big-ol-bookwyrm

[big-ol-bookwyrm]

Teeth

Read @patricia-taxxon's Therian HRT stuff a ways back. As a wolf therian (and, strictly speakin', the only therian of this system) it got caught in a fun way that I had to write about. What follows is a story about therian joy in a world that could be.

I keep a box on our dresser, where I can no longer reach. It's filled with my old teeth, chipped and broken things that gave way to new fangs erupting from changed gums. We keep them for...sentimentality, I suppose. A little, rattling box of memories of times before. You'd think I'd want to be rid of them, to throw off any reminder of the tattered remains of my humanity and run free, but no. It shaped me, is part of my history. I've removed myself from humanity, but I will always be connected to it.

The transition was in some ways harder than the time before. Dysphoria was a known factor, easy to handle in its familiarity. The changes were not. They hurt, most days, growing pains writ large as my body danced to a new song with each injection. My legs alone knocked me down for a month and a half, confined to bed or a hacked together wheelchair donated by my kin who had taken the leap long before I. My teeth were the most welcome change, falling out one by one in exchange for their deadly replacements. The worst was the fur, awkward puberty peach fuzz spread across my entire body, itchy as hell to boot. I was fired pretty quickly, turns out hairy paws are bad for food prep and a face stuck halfway between muzzle and mouth scares customers away. Good riddance.

The fear mixed with eagerness until I could no longer tell them apart. Joy at the new texture of my hair mixed with fear that it will never spread. Joy in how my nails sharpened and became dense claws mixed with fear that my paws will forever straddle the line between man and wolf. The anticipation of running in the woods, smelling of autumn and prey and family of all kinds, exacerbated the restless fear that I would never run again.

And yet, now I sleep curled at the base of his bed, proud in the change. Long, lithe muscle, beautiful in my simplicity. Soft fur belying sharp claws and hungry fangs. As long now as I was tall, massive and terrifying and graceful in ways I could never have been before. My intelligence is still human, but the undercurrent of instinct roars louder than ever, easy to lose myself in whenever I wish.

There are always dangers. Both to being other and also to being a predator. Fearful eyes see my teeth, my claws, the way my muscles move beneath my fur, and instead of beauty see danger. The fear is manageable. On better days, I provoke it playfully, offering approximations of grins and breaking into runs to show off. On worse, I ignore them, protected by law and the crowd. Worse are the pitying, the ones who look down. The ones who cannot believe I would choose this or who treat me like a pet dog to be played with. I wear no collar or leash, barely bending to "public decency", and at these people I snap. Growling, lips pulled back to reveal the fangs I worked so hard for, until they pull back or walk past.

I trade freedom for comfort most days. A warm bed and prepared meals in exchange for a harness warning the fearful and modified clothes for the embarrassed. A job to support my pack, culling deer populations when they begin to grow too numerous during the season. My pack is...broader, now. Encompassing human, wolf, therians, others. Nontraditional, to be sure. A melding of instincts, producing a creature that pack-bonds with ease and frequency out of both necessity and affection. Running with my kin for work and play and survival. Protecting and caring for my humans out of love and loyalty. Taking in my people as I was taken in before. A web of relations, centered on me, who I gather and love and celebrate my new life with.

And always, the reminder sits on our dresser, where I can no longer see it. Out of sight, in the past, yet ever present. They, like my humanity, were part of me, shaped me, but aren't me any longer. I am something new, something beautiful, something that revels in its own strangeness. I am a wolf, and I'll always have the fangs to prove it.

[big-ol-bookwyrm]

Slip, jump, throw, dive

Backflip, jump, throw, throw

Eat, eaten, simple, straight

Problem, solve

Die

Repeat

Tail, whips, ears, pricked

Hands, cling, legs, ready

Hiss, threat, throw, leap

Bite, eat

Die

Repeat

Hostile, home, comfort, cramped

Move, easy, path, clear

Friends, rare, treasured, enemies...

Teeth, pain

Die

Repeat

Desolate, complete, thriving, dead

Metal, forest, waste, growth

Plant, bug, predator, prey

Iterate, iterate...

Escape

Repeat

[big-ol-bookwyrm]

Bacchanalia

           Libera saw her first at a college rager, some big-shot fraternity bash her boyfriend had dragged her to. A party girl she was not, and the stench of cheap whiskey and piss beer, of root beer vape and body spray, of shitty perfume and thick makeup and lust muddied her thoughts and obscured her view of the untouched woman in the living room. Her dress was hanging off her shoulders, her cup was overflowing with dark red wine, and with a glance, a wink, a beckoning finger Libera was entranced by the figure who danced through and among the crowd, avoiding spills and slips alike, the perfect amount of unkempt.

           Where she walked, the party separated around her, and when they met, they were the only ones in the room. She brought Libera into a deep kiss, her purple vine hair winding around them, fading into the pot smoke hanging low in the air. When Libera pulled away, enthralled by the woman’s audacity, she took another nip at Libera’s lip, nearly pulling her back into the kiss before giving up for the moment.

