Re: Bonfire-adjacent: Aubrey/Lou
Wolf, non-wolf. Lou didn't think the wolf made a huge amount of difference to the person she was. The person she'd been. She suspected the wolf followed the human. An echo, a little wilder, a little more driven by basic urge. But the wolf was shadow, until the moon turned and the shadow was where the light fell. She hadn't gone and fought a war. Hadn't gone anywhere the wolf would sit beneath the surface, exposed teeth and long snout and pant. Just a set of breeze-blocks, damp paint and cold bars and for a while there, she'd kept the wolf out but good.
Hadn't been a drunk. Had seen a lot of drunks, over the years and Lou understood where the need came from. If there hadn't been an interlude, of noise and of people and of pack that lived chummily side by side with an elbow in one another's soft spots and the blow of someone's breath on the back of a neck as you slept, maybe the world would have needed more slow-burn. It didn't. Lou liked living loud. Liked living slow. Liked it all the damn shades it was, without alteration.
"Got it." She didn't shuffle. She stood tall. Her face didn't show a lot, never had. "Feel a lot more. Gets easier. No, doesn't get easier. It becomes habit. You start to figure out this is just how it is. Adjust."