Side-Write: Caught in the Storm (Patreon)

It's hard to say what exactly led me to writing this story, I was just musing over the various elements until I landed on a feeling and an image that felt worth writing about. I don't think this qualifies as one of those happy stories I've been trying to write more of, I guess I'll have to push more in that direction for the next one. But I hope it's still an enjoyable slice of something just a little different.

As always, this isn't canon so much as an exploration of possibilities in the world of Project Wild One. Cheers!

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I don't even know how long I wandered the woods like an animal, scavenging food and sleeping when I was too exhausted to keep moving. Months, I guess. I just kept moving, kept pushing myself... kept running from it all. It was practically a relief when some monster would find me, because in those moments, I really did just feel like a body. And when they seized hold of me and used me, it was... soothing, in a way, to feel like there was some purpose to me, some reason for me to be here. Just as long as I didn't have to think. To remember.

That's the state I was in when I woke up shivering one evening. It had started to rain, and I was already wet. I'd been so exhausted I hadn't even woken up until it was nearly pouring. I stumbled through the forest in the dark, trying to shelter under trees, but that just reduced the fine drops to fat, irregular bursts still pelting me all over. I scrabbled over slick roots and walked straight into branches in the dark, and I was pretty miserable by the time I found the cave I'd remembered noticing before.

I didn't dare go deep inside, but a broad overhang gave me enough shelter to at least get out of the worst of it. So I sat myself down off to one side, shivering and struggling to see anything in the gloom. Light did occasionally glisten off branches and the puddles forming here and there, enough I could take in the area around me bit by bit. I couldn't see anything else moving, though when all the world was swaying with wind and water, who could say?

I'd lost my clothes a long time ago, and there was no way I could make a fire in this. The best I could do was squeeze my fur out... and wait.

I tried to lose myself in the sound of the rain. The hiss and sigh of the wind whipping water across the forest, thundering one moment and whispering the next, driving a hundred little drip points and trickles to surge and ebb in their own tiny songs or rhythms. I stared into that speckled darkness, and unbidden, my mind went back, to before.

My dad had loved the rain, was the problem. I had so many warm memories of those moments, sitting by the window with him or hiding under an awning with him. He'd had a temper and sometimes I'd been scared of him, but something about the rain seemed to soothe him. He'd smile and just stare out at it, and sometimes he'd hug me in his lap, or just hold my paw. I even... I waited until it rained to tell him about my boyfriend. And I think it worked. He didn't blow up, and for a while, things had been pretty good.

I didn't want to remember. I'd hidden all of this away so long it felt like some old, crusted over part of me was moving again, hurting more every moment as it crunched against itself.

Things had been good, until... they weren't. Until my boyfriend found someone else, and my father got mad, and... stupid, terrible things happened. And suddenly I was alone.

I was shaking, and I hated that this was happening. A hot egg was growing in my middle, another me was clawing up out of my insides. Animal me was confused why another me suddenly had to take over, just so it could... hurt.

I'd had a job, and somehow they expected me to just keep smililng at people and helping them. I didn't. I couldn't. Everything was falling apart, and... I'm still not sure if I actually intended to live out here, or if I just ran away without any kind of plan at all and... couldn't find my way back.

All of me was hot inside now, and I couldn't understand how I could still feel so cold on the outside. Under my hide I was a screaming furnace, a cyclone of jagged fire. My body was fused into a single piece, my claws digging into my knees as I shook all over, strange patterns folding and unfolding in the darkness as I stared.

But something moved that was not symmetrical. Something slid from one side to the other, and the wet sounds distorted, resolved into the slap of strange footsteps. A tiny jolt ran through me, but I was too far gone to react, to try to defend myself or run or anything. I was locked up in a ball, and part of me hoped it was here to kill me just so I could reset and escape whatever was happening.

Its touch was wet, and cool at first, but as slick flesh spread across my arm, then my back, I felt the warmth underneath. I didn't even understand what kind of creature it was, it almost felt like a giant, lengthy tongue was sliding in around me. But when I didn't move, it pressed closer, wrapping itself snug around me, and I could feel legs moving under it. It must have been shaped sort of like a snake with legs, but... slimy.

I was so ready to just be used again, to have all thought stripped away by violation or destruction, but it just... squeezed me into its body, embraced me utterly, and it... It was so soft.

My shoulders bowed under the pressure, and my hands came loose. It squeezed slowly around me, molding at me, and my locked muscles came undone, melting under a warm pressure at once powerful and gentle. I was... hypnotized by it, the feel of its body rolling across mine, twisting, doubling back to press me flat between walls of slick heat.

The cold leached from my fingers, then my toes, as it pushed the air from me in shuddering little sighs. My arms slung clumsily around its body, smooth and so pleasing to press into, and I...

I started to cry.

I hadn't cried when I lost them. Not when I lost my job, not even when I ran away. I'd just... pushed it all away, out of me, away from me. I'd run as far as I could, as long as I could, until I was stuck in a cold, dark, distant place and it was all still right there with me. Inside me. And I felt the heat of it swell to either side of my eyes as my face twisted. I cried into the side of that strange creature, I panted and groaned, I made the ugliest, most pathetic sounds I've ever heard. I clung to it, this monster, and it enveloped me in warmth, its body rolling slow and heavy down my back and up my front. The salt of tears and its slime mingled in my mouth. And when I was able to gather enough breath, I screamed. I just... screamed.

I don't know why the creature came to me, maybe it just wanted to share a little warmth, or maybe it decided to treat me like one of its young. I was certainly pathetic enough. I just know that it held me until I fell asleep, throat sore and my body covered in a mixture of sweat and slime. The rain seemed so soothing now, drizzling through the leaves and pattering down the stone. I remember feeling... empty, but swollen, my head stuffed with cotton. But somehow... I felt better than I had in a long time.

I woke up alone, and it was very quiet. I was still smeared with that stuff, but the creature seemed to be gone, and the rain had passed. But I didn't feel that need to run anymore. I sat in the silence and... slowly, I thought about my father, and my life before. I thought about my boyfriend, and the people I might have called friends. It still ached, but it... I could handle it.

Birds started to twitter and chirp as light seeped in, and eventually, I rose to walk through that fresh, cold, musical morning. I found a road, and I stood on it a while, my eyes closed. I still had no idea where I was, but... the road had to lead somewhere. Back to people, and all their... messy feelings, all their anger and jealousy, all their love and tenderness.

I picked a direction, and I followed the road.