The feel of the razor slicing through skin. And then... Color. That shade of red that looked like nothing else, at least to her eyes. Floating on the euphoria that came with a cut after she began speaking, she looked at the white walls, at the dark straps that held her to the chair.

“You don’t need colors, cs821. You just need a cut.”

White walls, white ceiling, white furniture, white clothes. As she stared at the wall, part of it darkened, becoming a shape. Four legs. A tail. Massive head with horns. Another dark patch on the wall began forming another animal. And another, until there was a herd of shapes on the wall.

Then she noticed dots forming on the wall just above the herd—that shade of red unlike any other. The dots grew and began to flow down the wall, covering the herd with bloody tears.

•••

Panting, her heart pounding, Hope scrambled out of bed and staggered to the screened window in her room, sucking in cool, early morning air as she pressed her hands against the wood windowsill.

She wasn’t in the compound anymore. The walls of her room weren’t white. The cabin used by the Wolfgard in the terra indigene settlement at Sweetwater had walls made of wood, had floors made of wood. Everything was simple and wood except for the toilet and sink in the little bathroom attached to this bedroom. But some of the drawings she had made since coming to live with Jackson and Grace and the rest of the pack were pinned to the walls. A few were even framed.

Some were just drawings of the pack, of the land, of everything that lived in the Sweetwater territory that came within the boundaries of where she was allowed to wander.

“My name is Hope Wolfsong,” she whispered. “I am not cs821. Not anymore. Never again.”

But the dream. There was more, and the more settled over her skin like a smothering film. Had to get it down on paper to show Jackson and Grace. The dream image of the animal had already faded from memory too much for her to describe with words.

She closed the shutters over the window and carefully felt her way back to her bed and the lamp on the bedside table. She clicked on the lamp and waited. Jackson and Grace sometimes slept on the porch with some of the other Wolves. Sometimes they slept in the cabin’s main room where they could hear her.

No one scratched at her door or growled. No male voice, rough from sleep and vocal chords that hadn’t fully shifted from Wolf to human, demanded to know what was wrong.