws into life again and again.

A field of darkness began to emerge around us as the horizon shifted from the multi-layered front of clear, blue sky and open stars. Like a cloud of fog lifting from the earth, the darkness ebbed further and further as even the light shining from the horizon behind began to dim. A slow, unrelenting truth began to form in my mind then.

“There’s no going back, is there?” I asked, my voice trembling softly. “I’m a fading echo in a future absent of humanity. That’s why I felt it, that’s why I felt the separation in my mind before. You were always there, perhaps even before I awoke in this… in your body. The only reason we’re here together is because I had the ability to sense the difference, isn’t it?”

The grasslands faded from us as the very formation of the earth beneath my feet altered. The tree was still there, but the darkness had consumed everything. Above, as I looked, the full moon shined brightly down, providing illumination onto an earth that would have been otherwise in full dark. There was a deep shiver that rose up my spine, a fear that hadn’t been faced before but now was confronted. The beast stopped examining its claws, rising to all fours as it approached it, but its eyes had begun to grow milky-white.

I began to move back from it, the fear of it now overwhelming me. No longer did it feel like a part of me, instead I felt like it was an invader in a space it didn’t belong. I tried to step back again, only to stumble and fall back. I grunted against the hard, rock face I now found myself. When I looked up in the opposite direction, I realized I had come upon a precipice that wasn’t there before. The grasslands had transitioned from open bounty and hope, to a horrific and final conclusion. I stood a foot away from the cliffs edge, staring down into an eternally dark abyss that I knew awaited me whether I wanted it to or not. I began to sob uncontrollably as I felt the beast approach from behind, its paw gently resting on my opposite shoulder, as its head gently rested on the other.

“I don’t want to die,” I said, and I meant every word. “I don’t want to cease to be. Everything was stolen from me! I didn’t get a chance to achieve what I wanted in life! All my friends, my family, everything I knew is now gone!”

“Shhhhh,” it gently said, comforting me. The sobs became tears, and my body calmed as my eyes stared into the void. “It doesn’t have to be this way, David. You can choose this fate for yourself, it’s only one path forward of many. But if you choose it, there’s no going back. If you step off this cliff, everything you were will be gone.”

“Everything?”

“Everything,” it affirmed, pressing against me gently. I stumbled forward unwittingly. “Wait!” I then said, “Wait, please! I don’t want this!”

It began to press me forward, my steps resisting the overwhelming power of its force upon me. I was barely an inch away from the cliff then. “Please!” I begged, tears streaming, chest heaving, trying to force myself back. “Not this way! I accepted you! Please! You have to accept me!”

“Do I?” it said, and there was a hint of malice in its voice. “Do I truly, David? After countless eons I’ve waited for this chance? After the neverending dark I suffered through to be here? Stifled by the soul of an unwilling man who isn’t brave enough to face his own demise?! Do I truly, David?!”

I was an inch away from tumbling then, the beast pressing me as I leaned over the chasm of infinity, of final death. I knew if I fell down there, intimately knew, that everything I was would cease to exist. It would have its body, its mind, and everything it wanted from me. I was merely an obstacle to an end it desired. I was helpless in the face of destiny, just like I had realized before, just like I had speculated as the first inklings of its awareness pressed against my own. It had waited for an untold amount of time for this chance, and for me to resist it, or even refuse it outright, was against everything it intended.

“You said there’s another way!” I blurted, feeling my feets grip on the top of the cliff loosen. I was about to topple. “Tell me! Don’t let me die!” I begged, closing my eyes for the inevitable.

But it never came.

As I fell forward, my head impacted the soft earth. Around me once again I heard the rustling of the tall grass. I felt the warmth of the light, of the sun on the horizon, that had once been. I opened my eyes, breathing both in relief and out of necessity. I gasped for breath as my tears abated slowly, and I rolled in place to look upward. The sky, in its mysterious mixture, had returned. And, at the bottom of my perception, I saw the beast standing over me. My head rose gently, my eyes locking with theirs. I now longer saw the milky-whites that I knew belonged to that of a feral beast. Instead they were hazel again, beautiful and intelligent, and in them I also saw pity.

