Ah yes, the military - Bastion of Brotherhood, Defender of the Defenseless, Super Power of the Free World, Prison to the Soul.  Now, don’t get me wrong, the military does have some redeeming qualities for those that lack them.  Things like discipline are taut, respect for others and yourself, and pushing yourself when you feel the most vulnerable, but for someone who is as free spirited as me it was little more than a prison.  Rigorous schedules and unrealistic expectations abounded.  This was the darkest time for me in regards to Her, the wolf that now resided in my heart.  Never had I felt so alone then during basic training.  Perhaps that was intended, they must break you down and build you up to be a soldier and not a spineless civilian…right…whatever DRILL SERGEANT!

     Imagine, dear reader if you will, having a wild beast within you whose natural motivation is protect itself when being threatened.  Now, imagine that soul views every   incoming order, scream, scolding, and punishment as a threat.  It’s a good thing we had to have eight hours of sleep at night (unless it was guard duty, but I’ll get into that later) because the constant state of alert I was in exhausted my lupine soul.  There were some moments when I could reconnect with my wild side if you will.  We were constantly exercising.  Whether it was walking to one appointment or the next, 5 o’ clock calisthenics, or drill practice we were always on the go.  These were the times that I fell into myself and touched my wolf-ness.  I imagined when we were running laps that I was back in my Sanctuary, running on all fours as the wind wove in and out of my fur, relished the feel of my muscles pumping and my lungs expanding and contracting, but then, it was over too soon and I was back to being yelled at, told to memorize inane things that proved to be completely useless outside of our ‘final exam’ to graduate basic training, and then there was guard duty…oh wretch, thy name is guard duty.

     You would think given my ‘tendencies’ shall we say, that guard duty would have been a joy.  The only thing joyful about it was to relish in the silence.  There is something soothing about listening to 40 other people’s rhythmic breathing, the stillness of the balmy late summer nights in Texas, the calls of the wild life.  I imagined from time to time I was hunting the mutant sized jackrabbits.  Don’t believe me?  These rabbits were the size of small dogs and it was scary to be marching to an appointment to have one of those freaks of nature burst out of the bushes and run through your column.  It took an incredible amount of restraint on my part and abject terror of being punished to not break rank and chase after it.  But I digress, let me continue.

     While on guard duty there was always a perpetual and constant state of uncertainty and uneasiness.  Primarily because we were told to be alert and vigilant!  The Training Instructors had a duty to perform during these evenings.  They were to try to gain access using various methods of idiocy.  Everything from using an ID card with Mickey Mouse’s face and demanding access, to screaming at you and pounding on the door or shaking it to threatening to recycle you or send you down for punishment.  There was one time our TI (that is the abbreviation…in case you didn’t know) went so far as to bring up the superintendent of the squadron and demanded that both of them be allowed in.  The poor hapless guard didn’t know what to do so like any deer caught in the headlights…he let them in without proper ID.  My friends, I don’t need to tell you the punishments that ensued after that little debacle.  This was the first and last time that pack mentality permeated our little group, and it was all on evicting the weakest link.

     Along with these fun little ‘pranks’ as I came to call them, there were other issues that arose only naturally when 40 people of differing backgrounds were crammed into a prison block for six and a half weeks.  Racism became an issue.  I won’t get into the gory details here, but needless to say it cost our instructor his stripe (even though none of it was true, the racism, but the sheer mentioning of it caused a stir through the entire squadron) as well as almost causing us to all be sent back a week in training for ‘remediation.’  As expected, my ‘unusual-ness’ became the butt of many a joke and many a sideways glance.  After the last scare, people were on the lookout for ‘differences’ and wanted them rubbed out.  I had no friends in this band of brothers because no one wanted to be near me.  I heard in whispers that people said there was something “weird and unnatural” about me.  Terribly sorry for all your ignorance, ‘friends’ but we all are different.  Perhaps the stress was playing tricks on my mind and it was all a figment of my imagination, all I remember is one time yelling at my bunkmate in such a way, that I finally just let go and growled at him gritting my teeth and threatened to tear his throat out.  This was the final nail in the coffin.  He did finally do what I had asked of him, but the silence that fell in the room that day was deafening.

