"Ava" Varder calls out,his voice laced with worry .her hands are on the ground and the ground is cold and the heat is everywhere, rolling through me in waves, her spine doing something it has never done, something she has watched happen to every person in her pack since she was six years old and always from a distance, always outside of, always watching through the glass.
Not from a distance now.
It was agony. every account she ever heard made it sound transcendent, made it sound like becoming, and it is that too but underneath the becoming is pure animal pain, every bone re-learning itself, every muscle finding a new shape it was apparently always meant to hold.
She is aware of all of it. She is aware of the leaves under my palms and the cold air and Varder's boots stopping three feet from her and Jason on the other side of the clearing not moving, just watching, and she cannot tell if that stillness is shock or something else.
