remember remember

Remember, remember, the twenty-first of December.

Oh, how she remembered it.

She remembered the short day, the shortest day of the year. Cold, quiet, and dismal to most people. But to her, the long night was the most time she had with her sister all year. And tonight, her sister had a party to go to. But this year, her sister wanted to go with her significant others. She agreed to let her go, but there was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that lasted all that day and into the night.

She saw them get dressed up in their mother’s beautiful handiwork and head off, and headed to the werewolf cabin herself. The feeling sat in her gut as if she had swallowed a leaden weight, but she tried to ignore it as best she could. She tried to engage her friends there, but she knew they knew she was anxious.

She remembered confirming their suspicions the second the got the text from her best friend. As soon as she read that Midnight had been found with her eyes missing, and that they heard screams, she began to panic. She became a danger to herself and to everyone else in that cabin until the minute somebody else read the text and gave her direction. It was the one that looked like a sunflower. He told her he would go with her to find them, and an older man agreed, too.

She remembered that once she was allowed out of the cabin, she howled into the sky, and she ran. She ran and she didn’t stop running. She ran until she caught their scent, and followed it right to them. She remembered that the lead in her gut sank right out and onto the ground once she saw the blood on the ground and saw Midnight in her hunter leader’s arms, covered in blood and about to die. She saw her brother in law doing what he could to spare her.

Until they heard the screams.

She remembered the pause.

She remembered seeing Roscoe try to restrain his own beast with in. He could never allow himself to frenzy.

She remembered feeling her Rage boil to the surface spectacularly, biting at the back of her throat and clouding her mind. He couldn’t allow himself, but she could. She didn’t resist, she let it overtake her because she knew her sister needed her. She ran forward, and seeing her run forward made him finally charge too. He had let go, when he shouldn’t have, but in her blind fury it was another packmate to share the kill with.

She remembered the coppery smell at the door.

She remembered punching it in with one hit.

She remembered the table, and the lightning, and tanking through it just so Ros could get past her to where she was needed.

She remembered seeing her broken sister, lying on the ground, laughing through the pain because she had lost herself.

She remembered a pang of Rage that cracked like lightning through every iteration of herself in every world. In every world where she could see these versions of herself, that anger shot through, and the anger of every other iteration crashed through along with it, creating a feedback loop of fury that finally crashed back around to the version of her standing in that run down shack and drove her into the arms of Wyrmthrall.

And she embraced it. For seeing her sister so wounded, so broken, she reveled in it. Reveled in the hate, in the blind fury. She bit down on every pander that was thrown at her and consumed them utterly. She tore that shack asunder in her berserk rampage, all except for the corner that housed her twin and her brother in law. So great was her rage that even the archbishop who headed this pack feared her, and tried to stop her in her tracks using the shadows.

She remembered taking those shadows and making them her own.

She remembered leaving the woman who had tortured her sister something to think about and giving chase without relent as they retreated into the night.

She remembered the silence after all was done, and shifting out of her rage and feeling the ills of having eaten two dozen peoples’ worth of ash and bone fragments.

She remembered spending the night in the hospital, alternating vomiting and crying because she had let herself do something so evil.

And she remembered waking up in a cold sweat in her best friend’s arms in a completely different world, being pinned down so she couldn’t move, and seeing a crowd in the door from a screaming fit that pierced through soundproof walls.

She remembered the terrified, depressive funk she entered after that.

She remembered trying to kill a very sick gecko.

She remembered that in the other world, that depressive funk lasted until Shana invited her to meet her brother. Even after that, she still had trouble shaking it.

She remembered going out and finding a snapdragon plant, and planting it in one of the few sunny spots of her between. Miraculously, the snapdragons survived the fight that took out huge swathes of her flower fields, much later.

She remembers the twenty-first of December. That’s the day where she goes out and adds another plant to the field.