Strange blood.

New scent.

I can see them arriving, standing before me with wide eyes.

No threat.

Thin, frustrating metal separates us, but I can see them, I can smell them, I can hear their hearts beating just below the surface of their frail, pale, tender skin.

My kin.

Pacing behind me, silent paws treading on fallen leaves as they try to transverse the metal behind me, try to reach where I am because they can feel them too, feel them just on the edge of this pent up raging existence.

Soft voices.

I can hear them calling me, whispering, cooing, pleading with me to close that last small distance that separates us, keeps me from freedom, chains me to this captured, enclosed, confining existence I live behind the impenetrable nets of metal.

Insistent calls.

The others toss their heads back, howling to the sky, sorrow tearing from their souls in throaty, haunting howls as they weave a song that tells of millennia of existence beyond ourselves and I can feel my entire being answer back as my jaws lift to the heavens and my voice is no longer my own as it joins their eerie chorus.

Heavy hearts.

They have witnessed our melody, pleased that they should be privileged to share such an intimate bond with us, with those they know *nothing* about, could never know anything, never feel what we feel, and as they begin to walk away she turns, her eyes catching my fierce glare, sees my fury and frustration at being contained, at being caged, at being.

Bound.

And as she searches my eyes I learn. She sees, she knows, she understands.

Loss.

Pain ripples through me as I lean back, as I cry for her, as I beg the others to join and hear them take up the call of all our hearts. This call knows no end to sorrow in this moment for it is an eternal pain, it is a part of all our beings, of both our kinds, of wolf and human.

Shuffling feet.

She will not forget us, nor we her. We are one soul amongst the harmony of the song. for in different ways. somewhere along the way. somehow.

Understanding.

Somehow. we have both lost our freedom.