           She introduced herself as Proserpina that night and invited Libera upstairs, putting a hand on her cheek and leaving a wine-scented mark where her fingernails scraped against Libera’s skin. Her eyes glowed a deep purple through the smoke, a sharp and hungry smile betraying the intent behind her languid pose, and Libera accepted instantly, intoxicated by the smell of ecstasy that hung on Proserpina’s words.

           They spent the night in each other’s arms, but Libera woke up on the couch in a puddle of cheap beer and burnt joints, head throbbing and the memory of passion fading quickly from her mind as the sun burnt through the previous night’s haze. The marks refused to fade, so Libera covered them with purple vines that wound across her cheeks and down her neck, tattoos that smelt pleasantly of fine wine and fresh grapes.

           Libera saw him second in a nightclub, chatting up an older man, bare-chested, fat, with a purple robe bundled at his waist. The club around them roared with the noise of electropop mingling with the crowded dance floor, thousands of feet pounding on Libera’s ear drums as her tenth cocktail soaked into her thoughts. It took her longer to get drunk now, though she still could and did, in hopes to see him again. It wasn’t working tonight, and she was about to give up and go home, sober and alone, when the lights seemed to focus on the object of her obsession, painting his body in a shifting prism of colors that he seemed to fade in and out of while he seduced his mark.

He was surrounding the man with his preludes, his entrancing promises, his wine-soaked fingers, when he noticed Libera looking. He pulled away from the man’s embrace, leaving him looking confused at the new wine stains on his shirt, and wound between the dancers, at once part of and apart from their movements. They met on the dancefloor, and he pulled Libera into his dance, hand at her waist, feeling just under her shirt, leaving another of his marks on her skin. She fit perfectly against him, sinking into his soft embraces as she followed his poppy-scented breath further in.

           He introduced himself as Bacchus, pulled a grape from his hair, and offered it to her. Biting it out of his hand, she accepted his invitation to stay the night in her home, pulling him aside and into her car. She spent the night on top of him, making good on promises made, taking comfort in his arms when the night closed. Again, she woke up, stained purple and foggy, dreading the return of the sun through her shutters. The new mark was as persistent as the last, so she got a second tattoo: vines growing around a spilled cup, up her sides and curling towards her bellybutton. It seemed to have a better idea, though, growing slowly across her stomach and winding around her chest to meet her other mark at the neck, turning her into a glowing garden of intoxicating flowers.

           When she found her the last time, Libera organized the dance, the theme, the dress. Vines grew along the walls of her house, an orchard of grapes, fermenting into intoxication. Her dress flowed like the wine from her glass, like the kisses from her lips, like her lovers from her hands. Each piece was tailored for her guests, and one in particular, to draw her from hiding and return her to Libera’s arms. It had been some time since they last met, months, perhaps years, long enough for Libera’s tattoos to grow even further. They now curled down her arms, her legs, weeping wine into cups, rugs, mouths.

She looked for her divine love above the heads of her guests as the night wore on, until the haze grew thick and the conversation grew slurred. Her other guests lounged on cushions and couches, occasionally raising their lips to Libera as she passed. She grew more frustrated with each moment her love refused to come, sinking deeper into her own drinks, though she’d left intoxication long behind, and her agitation spread through her followers.

Murmuring turned to muttering turned to angry whispers turned to rage, once languid figures began, one by one, to tear at couches, pull down shelves, shatter glass. Her guests were tearing at wallpaper and walls alike as the music swelled in intensity, rattling the foundations. She moved among them, having mastered the art of being untouched, stoking the chaos with her breath, urging them onwards with the promise of a smile or the barest of kisses.

           Then, she arrived amidst the destruction, soft and small and undeniably in control of herself, filling each room with the warmth of a summer harvest, the smell of fresh wine, the heady daze of a drug-addled afternoon. The crowd, torn from their chaotic revelry, bowed, kneeled, prayed, wept, parted for the pair when they met in loving embrace, attention turned from the ruined walls and furniture to the softly glowing lovers who hung above it all. Her lover brushed back Libera’s hair, running her fingers through it and leaving it maroon in her wake, murmuring praise between kisses. Libera had passed, she said, and may now enjoy the fruits of her labor. The party around them faded into pink fog as the pair began to dance into the night, leaving the world and its troubles behind, lost in each other’s love.

           Libera woke to Dionysus’s kisses, as she had introduced herself again before daybreak, the usual hangover chased away by the pleasure of a lover’s caress. In her hand was a ring, woven of grape vines struck through with gold. Libera took it and pressed it to her lips, the golden thread turning purple at the kiss, and threaded it onto Dionysus’s finger. She pressed Libera’s hand to her own, squeezing gently before releasing to reveal another ring, matching hers, which had grown around Libera’s own finger, binding the pair together. Dionysus kissed her forehead, having nowhere left to mark, and asked the question they both already knew the answer to.

           Libera answered with a kiss of her own, and began to dance again.