"Don't let her shift!"

"Hold her down!"

The girl fought, or at least she thought she did. Her mind had no idea how weak her body was, her fingers gripping the linens she was splayed out on as stronger hands held her frail body down. Her skin rolled, flecking with tawny fur, threatening to shift for the final time.

Outside, one long, piercing howl erupted, that was so mournful that everyone in the room shuddered, almost losing their focus on the girl writhing on the table.

Snarls and gnashing of teeth sounded over her head, fluttering in and out of consciousness.

She fought. Oh, she fought to stay there. To stay lucid. But in her heart, she felt she had always known the end. They had flown too close to the sun, despite warnings on both sides. She was never meant to live with the choices she had made.

Leaving him would have been more painful than death. Even in this moment, she was grateful for every stolen second they had gotten. She had tried. She had tried so, so hard.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Asta always had a flare for the dramatic growing up, but she knew her boundaries. Her family joked that the reason she could be cutting at home was because she bottled it all up when she was out in the wild, being a natural Shadow.

She barely needed training in the ways of being silent in the brush, not so much as making a leaf rustle as she worked. Her mother noticed Asta being able to read the winds as early as age three, when fawns still barely had their legs under them. It was hard to tell at first, but mother's intuition caught on that the toddler was pausing in the flower fields and scenting the rains, the winds, and above all, danger well before many of the adult's ears would prick.

It made sense then that in a time need, it was Asta who was sent out away from the herd. They all tried to cling together as much as they possibly could, but a terrible blight had inundated their fields.

The options that were laid out for them was to try and seek out additional food to store for winter, or migrate. Migration was the Old Way; but here, they had created shelter, sowed crops, and built a life. So, she offered - no - demanded, to venture out in the direction they feared to go, to be a shadow and seek out what they needed.

Never had her intuition failed her, the doe tip toeing through the forest, her neck swaning and swerving with each step. A step - pause - clear. A step - pause - clear. Methodically, her wary stalking had taken hours, and yet she had not found anything particularly sustainable. With a flustered shake of her head, the doe's eyes landed on the lichen hanging on the trees in front of her. For now, this is all she had to bring back, along with ample trout lilies, a beautiful feast for now, but nothing that could be dried and stored through the winter like grains.

She was about to shift, so she could crouch down and start to strip the bark and place it in her bag. She had always considered the magic in this; that any object she held in her person would be able to fold in on her when she shifted. It had puzzled her as a child, learning how to use her clan's powers, but nobody else seemed to give it a second thought.

Just as she was about to do so, the doe paused, her eyes flickering first with fear, then with question.

What was this?

On the horizon of the winds, blew the sent of... lavender, and warmth, threaded with sage, and a sweet smell she couldn't place. A smell that brought her comfort, hope, and.... a feeling she couldn't place either.

It was enough to put the Shadow off kilter, and Asta was too late when the winds suddenly hit her with the scents that would stop her heart in its tracks.

Predators.

A lone deer was no match, and she burst through the thicket just a split second too late; a clawed paw had thrown itself at her, ripping at her hide.

She had to count herself lucky; wolves didn't have the talons of mountain lions or even bears, but they were swift, and Asta's creeping journey out towards the wolf clan's territory had already tapped her resources.

- They can't eat me - she panted in her head, begging herself to believe it as she ran.

It was true that all the shapeshifters had an uneasy truce that they wouldn't eat the plant eaters, but the deer did not stray close to the wolves for good reason. Shapeshifters died in their beast, and if they were to be killed while fleeing in their beast as well, nobody would know they had felled a fellow shifter. The wolves in particular were rash about this, and the deer did not trust that they even cared who they slaughtered, never owning up to it if it was brought up in council, but the deer and hare population growing smaller by the year. There were rumors that when the wolves came upon the plant eaters, if they realized they were shifters in time, they'd kill the men and imprison the women, but nobody had ever escaped to tell the tale first hand.

That, of course, was when there was a council. The clans had fractured decades ago, before Asta was born. There weren't any repercussions for breaking rules. Only individual morals would stop a predator from killing - murdering a doe.

The doe grew tired quickly, her vision starting to blur. She had been trained well as to how the wolves hunted, scenting seven individuals on all sides, even if she couldn't see them. They were waiting her out. She would tire, and then they would descend.

Defeated, her jagged leaps slowed to a shaken trot, inhaling deeply to take in whatever was waiting for her.

That was when that scent hit her again: warmth, light, comfort. Home?

Spinning, seven sets of eyes had fixated on her, none of the dogs even so much as whining at each other in anticipation.