Finn slept fitfully that night, plagued by the usual dreams of opening boxes and peering in jars and being confronted not with all the horrors of the world, but the horrors locked within her own head, spilling out in a great tide of scent and sound and colour so painfully loud and blindingly bright that she cried out in her sleep and woke herself up. The wolf lay there in the darkness and shivered, trying to dispel the customary chill that nipped at her toes and wriggled it’s way in between her vertebrae and made them ache. Her den smelt of fur and hay and reality, all comforting things.
She stood, pushing through the door that hid her sleeping quarters and through the next one that led to the rest of her cave. Her cave. So strange for such a space to be under her possession. Finn had never owned a cave so large! Then again, she’d never owned a cave at all. This room surged with warmth, and Finn grabbed a few dry branches to toss onto the fire that kept it this way. She sighed, gazing at the flames with avid eyes. The way they moved, flickered, danced, was so beautiful. She’d never been able to experience it this closely before.
The she-wolf basked in the renewed heat for a moment, before turning away and entering the long passage that led to the larger parts of the caverns. It wasn’t far, and less than a minute’s walk brought her to the huge common room. Finn yawned and stretched, feeling the joints in her body crackle and pop. She hated feeling so old and creaky and stiff. She was only four years old, for crying out loud! These movements done, Finn began settling into the patterns her father had taught her so long ago.
Duck, duck, weave, dart. Feint, leap, roll. Charge forward, spring back. Finn went through all the motions of a fight, but without a partner. This wasn’t much of a setback, she’d been doing it alone all her life after all, and knew each flip of a limb and torsion of her torso so well she could have performed it blindfolded. The workout didn’t do much to get her wheezing, her unnaturally cold temperature and high stamina saw to that. And once she had worn off the rust with a few minute's work she began to move even faster.
This was the stuff she lived for, the rush and pull and jump and snap of a battle. As she moved, Finn pictured each time she had used that particular set to defeat an enemy. Leap, grab, twist She’d thrown that bragging greenhorn of a wolf over her shoulder and sent him yelping for home. Slash, claw, strike. She’d torn the throat out of a mountain lion, moments before his own claws scored her shoulder. Indeed, Finn’s history was mapped out just as surely in her mind as it was written in scars on her pelt.
Now if only she could remember the lost coastlines.