You get used to it. You figure out how to live, and how to stand on your own four paws. You learn who you really are as you fight for your life day after day, and who-ever you used to be is stripped from your very soul. They never saw me for who I really was, and they will never know. I do have mixed feelings about the pack of my birth, and yet nothing was strong enough to pull my fancy to return. It's strange now that I think about it, and complicated. Difficult to understand. Like a puzzle inside of a maze. Too much to bother with at the moment. Maybe we'll go back to that later when I was in a more... philosophic mood. The light pools on the pale russet mask that covers the right side of my face. I shift and can feel my journey worn muscles protest at every slight movement, but I will survive. It is what I am made for. What my bloodline excels in.

It was what I am used to. I am used to pulling breaths into my lungs even in the most pained and hopeless of times, used to feeling my heart beat in my chest even if my own lifeblood was pooling around me. There was always that ingrained voice snarling in my ears that to die was to be lost, to be weak, to be so useless that even a puppy could surpass you in worth. To die is to let heaven crumble to pieces around everyone you care about, and it had nothing but prices to pay. To be killed by your own pack is the greatest dishonor that one could face, and they had tried it. They had failed. I had escaped and become a wandering soul, with everywhere and yet nowhere to go. Always having to keep an eye open while I slept, and my good ear perked for any minuscule sound, while I made sure those that came looking never found me. I was nothing but a ghost.

I know the way of the loner. I know the ins and outs, and where to let your paws tread and where to avoid. I'd been thrown to the mercy of everything and everyone and had to learn quickly. Under heavy stress and no support system I had indeed learned quickly. I had to learn or die, kill or become someone else's kill. I had made myself into a instrument of survival, and what a special one I am indeed.

And yet I had not lost myself, as my ears catch the call of another. I gaze in her direction with a soft look, and the tip of my tail gives a welcoming swish. She is alone just as I am, and yet she bears no scras of being cast out. She didn't look the part of a killer either, so for once I am at a loss. Was she a loner by choice, or was she born to loners? My tail gives another wag as I dip my head in greeting, and loosen up my stance. "I had no meaning to trespass."