Who: Drei Kovac (narrative) What: Things are far simpler, for a wolf. When: Sunday, September 27; night Where: Woods outside of Garberville, California
Missing Corbin and Sophia was still something that weighed on Drei a lot, and when he least expected it. The thing about spending a year of your life with someone was that they became part of all the little moments and routines. Drei had gone through countless full moons between getting Peter and meeting Corbin, but after not quite twelve of them where he had someone on call to help him arrange getting to a place with woods to run through, he'd gotten used to having the extra help. The full moon, and the days around it, had been about Drei. There was no way to avoid that. He'd forgotten that he didn't have that, this month, this first full moon as a single man again. He'd forgotten until the last minute that he needed to track down a place to change, and a way to get there. Lucky for him, he had Juno now, and had reconnected with Cadence. He knew he'd be fine, even with that stab of pain that hit him at first.
It wasn't the first time he'd gone to Garberville for the full moon. It was a rural place, and mostly decent even when temperatures started to drop. Plenty of room for the wolf to run, and only a little bit of a pain in the ass to get to. There was, at least, a place to go for food once he'd changed back in the morning, and a cheap motel to crash in for the next day - not comfortable, but Drei slept like the dead after a full moon. Comfort didn't matter. He'd gotten his room booked, rented a car, even though he couldn't really afford either of them. Before, he'd always done pretty good running just ahead of the credit cards bills. He'd have to learn the knack all over again.
None of that mattered once he was in the woods, though, stripping down and shoving everything into the battered backpack he'd brought along, one with a bottle of water and a few granola bars in it to get him by until he got real food. The moon was rising, and a strange sort of calm was settling over Drei. No matter what else was going on in his life, the moon and the change were a constant. They were always the same, always something he could depend on.
It hurt. It always hurt. The pain was comforting, too, by now, something he was used to. His skin shredded, teeth falling out as a wolf's snout emerged from between his lips. His eyes rolled from his head, replaced by the eyes of the wolf. Bones broke and reshaped with a sickening crack, wet fur bursting through the gore that had once been human flesh. Drei threw himself into the change, because as much as it hurt, at least the pain was physical. It was simpler, easier to deal with than all of the things that worried him as a human. Once the last of the human parts had been stripped away, meat on the ground, Drei shook himself, blood flying from black fur. He was more slender as a wolf than Peter was, but with longer legs, legs that could eat up more distance in a night.
He was hungry, once the change was over. He was always hungry, moving from one body to the next took a lot of energy. It might have been disgusting, as a human, to eat his own discarded skin, but Drei wasn't human. Drei was a wolf, and meat was meat. Bending his head to the ground, he gobbled the remnants of what had been his human body up greedily, everything but the teeth. It didn't fill him up, but he could smell prey further on into the woods. Nothing exciting, but fresh meat would be enough to fill his stomach. The absence of the scent of mate and child meant less to the wolf; it wasn't as though either of them ever ran with him, during the moon. For the wolf, things were as they always were.
Drei raised his head, let out a piercing howl, and ran.