Chapter 15
Kiss Your Fist And Touch The Sky

“What do you mean I was hiding the…” I frowned. This was all sideways. She wasn’t supposed to have responded that way! She was supposed to, I don’t know, scream, shout, get the people of the village to drive the evil werewolf witch out. Speaking of which. “Hold on, what do you mean, ‘everyone is’??” 

“The village!” Octavia said, waving out the door. “This is a… how did you not know? The pack literally lifted you out of the snow! Sorry,” she rolled her eyes, “your ‘cousin’ out of the snow. You tried to pet me!”

“I did what?!” I squeaked. I must’ve been completely delirious at that moment, but now that she mentioned it, I did vaguely remember dreams about wolves… right before I’d woken up in her house. And… “Oh god…”

“In your defence,” she said with a smile, “it was genuinely precious. Then you turned into a wolf in front of us, so we knew you were one of us. I thought you knew we knew, and it was the… Maya you were embarrassed about.”

“But, wait, it wasn’t full moon yet!” I protested. “How did— What d— What?”

“Wait, you don’t know?” She cocked her head. “We can always change, Maya.” 

“Then what about the full moon?” I looked out the window. It wasn’t going to be long now, and I wasn’t ready. There wasn’t enough time, I wasn’t ready to stop being Maya yet, I wasn’t ready to let go yet. “I don’t want to go,” I whispered. Octavia closed the distance between us and wiped away the tears that had started to roll down my face. 

“You don’t have to,” she said quietly. “You can stay, there’s nobody’s making you go.”

“But… I’m only Maya when the moon…” Breathing was getting harder, and I felt myself start hyperventilating. “I don’t… get… to be…” Octavia wrapped her arms around me and buried my face in her shoulder. 

“You can just… be Maya,” she said. “All you’ve to do is choose it.” Her hot breath brushed my ear. Her whispers fluttered into my brain and set off every part of it like fireworks. That wasn’t true, was it? I couldn’t just choose to be Maya, that’s not how it worked, because I wasn’t Maya, Maya was something, someone that happened to me, no matter how much I wanted it to be otherwise. 

“I can’t just…” was all I managed before my breathing was reduced to huge, heaving sobs. She patted me softly on the back, rubbing her hand in little circles between my shoulderblades. 

“You can,” she said again, and very softly kissed my cheek. “But maybe you need a little… affirmation.” She stepped back. “Come on, it’s pretty much time.” She closed the door and quickly tossed off her coat, then dropped her dress. 

Even with everything happening, Tavi taking her clothes off in front of me short-circuited my brain. I would’ve felt awful if I’d been capable of even a single thought, but my mind was completely taken up by the beautiful, very naked woman in front of me. She giggled. “You’ll make me blush, Maya.” Suddenly she got a lot shorter, and a lot more… fluffy. The wolf, the one I’d met in the forest the other day, sat in front of me. 

I heard a scrambling behind me, but as I turned around I tripped over my clothes which were now far too big for me. I scrambled backwards out of them, my own four feet getting in my way, before looking at Pancakes. 

He’d woken up from the spot where he’d been asleep, and he was clearly excited at the sight of not one, but two large dogs for him to play with. He fell face-first off the couch, bounced up like it was nothing, and hurried over. 

There was a sort of growling-hissing coming from behind me, which I realised after a second was the sound of Octavia laughing. Pancakes came over and experimentally sniffed her nose. She raised a paw and bopped him on the snout. He yelped, jumped back, jumped forward again, and then fell over and pawed at her. 

“Woof,” I told him reproachfully. He glared, but I wasn’t having it. I nodded at the couch. He got up and went back to his spot, and I didn’t know if it was my imagination or not but it looked like he was dragging his feet. 

“Arf,” Octavia said, winked, and turned around, nudged the door open, and ran outside. I followed her out, making sure to leave the door open just a little bit in case Pan needed to go out. 

Tavi was a blur of movement through the snow, but every time she stopped, I saw the moon reflecting in her eyes. Every time she looked at me, I recognised her again. I couldn’t not follow her. My legs moved before my mind decided to. 

Tavi ran through the trees and I followed. She jumped across the stream, and I crashed into it. Not that I was going to let that stop me, of course. She let out that little chuckle-giggle again as I shook myself off. I looked up at her, and found her nose-to-nose with me. She nudged me softly, then spun on her tail and ran off again. 

Where was she going? This wasn’t a solution, it was just… putting things off, distracting me. But I didn’t want to think about the reality of becoming the Witch again, so I decided to let her distract me. Maybe that was for the best. 

