So here's my updated blog series. It's very different from what you have probably read before. Sorry that I keep bouncing all over the place. I just needed something that I could write constantly about and not grow stagnant, because honestly, if I'm bored in writing it, you will be bored reading it.
I have decided to go with a more laid back take on the blog series as it's supposed to be quick reads and hopefully quick writes for me. Most of the entries won't be edited or proofread. I just need to type-vomit and get some writing out there. I'm VERY excited with this new direction for my blog series and I hope that you will enjoy it as well. The entries will be shorter than I was intending last incarnations to be, which will be easier. I'm desperately hoping to release a new entry every month.
So here's Animental, my blog series. Meet Nat and his companion--and his world. Any questions or comments leave one below OR email me at N8Charley@gmail.com
2: Predator & Prey
“YOU KNOW AUBREY III, I USED TO BE QUITE THE WRITER.” He’d said to the quiet plant, tucked under his arm in her pot. There was no he or her in the plant world, but Nat had felt that the plant was a female. Though she’d whispered her name to him, Nat had begun calling her… “Aubrey, you hear me? I used to be a writer. Though there is no reason to write anymore. Who would ever read it?” He whispered as an aside, as if he wasn’t asking Aubrey III, but the wind.
They’d walked for miles, all day, down the hot paved roads, until Nat couldn’t take it anymore, “You are no help, Princess!” He’s scoffed at the still, quite plant. He’d come to figure that the plant was some sort of tree judging by the hard fibrous stalk each branch reached out from—or a woody bush. He’d only spent one day with the plant and he was sure that he knew her every branch, leaf, and vein.
They found a dwelling—a shed. It was easy to escape from…And to be honest, Nat felt strange sleeping in someone’s home—regardless of whether they were around or not. Human hope, or perhaps human stupidity, did not allow him to believe that he was the only surviving human. There had to be someone else. They were just hiding.
“They’re hiding amongst the trees, Aubrey…Or inside houses like that one there!” Nat had gathered a tarp, burlap sacs, and straw for bedding. He’d planned on camping in the little shed for the night.
Nat set her down, just at the mouth of the shed, where Aubrey III could catch the last rays of sun before it sunk behind the horizon. He stalked through the yard in search of food. There hadn’t been very many animals around. He’d left the bloodless massacre behind hours ago. His senses still on high alert for whatever creature had drank all of the creatures’ blood…And what happened to all the people?
He was looking for nuts, berries, or any other edible plants. Plants were plentiful as it seemed there weren’t many grazing beasts around. Not that Nat had any tools with which to take such an animal down with.
As he found a thorny bush of berries, nearly a quarter mile from the shed, a sense of loneliness fell over him. He scanned the rolling hill, high cloud-cutting mountains in the distance. There was no fowl, no antelope or deer—nothing. The wind whistled as if laughing at him. It only made his loneliness feel more claustrophobic!
Before Nat knew what he was doing, he was running, racing, towards the shed, desperate for Aubrey III! He ran, digging his shoes into the ground as hard as he could! His face contorted into an animalistic scowl! He was half-mad as he ran. He half-expected to see a table full of tea kettles and pots and tea cups and a crazy brown hare and a mad hatter. He the mad hatter. Alice!
Nat nearly dove for Vivirdrasil when he saw her, perky in her pot. He pet her delicate branches, “Aubrey III,” he cooed in sing-song. I’m going to go crazy out here.
Human instinct wanted him to find other people. Humans were social creatures. Ask anyone in solitary confinement for a week. Nat had only been milling about alone for half a day. He wouldn’t take much more of this. He’d unravel. Perhaps that’s what happened to the others! He thought. Seeing the purple mountain majesties in the distance, he thought of people throwing themselves from cliffs like lemmings. Would it come to that?
Nat hugged the pot, Aubrey III’s branches brushing his face, like callused fingers. “Oh Aubrey, I’ll never leave you again,” he pledged. He didn’t make the promise for her, the tiny sapling didn’t care whether Nat left or stayed. But just as he thought it, Nat knew it wasn’t true. Vivirdrasil, Aubrey III, had attracted him, had called to him! She called him now—wanting to wrap her branches around him. Nat could feel it!
