& like jasmine emerging from behind your hands i will wake up

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When Olive awoke from her slumber, there was almost nothing that signified that things were different. The trees stood as obelisks, the wind blew gently against her cheeck, the sun danced upon dew drops; the things of the world rose as they always did. The alabaster sylph felt as she always did, perhaps somewhat weary from her travels, but her blood thrummed and her legs could move. Just as the world had done, Olive walked on.
 
As she moved, she thought of trivial things — the trees and the wind and the sun, yes, but also how her belly felt hungry and it seemed to sharpen her mind. Yet, she wouldn’t place fang against prey until it was necessary, and there would be some larger purpose to the small soul’s consumption. Within a week’s time, the moon’s crescent would slip from the sky and disappear. The timing could not be more opportune for a sacrifice. She felt filled with the potential ritual the way a mother might feel her womb filled with puppies. It was something larger than herself, which she lived for entirely, and it would leap forth from her being only when the conditions were right for it. Still, these were trivial things, no different from every turn-of-the-moon the shewolf had ever lived. In another month, she would fast again, and the moon would purge itself. She would sing and commune with her keepers — souls she felt adjacent to, but could not explain how — and then she would resume her earthly duties, until the cycle came around once more.
 
It was in the middle of this thought that Olive noticed another wolf, picking her delicate way across the landscape. For seemingly no reason other than an energetic pull, the woman fell into a languid pursuit, footfalls silent and curiosities piqued.

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There, somewhere, beyond the mists — a child cries. Olive, attuned to the sound more than she is consciously aware of, pauses in her current excavation and spend but a mere moment using a wiggle of ears to correctly place the epicenter of the sound.

Though the sound of a child was not always a harbinger of misfortune, this was not a stone she would ever leave unturned.

Into the hung-heavy clouds she dove, her pale pelt blurring at the edges against the mist, melting into her milieu. It all seemed so eerily empty despite the clear presence of another; abandoned, yet so verdant. She wondered if this place, too, was claimed — perhaps she had accidentally wandered into an occupied place, and this voice was not as lost as it may seem. Whether or not this was true, she would soon see.

Beneath a heathered aegis, she picked her way towards the cry which called to her; in the same moment the petaled child came into view was she swept into the embrace of another, and the two became one. Olive, her presence still obscured, paused with one paw cocked and curled into her angled chest. Was this a place for her, something so intimate between others? If Olive hadn't been Olive, and she hadn't felt an unfurling of something lovely and recognizable in her chest, she might have left the mother and child be.

Instead, called forth by the very essence of her ancestral being, Olive pushed through and parted the underbrush to share space with the others, though any words she might have said were left unspoken.

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+1 discovery

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Her presence was noticed, and at the same moment, Olive no longer felt extraneous — in the pith of her chest, something warm flowed. It was not the thump-thump-thump of her heartbeat, but something that ran deeper. It more than kept her body alive; it was the soul that embodied her every moment of being. Rarely did she feel it flow so close to the surface outside of ritual and being in the god-state, but here it was now, and just as the child's cries melted into a self-assured silence, so did the nearly endless questioning that plagued Olive's spirited mind. Not only did she know, but she was.

The dove, perceiving the question that was asked of them both, settled back on her haunches and then pedaled her twiggy front-legs outwards, belly against the earth. She crawled, crept, slunk close to the enveloping madonna, unable to find the ability to procure words, or use her throat. Rendered speechless, Olive allowed her silence to be her voice; and the glimmer in her eyes, the meaning behind her words.

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