She danced around me, weaving between the trees, and in time I found it easier to just lose myself in the game of it. Octavia. Could I call her my Octavia? She’d implied as much earlier, but that was before telling her The Witch and I were one and the same. On the other hand, did she already know that? And would she be okay with that? 

Did that make me hers? As we circled around each other, both out of breath, and she shoved her nose into the fluff around my neck, I was starting to accept that, if nothing else, I wanted to be hers. Her Maya. 

She once again led me through the snow. Up the mountain. To the little cabin we’d been at before. The sky was slowly getting brighter. There wasn’t much time left anymore. We walked up to the porch, where she turned around and sat down, looking at the horizon. Time was up. The sky had draped itself in purples and reds. I was going to turn back any second now. Nonetheless, I joined her, and she moved her mouth close to my ear. 

“Stay,” she said. I looked at her in surprise. How was she able to speak? Nonetheless, I did as she said, and sat down on the hard wood, and looked at the horizon. “Stay here,” she continued. “Stay like this. Stay you. Stay wolf.” She nudged me with her forehead. “Stay Maya.”

I wanted to respond with a little despondent woof. If my calculations and timetable had been correct, I had only seconds left before I’d turn back into The Witch. Into him. Not to mention naked. That was the last thing I wanted. Not in front of her. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. “I don’t know how,” I said. I blinked, then tried to look at my own mouth. Next to me, the crystal-clear laugh of Octavia rang through the air. 

“You look ridiculous,” she said, leaned over, and nudged my nose with hers. “There. You did it.” 

“But… how?”

“You chose,” she said with a little shrug. “That is all.” 

“That can’t be it!” I protested as the sun painted her fur a warm yellow. She closed her eyes as the warm rays bathed us both in golden light. “There has to be something more to it!” She just shook her head. 

“No,” she said. “There’s only the choice you’ve made. Maya was already there, love. You only had to choose to be her.” 

“But it can’t be that simple! I spent weeks trying to figure this out, trying to understand what was going on and why I would turn into her and what made me go wolf and—” I laughed. “It’s just… choosing?”

“It’s just choosing,” Octavia said. “Being Maya was a choice you had to make. And I know your kind.” She shot me a knowing look. “You would’ve fretted a lifetime trying to reason things through. I only put you in a spot where a choice could be made, was all.”

“You monster,” I said, and sat a little closer to her. Her tail flicked mine. I flicked it back, but they got entangled. Oh well. I closed my eyes and let the warm light of the winter morning sun fall on my eyelids. “This is nice.” Our tails slowly entwined. 

“It is,” Octavia said.

Of course, we had to head back eventually, if only to feed Pancakes. But a weight was off my chest. Maya wasn’t something that happened to me. Not anymore, if she’d ever been. Maya was a choice I’d made, and now I got to be her. Back in my cabin, Octavia turned back into her human self, and carefully picked her clothes off of the ground. A part of me wanted that scene to take a more interesting turn, but the fire in the hearth had died and it was, frankly, too cold for those kinds of shenanigans. 

Then there was me. I sat in the middle of the room. I was going to turn back. But I’d be damned if I spent another day as him. Slowly, the floor grew more distant. My limbs longer. Octavia stood in front of me, and wrapped a blanket around me when I started shivering. 

“Hello,” she said, and kissed me softly. I was, as always, liquid uselessness in her touch. She took my face in her hands and kissed my cheeks. My forehead. My nose. My lips. Over and over again, in a little cycle that she kept repeating, until I giggled, my voice high and beautiful and Maya and mine.

“What was that for?” I asked with a smile. 

She grinned her teeth bare. “Because it’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I replied, kissed her back, then very gently bit her nose. “I’m Maya.” She laughed. 

“I know,” she said, “and it’s nice to meet you too, Maya. I’m yours.”

“A,” I said, as she wrapped her arms around me again. Then… I put some clothes on, because we did need to get a fire started, feed and walk Pan, and eat something, because neither of us had really eaten a lot the day before either, romantic as we wanted to be in the middle of that room. 

So we made food. Together. She wrapped her arms around me from behind and kissed the back of my neck and I literally died on the spot. I returned the favour and found out that wolves can purr, too. 

We spent the day talking, reading, and scratching a very spoiled Pan behind the ears. I explained the situation with The Witch to her and showed her the journals. Showed her the magic circles I’d tried to make to figure myself out. 

In the next few days, weeks, I told her about where I was from. Who I’d been and what my world and life had been like, and reassured her that what I wanted more than anything in the world was to stay. With her. For as long as she’d have me. 

She told me she wanted to share her life with me. So she did.

Elamimax

This is the last chapter ;D (okay actually there's one more epilogue happening but other than that the story is over and done!) I hope you all liked it :3 Bigger end-of-story note tomorrow!