Wolves and Men

book 7 chapter 12e


Furaha, stepped away from Mary and massaged her throat as she coughed a few times, trying to ger her bearings, and recover her balance.

"How do we start?" Mary asked.

Furaha shot a glare at her, "right now? Are you serious? After you almost pushed me over the railing, you want to start now?"

Mary nodded, "No time like the present, as the saying goes."

Furaha's hatred towards this woman flared up in her gut, but she had made a deal, and the one thing that she always held to, the one thing that she would always hold sacred is that her word was as good as gold and she never backed out of an agreement.

"Sit down, and get in as comfortable a position as you can," Furaha didn't hide any of her distaste for this woman, she had agreed to teach her, not be nice. Surprisingly, Mary did as she was told silently and took up an easy sitting position, with her back leaning against the wall of the building.

Furaha remained standing, watching the werewolf woman do as she was instructed. In her mind she saw how easy it would be to rip her head off. "Now, as you relax, as you go into your meditative state, you'll feel yourself sink down into yourself."

Mary did as she was told, listening to Furaha's guiding voice and feeling her mind become calm, and her body relax, letting her meditative state come to her. She felt a twinge of nervousness, letting herself become so vulnerable around the woman who wanted to enslave her only a couple of short weeks ago. But she knew that she had gone as far as she could by herself. There was no other choice. She just had to trust that the bargain Furaha had agreed to was as binding as she hoped.

Furaha was still speaking, "and as you feel your body start to stretch out farther and farther from you, as you sink deeper and deeper into yourself, tell me what you feel."

Mary's voice responded almost before she could acknowledge that she heard a command, "small, dark, warm, vulnerable."

Furaha nodded at the words, she hadn't expected anything less from this western woman, they were all weaker than her kind was, "You feel vulnerable because you are unwilling to accept that your mind, that which makes you what you are, is not dependent on your body. Your mind can be decoupled from your physical form, and something about that scares you, doesn't it?"

From deep within her giant body, Mary felt her head nod at the barely heard words of the other woman. She was deep inside herself, her legs felt like they were miles long, her arms felt incomprehensibly huge and her head was something from mount Rushmore. She had been this deep in mediation before, but not often, and hearing the words of her new Bultungin teacher, she realized there was truth in them and she was afraid.

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Furaha sneered down at the other woman, she was weak and didn't deserve to see the Matriarch, but she was held by her word, which made her hate this woman even more. "You need to accept that fear, Mary. That fear is what is blocking you, much more than I ever did." She wandered why the hell she just admitted to working against this woman for so long. It didn't matter, Mary had to have figured it out by now and if not, well it might break her meditation and then she could get some sleep.

Mary didn't break from her meditation, she accepted the other woman's confession as she grappled with the concept of accepting her fear, that cold, stabbing sensation that closed her throat and made it hard to stay focused. In her meditative state, she could feel things much more acutely, but also the emotions were muted when she wanted them to be. She found that at this level of meditation she could move within herself, she wasn't locked down to a specific spot, and as she discovered that, she moved through herself as if through a canyon. Her body was huge and she could feel her blood pumping along veins in her arms that seemed like rivers. Her breathing was a hurricane of air that forced its way into her lungs that were bellows that would make Hephaestus himself jealous. Her body expanded out from her in a metropolitan honeycomb of activity and noise, she had never fully understood how loud her own body was.

Furaha watched the other woman, how long was this going to take? She had never taught any others of her kind, so she didn't have anything to reference against. She hoped that it had never taken her so long to learn these basic concepts. This woman was farther behind her than she originally thought, and that meant that her night was going to be a long one.

"Mary, where are you?"

Her voice was a thunderclap and an earthquake all at once and she was dazed by her own body responding without her consent, "I'm at my lungs, the bellows of the gods."

Furaha smirked at the analogy. "Have you never explored yourself, Mary? Does your own body hold such wonder for you?"

"I have explored," Mary said, uncertainty and doubt laced her words.

"You want to know why you have not been able to see what is around you. How can you see in the distance if you ignore what's right in front of you?" Furaha didn't expect, nor did she wait for an answer. "Mary, to see is to know. You must learn the shore before you can dive into the ocean. Explore your body, let your consciousness roam the inner workings of who you are."

Furaha knew that this step would take the rest of the night and maybe several other nights besides. She had no idea just how much of a child she was dealing with. If she had known that this Shape shifter was so far behind her in skill, she would never have offered to help.

Furaha was hit with a wave of concussive force that stole her breath. She gripped at her chest as she forced herself to relearn how to breathe. She glared at the meditative Mary. Her eyes were closed and her body breathed deeply and evenly, but she knew that it was just that, a body. Mary's being had just exploded out into the world around her, leaving Furaha stunned. She could feel Mary watching her even now, but it was with sight, and it made her skin crawl.

The Bultungin sight was something Furaha could feel, physically, and trace back to who was looking at her, it took time, like tracing a telephone call, but it could be done. Feeling the sight of a werewolf on her felt like someone was staring at her from across the room. She could ignore it, but knowing that someone was watching her made her just a little self-conscious.

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