Chapter Text
People say you never remember your first moments of life because you're not even conscious at that moment, and your neurons haven't yet made associations with what you see, what you hear, what you feel.
But I remember perfectly the first thing my eyes saw when I was born. It wasn't my parents, it wasn't my future wife, it wasn't her family, it wasn't the eyes of the pack leader and his son, it wasn't any of the members of my biological or pack family.
I remember perfectly that the first thing my eyes saw were red eyes staring at me with hunger, and that's why I started to cry... Because of the fear I felt, because of how vulnerable I felt... Because of how alone, empty, and weak I was before those eyes...
And although from that moment on I never saw those beautiful ruby-like eyes again, the memory and the unconscious thought produced an uncontrollable fear that I couldn't explain... My hands trembled... My eyes crystallised and my body shuddered…
Everyone around me said I was a weirdo, a coward.
And although over time the image was forgotten, seeing those eyes again one stormy night made me scream when a thunderclap dyed the sky white and those red eyes were accompanied by a huge, satisfied smile for having provoked my loudest and most terrifying scream. My parents comforted me, but there was no way to calm the crying that that nightmare and those eyes provoked...
I turned fourteen two years after I was born.
I often didn't understand how humans could take so long to grow and mature, or vampires, who matured just as slowly as humans, yet their appearance between adolescence and adulthood always remained almost eternally constant.
I'm not allowed to talk or think about vampires; they were enemies, but enemies so close to us that it seemed ridiculous to even consider the prohibition against thinking about them. In fact, even though the pack leader and his son explained to us once a year, being something like a commemorative tradition for all those who died in the war, how it was that the vampires were such bad people and the pain that the wolves felt when one of them vilely betrayed them for chilling interests of revenge and jealousy for not being able to take something that did not belong to him... And it is not that it was simply something of a love triangle that had caused a civil war within the wolves themselves, but the main problem was that that traitor wolf did nothing other than try to take the love of his life, stealing the chief's wife in a marital slip in which the pack leader would see himself fully entitled to pursue and massacre the traitor...
Because that was the law of the wolves. Laws that were based on four basic pillars. Our laws were basic and were learned from the time we were children, barely aware of the world:
Fidelity… Monogamy… Trust… Loyalty to the leader and his family… and breaking any of those laws, depending on the severity, could mean death…
Undoubtedly, that traitor would die one way or another, either in an upcoming war against the vampires or due to his own age. Considering that we all have the end of the road waiting for us, some sooner than others, we shouldn't consider the traitor merely a traitor for fighting for his life and trying to survive... Rather, we should consider him a traitor for the fragile legacy his family was forced to accept when they realised the betrayal their son had chosen in order to survive after trying to break up the entire pack out of a selfish desire to take the pack leader's wife.
And as far as I know, that breaks with monogamy, with fidelity, with the trust of the pack and with loyalty to the leader…
In my opinion, the fact that someone wanted to take someone's partner, and that this partner played along with it until they realised the sexual intentions and then alerted her husband, wasn't exactly the best example of fidelity to me; after all, laws are laws. But personally, I like to go beyond what the stories tell us, not because I want to defend an indefensible traitor, but because it was a matter of logic to consider certain things when you have reason and a lot of free time to look at the clouds…
And when you can no longer think of what to imagine, your eyes wander into the forbidden forest, and when everyone playing in the meadow looks at you and laughs because you prefer the solitude of a book or admiring the passing clouds rather than simply interacting with them.
“Hello, Tweek…” a muffled and tired voice was heard next to me, I turned my head, seeing a boy with brown hair, a little long, that was tied in a high ponytail and part of the hair was left to fall, creating a curtain of straight brown hair and violet eyes who approached me and sat next to me, crossing his legs and resting his arms, resting most of his weight on them as he leaned back. “Are they playing that pathetic fighting game again?”
“Yes…” I sighed, returning my gaze to the front, and although I was focused on admiring the forbidden forest, which no one has been allowed to approach, much less enter, since the times of the war…
For a few seconds my eyes focused on the virile and masculine fights in which all the young wolves of my age were fighting.
The basic laws of wolves were four basic pillars for the stability of a pack… but since the war, the leader decreed a general prohibition that did not count as a law, but as an imperative prohibition… anyone who crossed the forest could find themselves in serious trouble…
“What do they find so funny about hitting each other?”
“Don't know.” I shrugged.
“And what do you find fun about looking at them?”
“I wasn't looking at them…” I admitted.
“And what were you looking at?”
“The forest…” I rolled my eyes at Jason's, he wrinkled his expression in doubt.
“The forest?” He raised an eyebrow.
I nodded, returning my eyes to that dense, thick, and unexplored forbidden zone that had so much power, so much presence, and so many good hiding places, but no one could get close.
“I thought you'd already given up that obsession with the forest…”
I was lost in my thoughts. Plunging into the depths of my blurred memories, those hungry red eyes made my body shudder again.
The day I was born, those eyes pierced my soul and filled me with fear, but also curiosity. So, for as long as I can remember, my body, even if I didn't want to, moved on its own toward the forest to search for those horrifying eyes that gave me so many nightmares and made me so curious…
My parents never let me near them, never lost sight of me, because they knew that if they lost me, I would go straight to the forest… I remember almost starting a war one night when I was seven years old…