The sun sagged and Nat’s stomach growled. He’d only plucked a handful of berries and popped them in his mouth ravenously before Aubrey III called him, made him feel lonely so that he’d come rushing back. Nat lay there, arms laced around the pot as best he could. The pot didn’t give like a body, like pliable skin, like the touch of another human, but Aubrey III’s woody fingers made him smile, made him feel safe and un-alone—for a moment.
Darkness started to cast its own arms around the world. Nat lay there, clutched around Aubrey’s pot, with the shed door wide open. Nat suddenly felt naked, unsafe. He snapped up, sitting, he looked out into darkness. Shapes shifting in the shadows. Protectively he slid Aubrey III’s pot deeper into the shed! He pulled the door shut and threw the barricade that he’d made earlier.
He kept his eye pressed to the peephole in the door. Shadows slunk across the yard. It had never occurred strange to Nat that this shed was placed in what looked like a yard, but it didn’t seem to belong to a house. The figures, Nat knew they were figures now, creatures—perhaps the beings that drained the animals of blood on the riverbank. Nat stood still, almost forgetting to breathe, but never looking away from the peephole.
Fear made him shake, but when he calmed himself and tried to expel the fear, tried to clear his mind—he could sense the wolves. Wolves! They are wolfen wolves! Not sure how he knew this, he desperately tried to clear his mind because that’s when he gained information. He could see. He didn’t know how it was possible, but he seemed able to slip his consciousness into their minds—well, one of the wolves anyway. A male, high up on the hierarchy of the pack, but not the alpha. He was too young and inexperienced to be alpha.
The sensation of it was unbalancing!…And when Nat pulled his consciousness, somehow, into his own mind, he felt dizzy and wretched onto the shed floor. Aubrey III looked at him ashamedly, as if he was a drunken collage boy and the sapling felt she’d have to take care of him—hold his hair back as he prayed to the porcelain goddess.
Nat ignored the vomit and pressed his eye to the peephole. He focused, expelling everything from his mind, and with ease, it was getting easier, Nat slipped into the young wolf’s mind. He started to see with the wolf’s eyes and smell with the wolf’s nose. He could easily smell his own vomit. The wolves knew the furless creature was there, in the shed.
Crown padded with his pack. They searched for food and shelter in the desolate landscape. Everything was migrating and they were in unknown territory. Possibly territory of other wolfen, though it was unlikely since wolfen were cold weather wolves of the far north or tops of the mountain peeks, like where Crown had come from. But the strange blood drinkers had come to the mountain.
Crown knew there was a presence in his brain. He wasn’t alarmed. His alpha had a master once—before they’d made territory in the mountains. They had been friends, partners. Crown hoped that he and his new found master could be partners. Humans were smart, and he could probably help the pack. This land was so unfamiliar, the smells so alien. Though, Crown’s master’s vomit dominated most of the scent-o-sphere.
Then the scent of something more delicious wafted on the air. Prey! Crown slipped into formation with the pack. The alpha growling, softly, out commands of attack. The lower wolves hung back with the only two pups the pack was lucky enough to wield.
The focus of the hunt threw Nat out of Crown’s mind. Crown, Nat thought, smiling. He didn’t know how he slipped into the wolfen wolf’s mind, but it felt like a familiar power, like an ability he forgot he had.
Nat was unable to slip into Crown’s mind anymore that evening, even though he tried, obsessively for hours. Eventually sleep found him and, snuggled against Aubrey III, wrapped in tarps and burlap sacks, Nat dreamed.
…Nat woke with a start! There was a person rummaging through what little things he had. He wanted to jump up and strike the human, but something told him to stay still, pretend he was still asleep. He knew that Crown could sense what was up. How had the thief broken the door open?
Crown was there, growling. The thief turned, a serrated blade in one hand. “Back off!” The boy shouted. “Back off!” He slashed the air with his dagger. Crown only stepped forward. The boy wasn’t going to win this stand-off.
Nat sat up, hands out to show he held nothing, “Don’t make any sudden movements and Crown won’t hurt you.”
The boy was startled, but it wasn’t because Nat suddenly got to his feet—it was something the boy saw in Nat’s eyes. The boy looked from Nat, then towards Crown. Nat noticed it too! Crown’s eyes mirrored Nat’s. “You are a skinwalker.” The boy said.