     Time passed and graduation was over, on to technical school!  The greatest tease the military ever conceived.  You see, in tech school there were multiple ‘phases’ that you could go through, and each phase bestowed upon you privileges.  The theory behind it was to show you how the ‘real’ military worked.  These privileges ranged from displaying TVs and personal affects in your dorm room at all times to being allowed to wear civilians clothes and even go into town in your free time.  This destroyed many people as with the freedoms, they became stupid and took dangerous chances.  All you had to do is keep your nose clean and run a mile and a half in eighteen minutes and thirty seconds or less.  Piece of cake right?  Wrong.  The run was the easy part.  There were so many ways to screw it up for you and most of them were because students are foolish.  Everything you can imagine in a college campus occurred in those hallowed halls of military discipline, but because it was the military, every escapade you were caught at punished the entire squadron.   

     What does this have to do with my therianthropy?  Wolves have dens yes?  Dens where they defend from outside intruders.  In tech school we had room inspections.  We were given the privilege to decorate tastefully and keep the rooms clean.  Easy enough, but if there is one thing that I detest, and continue to do so is other people coming into my den and digging through things.  One day there was a surprise room inspection.  The TI came in and looked around, apparently I had failed.  I’m a perfectionist by nature, not necessarily a good thing, but when I confronted the TI about why I had failed he made some nonsense up about my shoes being misaligned or some crap like that (there were strict policies there that determined how things were to be displayed and such.)  You already probably know what happened after that, I was sent to remedial military training for a weekend because I ‘threatened’ a TI.  Apparently growling and clenching your fists like claws are considered a ‘threat.’  Well…I suppose taking a swipe at someone I knew was a known offender of the phase program, as well as an underage drunk when I stormed out probably didn’t help matters either.

     Not all things were bad here.  The dreams returned, oh sweet bliss they returned and always when things were going bad, but overtime they slowed.  I noticed subtle changes but nothing that really alerted me to anything odd.  One day, however, the truth of how far I had sunk because painfully obvious.  There was a time when I was struggling in class and was very close to ‘washing back’ which is basically military speak for repeating the grade.  I was in tears on my way back to my dorm room.  Not because of the material, but knowing that my wild soul would be stuck here even longer.  I was doubly fortunate because during this time I did not have a roommate so I had the entire room to myself.  I locked the door and lay on the bed.  I fell into myself and allowed my connection to Luna (crazy crab that I am) and allowed Her to wrap me in Her silvery embrace.  In a short time I had entered that in-between state of trance, the dreamy/detached feeling suffused itself in my mind.  I visualized my Sanctuary and as it came into view I quickly felt something was very wrong.  

     The trees that I had remembered from my childhood as golden and yellow had withered to bent, twisted shades of their former selves.  The grass did not ‘feel’ soft and supple beneath my feet…wait…feet?  I never entered within this sacred place without going through a spiritual shift, this shift was necessary because of the sanctity of the place, no mundane human could enter here astrally or spiritually, the wilder spirits would never allow it.  I was naked and very much human and vulnerable.  The air was chill and hard to breathe.  The pool where I had seen my True Self had grown stale and stagnant, sludge-like things now lived in the crystal clear waters.  I felt the intense scrutiny of something alien and foreboding.  I looked around for Her, but she was nowhere to be seen.  I took a few tentative steps; each blade of grass seemed to cut into my feet, shredding the tender soft human skin.  I followed the same path I had all those years ago but it felt wrong, a mockery of what it had been.  I gazed into the pool, leaning close to the noisome liquid that roiled around and burst in mucus-like bubbles.  I fell to my knees, the grass once more piercing me, but I ignored the pain.  It was then that I felt what had happened.  I had done this.  The military had done this.  My Sanctuary is a direct representation of my spiritual health and at this point it was shattered, malignant, and tortured.

     I shook myself out of my trance.  I had gone to seek solace, but only found devastation.  How could I have sunk so low?  How could I have allowed such a fate to befall me?  That, my patient readers, will be explained in the next chapter.