“There is a way we can coexist, David,” the beast spoke, lowering itself upon me. Half of its chest covered my legs, pinning me, as its head rested on my own chest. I felt its breath upon my face, no longer able to look into its eyes as I settled my head back onto the soft earth. “There is a way we can work things out, but you have to trust me, David. You have to believe I am here for your best interests. I am not something here to destroy you, I am your new beginning, your new life, and a new chance at exploring this new world.”

For a time I lay there, both relishing in the feel of its body in my naked form, and fearful of what it had planned. There, too, however, was also a growing understanding. I had trusted it before to take control of a body I could otherwise not use. I knew how to do it now only because it's instincts had molded into my own. I had trusted it to keep me alive, and now here, too, I would need to trust it again. I closed my eyes, heaving a great sigh as I released the last of my resistance.

“I trust you,” I affirmed.

“There’s my David,” it said, its warm breath caressing my neck and head as its flowed over me. “You’re not alone anymore. You’ll never be alone. You’ll have me there. And together, we can coexist. Open your mind, David. Feel the tendrils of my own. Follow the pathway into my thoughts. I will show you wonders.”

There was no longer any resistance in my mind as I released every inhibition that held me back before. Walls and doors that I had built up to cope with the reality I had been thrust into shattered in an instant. And there, at the edge of my perception, I saw a new door. The reality of where I was shifted as I stood upright at the cusp of the doorway. I looked behind one final time at my most sacred space, seeing the tree now for what it was as it began to rot away among the wilting grass around it. It was the old me, the human me, the life I would never return to. Everything I was and had been was inside that tree, and the fields of grass represented my flourishing humanity that now wilted into nothingness.

I turned around towards the door, moving towards it as I moved my hand to turn the knob. As I opened it, a blinding light encompassed me all around. I didn’t hesitate as I moved forward, crossing the threshold, and entering the new shared space of our consciousness. No longer was I a human being. I had transcended that, evolved, transformed into something greater. And no longer was I alone in my thoughts, left to my own devices and forced to struggle absent of anyone else. There was another presence there, sharing the same space as me, conforming to my consciousness like a warm blanket would on a cold winter morning. The door to my previous life closed behind me, permanently and completely.

And what I saw took my breath away. Things long forgotten, structures so impossible as to be both entirely ancient and yet technologically advanced. A land complete and whole in entirety spanning one side of a newly formed world. Beings and races of beings living together in a harmonious existence that rivaled anything any human civilization had ever attempted. As the memories of that long-forgotten time flooded and crossed my awareness, there in the center of my new being stood myself. I moved towards it, and the light chasing between our forms molded and joined, permanently destroying the last vestiges of David Thompson.

Despite those memories, despite everything, what the beast had spoken before was true. I never encountered a name, for the time between when it truly existed and when it emerged into this reality had been far too long. The universe could only allow so much to go without taking back to itself what rightly belonged to it. In that confusion, however, I sensed a great opportunity. Our two forms molded together, caressing one another as two souls began to join into one. Separate in identity, but permanently bound together in both purpose and life.

“What is your name?” I felt my new self ask me, seeking resolution to the confusion from before.

“Paul,” I decided. “Paul Pathfinder. And what is yours?”

