Chapter Six: The Stirring Within

The moonlight seemed different lately.

It no longer just kissed Aria’s skin. It would flow, warm her bones, whisper things in a language she didn’t understand yet. She gazed at it for hours without realizing how time went by, her mouth slightly opened as if she was waiting for something. Words that she had never learned formed on her tongue before disappearing like smoke. Since she discovered her pregnancy, the world began to move around her. The forest no longer felt like a threat, but as a living being who looked at her, breathed and walked beside her.

Sarah noticed it first.

"Your aura is changing," she murmured one night.

The fire lit between them, casting their shadows in strange shapes along the worn walls. A strong scent of burning rosemary and old smoke filled the air. Sarah’s fingers followed a worn charm around her neck as she studied Aria with eyes older than the forest itself. Aria placed a hand on her lower back while the old woman sat by the fire, trying to relieve the cramps she had caught on her side.

"The child is quickly... but something else is awakening."

Aria didn’t know what it meant. The forest was scaring her before, but now she felt as if she was going through memories that she could vaguely remember. Every whirl of wind carried the whisper of long-forgotten stories. She purred with recognition of the stones under her feet, as if something sacred was within her. The trees swayed as they passed by, as if they recognized them in silence.

As the weeks went by, her dreams were overwhelmed by the silver wolves flying through the air in purple flames. She began to wonder if she had ever woken up anything. In a dream, a silver wolf was standing on top of a flaming hill, howling not at the moon, but toward a bleeding sunLooking at her, she felt her bones break and rebuild immediately.

A pregnancy was supposed to make her tired, heavy and vulnerable; instead Aria felt alive.

Her skin was trembling with energy; her wolf, once calm and careful, had become more present - loud, restless, brave. At first, Aria refused. She bit her tongue swallowing the growl and her fists gripped as if her nails were turning into claws the next minute. "Have I become something else? Will I get lost?

Some nights, she woke up fighting for some air, her chest clenched while her breath was redundant. A voice, not their, but deeply familiar, murmured in his sleep.Her heartbeat never matched the rhythm of her own pulse.

Sarah led her as best she could; the old woman’s hands were steady, her voice like the wind blowing through the leaves.

"Your wolf is awakening," Sarah explained one morning as Aria was crushing herbs for tea, "but not like the others. It was tied up, hidden and waiting for the signal that the lineage could return safely.

Aria sat up,"what do you mean by the lineage?"

Sarah did not respond immediately; she moved the herbs, lips tightened. When she finally looked up, her smile was somewhere between sadness and fear.

"You will understand soon."

Over the months, the signs multiplied.

Aria’s brown wolf was rarely seen and sometimes pressed so hard on her skin like it was about to burst from the inside. As she walked through the forest, her gaze softened as the world glowed with colors that she never had any knowledge of. The leaves shrank like glass and the tree trunks were inhaled with hidden runes. Each carrot was buzzing under its boots and each flower blinked before shutting up.

One morning, she fell to her knees.

Sarah knelt down next to her and whispered, "You see the veil."

It was no longer just a pregnancy.

It was the rebirth.