Daaren

Pain all over. Want dark-den.

Humans. Want to bite them. Fear. Bite, they hurt.

Chains drag on collar, outside, can’t run.

More humans. Too many. Loud. Smell bad fear, anger.

One comes near. Challenges chain-humans. Snarls, no bites.

Human pack angry at chain-humans. They fear now. Turn tails.

Challenger makes calm noises. Quiet. Touch gentle. Makes chains fall. Pulls me away, to place without other humans.

Want to run, but weak. Afraid.

Challenger takes collar.

Less pain.

Quiet. Safety.

I change. No fur, but hands. This is me, too.

My voice is hoarse with disuse. “Thank you.”

So, I'm attempting the April A to Z challenge, with fiction with at most 100 words. "C is for Chained" came from Royce Day. If you have prompts for later in the alphabet, please give them to me.

Nico found Daaren cleaning the kitchen table, and placed a little metal disc on it with a click.

“What’s that?”

“Tax plaque. Has our telephone number, too, so if you get caught again some other full moon, the pound calls.”

Daaren didn’t touch it while working through the implications. “I won’t wear a collar.”

“I can fix it to a bandana. Which still goes round the neck…”

He sighed. “It works. Do me a favour and don’t use a red one, though.”

“What is it with you and red?”

He was wound up enough to snap. “Red is for targets!”

I heard Nico approach, and didn't hide from her. I could not... well, if she was looking for me, she'd go on, and who knows in what trouble she'd end up.

She took a breath and stood still when she noticed me. She must have looked at me for a while, I guess. I didn't look at her. Eventually she sat down next to me.

The moon tugged on Daaren's attention. Around this time of the month, time seemed to slow, and the world to come closer, right under his skin.

It is... peaceful, he told himself.

Nico ambled away from the main hubbub of the party, and found Daaren on the veranda, apparently watching the gardens. She propped herself up next to him, and asked conversationally, "So, why'd you leave?"

The view from the shoulder of the Tellanot - that's a mountain, in case you didn't know - is amazing. If you inch right to the edge of the cliff, and lean forward, You get a feeling almost like falling up into the sky.

I guess I was caught up in admiring it a bit too much, for the next thing that happened was that I fell down past the ground; the edge had crumbled. I twisted and tried to grab the new edge, and Daaren successfully grabbed my wrist, and well, the usual you'd expect happened. With me down the cliffside and him flat on the path, he said, "Don't look down."

I looked him in the face while trying to find some purchase with my other hand, and feet, and asked, "Sure, but tell me why."

He didn't answer until we were lying both on sound rock, panting, myself more than him. Sound rock has benefits, too.

Then he answered, "I thought you might get stupid ideas. Like jumping."

Made me laugh until I couldn't breathe at all anymore. Right to the point, that's him.

"Ah, finally we can talk in private, just you and me."

Daaren carefully kept his face blank. Counting two guards and three servants in the room with them, who did not seem about to leave, he concluded the Baron must be completely insane. Better not to irritate him.