“You may call me Broosura,” the inner me replied.

~~~***~~~

When I awoke, I felt changed; it was such a comical concept to wrap my head around feeling changed, amusing both in the simplicity and complexity of what I recalled from my dreaming vision. My eyelids slowly opened and I saw the same shattered shelves as before. The supermarket was quiet, save for the sounds of field crickets chirping both their lullabies and also their mating calls, and a few toads or frogs croaking near the corners of the ruined building. The first thing that shot across my mind then was Sandy and, with the sudden spurt of energy, I rose to all fours; I wobbled to all fours, staggering a step, feeling odd in the intensity at which I felt familiarity with myself. I shook my head briefly like a dog dislodging the prior nights deep sleep, head twisting quickly in both directions as my mane and ears bounced in either direction by the fast motion.

Afterward, the uneasiness inside me abated, and I stood firm and still as I registered my surroundings again. Minus what I had heard before, my ears perked and twisted in all directions, and what I heard the most caused me great alarm; silence, other than nature itself, dominated the supermarket now. I looked behind me expecting to see the defiant and challenging glare of the Alpha, only to see the backroom doors vacant of any obstacle. I rushed into them, eliciting a loud creaking as they wobbled back and forth after my entry, eventually settling by the time I entered the empty back room. There was a smell of waste that permeated the space and I saw some blood spots in the opposite corner. I moved over, lowering myself to sniff, and I verified the scent of Sandy immediately.

My head shot up and turned both ways like a hound dog on the trail of a raccoon or fox. Ears perked, eyes wide, sniffing the air as I tried to ascertain the scents around me. I smelled the Alpha, the strongest scent, and the Matriarch's was the second most prominent. The rest was Sandy and the other beasts that were here, and all the scents were intertwining together towards the opposite end of the stockroom hallway. I could visibly see the scents, they were colored in strange patterns and vaguely visible, but my eyes could trail them so long as I could scent them. It was an odd and unusual experience, but one that I felt was entirely natural, so I gave it no further thought. I instead followed the trail of scents, most particularly the one with Sandy’s scent intermingling within, with my head low and my snout sniffing softly.

I bridged the hallway towards the receiving area, with only a minor observation given that this had been my original intention for escape. I ruminated only briefly on that revelation as I examined the area; three sets of roll-up dock doors, with one torn asunder and broken by wide claw marks and gashes. All the scent trails followed there and I, having nothing better in mind to do or think on other than finding Sandy, pursued. I leapt from the torn dock-door, my paws landing elegantly on the surface of the concrete. I had only a brief appreciation of my fluid form, the natural way in which I now walked and moved, before my mind refocused on my objective.

Are you sure this one is worth the effort? Asked Broosura, as they were also able to see the outside world through our eyes. My mind no longer felt separated, I no longer felt anything at the “edge” of my awareness. Instead, everything felt comfortable, close, molded to my consciousness and equally as aware as myself. Perhaps it would be best to begin a new adventure, separate from a pack of primitive animals.

But why? I asked, not as a challenge, but genuinely curious as to the proposed change of directive. She trusted us to take care of her. The pack opened up to us because of her. They may have left us, but perhaps they thought us dead. Shouldn’t we seek them out again?

Every step forward is a choice along three separate paths, Broosura replied. Right now you stand at the crossroads of all three. What once was led to now, and what is may be best left to itself.

I tumbled the thoughts in my mind as I pondered on the options. The scent trail was only a few hours old, my instincts told me. I sniffed again, the colorful trail of their redolence leading off towards the east, then rounding the back corner of the supermarket towards somewhere else—though by that distance it was hard to make out the scent trail from the perspective of the surroundings. I huffed gently, stuck in indecision as my head repeatedly turned from the right, to the left, then center. Ears perked, eyes open and questioning, and I beginning to pant softly.

I could either chase after what was before, or pursue what was ahead of me. Did Sandy even care? Was she even aware enough to comprehend or understand? These thoughts had been lingering at the back of my mind ever since encountering her, but now with a renewed focus and mental faculty, I was able to more clearly engage with them. What if her intelligence is that of a dog and she has affection for me? I postulated, adding already to the growing dilemma within myself.

