“Alrighty, say your goodbyes and lets leave this dead-man wonderland,” said Luna, my twin sister. My name is Leanne, and my sister and I are timber wolves, also known as gray wolf nagual. The dead-man wonderland she spoke of is our village which goes by the name of Himitsu. All of the timber wolves in Himitsu, except for us two, were slaughtered in the night and then our village was burned, along with the surrounding forest of Argonne.
Himitsu Village lies deep in Argonne Forest, but apparently not deep enough. Argonne Forest is located on all human maps, though Himitsu is not, for it is unbeknownst to them. That is how it is for all nagual villages, towns, and cities. The surrounding area may be known to humans as some sort of geographical landmark, but due to our utmost secrecy, a nagual village itself is not.
Right after all of our people were slaughtered, the killers set Himitsu on fire and left it to burn itself to the ground. Of course, this is no more than an assumption, seeming as to how everyone was asleep at the time. Almost every house was incinerated, with only few pieces of wood and ashes remaining. Luna and I had just barely managed to save our own. We woke up in the night, startled by the smell of smoke, to find that our house was on fire with us in it. We acted with haste and quickly poured bucketfuls of water on the outside of our home, loosening the fire's grip on it until there was not a single flame burning. Our house wasn’t entirely saved, but it still managed to stand, lopsided however, despite the scars of the burns. Some areas of our house are inaccessible due to cave-ins, but for the most part, one could still live in it, not happily, might I add.
Because a forest surrounds our village, we had to douse the area with water as well, as to make sure Argonne didn’t start on fire and cause a terrible forest fire. Right after removing the fire from our house, we immediately set water to the other houses that had burnt to the ground and were still flaming, along with any grass that had started on fire. Once we were done with that, we checked around a small perimeter of Argonne to make sure not one spark remained. When certain the forest was not in danger, Luna and I returned to Himitsu to get a better view at the situation.
This had happened a mere two days ago, and Luna and I are still in shock when we look at the remains of our once thriving but small village. Everyone we had ever known since childhood up until our current age of fifteen are now gone, in only a matter of minutes. Family, friends, elders, village leaders, and even tiny children who used to frolic around the village, were now gone.
In an eerie way, we were lucky, and not just because we were the only survivors. In fact, we probably would have gone through less pain if we had died along with everyone else. That way we wouldn’t have to be the only ones left in our village alive, with only the souls and spirits of all those that died haunting around. Thankfully, because the houses were burned down, the rubble covered up any dead bodies that lay under them. Even a part our now ramshackle house roof had collapsed right onto our parent's bed, which now served as their grave.
On a lighter note, there is something unique about the timber wolf clan that lived in Himitsu. Not because of the clan themselves, but because of two people within that clan. Me and my twin sister Luna. The reason for us being the center of that uniqueness is because all nagual can shift into animal form at any time they want, except for us. Ever since we were able to shift, which for any normal nagual is anytime after birth, we could only shift at night. For a normal nagual, it didn’t matter what the time of day was, night, dusk, morning, it made no difference.
So when all of the other little nagual children our age shifted for the very first time and parents praised them for learning how to, Luna and I ended up being the very last in our clan to shift. Our mother waited eagerly for us to shift. Of course, the very first time that one shifts is always a struggle.
Shifting from human form to animal form doesn’t come entirely natural until about two to four years of age. Before and between that time, a child must concentrate deeply on becoming a wolf, often closing their eyes and thinking hard, reaching down into their soul for the wolf spirit that resides within them, and trying to grasp it. This is often the explanation given on how to shift, though no nagual can really explain the feeling they get as they go from human form to animal form.
Most nagual children shift during the day so that they can play as wolves with their friends. Luna and I tried to shift as hard as we could, practicing everyday until our minds were sore with trying to tackle our wolf spirit, though it always seemed out of reach and never really there. No matter how hard we tried, we could never do it, and finally gave up.
Until one night, that is. I've said before how most children do their shifting in the day, when they can play, and don't bother at night for their too tired by the time the moon rises in the sky. A few nights after we had give up all hope, and everyone in Himitsu thought that Luna and I would never shift, I decided randomly to try and do so. And it worked, to all of our surprise! Luna tried as well, and she could too. It turned out that the problem was that we could only shift at night, no other time in the day.
Soon after, our parents took us to the doctors and elders of our village to find some sort of explanation as to why this was. The doctors with their limited tools and technology couldn’t find anything physically or mentally wrong with neither of us. The elders made an assumption that our bodies must react to the moon's aura. Their conclusion was false because if it were true, we wouldn’t be able to shift during a new moon, when there is no moon in the sky, which is untrue, because we can shift at that time.
The elders' conclusion was most likely based on myths and folklore that were passed down from generation to generation in our clan. One of the myths was that of the first wolf nagual, who shifted from human to animal on the night of a full moon, and only did so during days when the moon was a complete circle, until he mated and revolutionized to create our the shifting ability that we nagual have today.
This was but one of the many tales we had heard of a thousand times, and begged not to hear a millionth of only because we were sick of them. Now, finally, we were free of them. We would no longer sit in a circle around a campfire at night, huddled near one of our elders, who would tell the children and teenagers the scary and mysterious myths that were known. It was sad to think this, but also glad that we didn’t have to listen to such oral traditions anymore.
Ever since we could talk, Luna and I have pestered our parents with questions that they didn’t have answers to about ourselves. Eventually, we started to ask the question our parents always feared we would ask. Whether or not we could go out of the village and investigate so that we may try to find out some logic to our shifting problem, for, if it wasn’t to be found in Himitsu, it certainly was in some small corner of the world.
Of course, the answer was always no. And if we questioned that answer, they would always give us the only reasonable counter they could think of at the time, usually something related to our safety such as that we could get hurt. Our parents told us that if we went out of the village unprepared, the cats might try to harm us. We argued that we could carry weapons to defend ourselves with, since our father had taught us how to fight with many various weapons, but they said that either one of us carrying a sword was unacceptable, which didn’t make much sense to us, seeming as to how there were many fighters in our clan that make sure to keep our village safe from harm, our father was one of them.
But now our parents are no longer here to restrict us from going outside Himitsu, and we have all the freedom in the world, with no one to tell us what to do. The freedom to explore a world hidden from us our entire lives and find out why we cant shift normally, was now at our fingertips.