“Didn’t you lead me here?” I asked myself softly.

Broosura answered. The concept of me led you here. Instinctually driven to coincide with similar creatures. A need that overruled anything coherent and capable.

“What should I do?” I asked, my voice a mumble as I looked to the right again, near the edge of the building. “What if…”

She doesn’t, Broosura answered again. She’s an animal, Paul. If there is an inkling of her consciousness left, it is what drove her to be affectionate toward you. She is like… like one of your canine companions. She doesn’t have the capacity to fully understand what she does, only the instinct to appreciate and go about it.

“But the Alpha, the pack, they-”

Paul, you are us now, Broosura reminded me gently. You are like them. It was natural for them to react the way they did. You befriended a pack member, the pack accepted you, then they thought you dead and moved on. Is that truly behavior you’d expect from someone with more emotional capacity? And think, Sandy probably thinks you're dead anyway.

My mind imagined in that moment the Alpha coming to sniff at my limp, barely breathing corpse. The situation played out in my head, as if driven by the visions of another, as the Alpha felt a whine of remorse as they sniffed my body. Out of reverence or perhaps guilt, or more likely an already full stomach, the Alpha didn’t consider my body as its next meal. It had not intended to kill me, it had only intended to keep me away. Yet unlike me, it was easy for it to deal with its own consequences; nature was brutal, unforgiving, and if one dwelt too long on the results of uncontrolled things, it was a sign of weakness, and the Alpha was not an example of weakness.

I continued the play, my thoughts imagining the Alpha greeting Sandy and the Matriarch as they came out. Perhaps Sandy sniffed my body and moved on, or perhaps Sandy had died and her body was carried off; it was a brutal world, even if the Alpha rejected eating my body, Sandy’s might be more appealing as a food source for whatever instinctual reason. Whatever the reason, my mind fabricated the excuse as the play and actors within my imagination moved on, together, out the loading docks and into newer pastures. They, being the animals they were, did not give my dead body a second thought.

Did you do that? I asked Broosura. My reply was the feeling of something warm, comforting against my awareness. I sighed audibly, looking away from the right, now focusing on straightforward and to my left. Well, I suppose it makes sense, I concluded as I began to move toward a more northerly direction, away from the east and to the buildings end where the pack's scents lingered. They would be only animals, after all.

I gave you a choice to be with them, Broosura spoke up suddenly, I stopped, one ear perked and my eyes diverted upward towards the night sky. You could have lept and everything would have been over.

“Yeah,” I said, my breath coming out as a gentle mist. It was getting colder, but the sky was so clear and bright. “I didn’t see it that way, though.”

I heard Broosura chuckle. Their voice was like an angelic thing; a soft, gentle, ringing voice that complimented the togetherness I felt between us. It was both at the same time relaxing and comforting. I appreciated the connection we had now, the decision I made to be one with them, and the feeling of newness all about me. The feelings I felt were like gentle kisses and embraces toward them, and I felt a reciprocation of emotions in return.

The stars are beautiful tonight, aren’t they? They observed. I agreed with a soft humm.

I chose a direction; not toward the west, and not exactly northward, but somewhere toward the northeast. I knew if I followed that direction I’d exit the city of Blairsville for good, heading along rolling hills, gentle forests, and eventually toward the edge of the Appalachian mountain chain. My mind wasn’t particularly focused on finding anyone else then, I had someone, and that someone was intimately close to me in a way no one else could be. I wasn’t alone and I had the experience of my own previous life to guide me, as well as that of Broosura’s. I crossed into the set of pine straw and trees, then across a gravel driveway, and eventually into another path of pine forests.

I sniffed like an inquisitive dog along the ground and in the air. Multiple scents met my perspective as I glanced around, but nothing prominent or close. I was alone now, and I had again made my choice for better or worse. Whether I like it or not, Sandy was an animal, and she deserved to be among her kind. I could have chased her, found her, but then what? Like Broosura had asserted, I was more intelligent than she, and that life I could have had I tossed away in favor of a new one. I couldn’t go back, not now, and I had to move forward. Perhaps in the future I’d return, just to check on her, just to see if she was still alive.

“New world, new opportunities,” I murmured as I slinked between the trees. I felt Broosura gently agree as they rubbed against my consciousness.