Abney: Of Maggots and Men
By atfirstdawn

*Mature content warning
*(C)Keira Morrison/atfirstdawn 2014


Abney opened her eyes to the dimly starlit riverbank with a stifled groan. Her body ached from head to toe and was bound in much the same way. The ropes binding her ankles, thighs, wrists and elbows had only tightened during her ill-conceived attempt of escaping the city guards of Frockly. Admittedly throwing herself from the city's highest bridge and into the city's most vigorous torrent of raging water hadn't been the most elegant or safest means of escape but it had worked, just.

Swimming with her limbs so tightly bound was as hard as Abney had imagined it, but harder still had been her efforts to not ingest copious amounts of polluted city water while wearing a gag that jammed her mouth open.
Despite her best efforts to remain conscious, and therefore alive, Abney's body had eventually succumbed to an all encompassing darkness brought about by the most definitive example of exhaustion she had ever known...

Coughing and spluttering to rid her throat of what felt like a slime coated hairball, or perhaps a hair coated slimeball, Abney impatiently edged herself out of the riverbank and rolled herself onto the soft grass of the surrounding meadow. Lying on her back and her arms, Abney took a few moments to gather herself.
No bones had been broken and no internal organs had been ruptured during her improvised escape attempt, though she'd have a fair few angry bruises come the morn.
Sitting up and twisting her head left and right, Abney took in her surroundings. The river had taken her out of the city of Frockly and into the countryside, she was tens of miles from where she had first taken the plunge but knew exactly where she was. She knew that in the close distance to her left was a small yet thick area of woodland and also knew that half a mile to the east was the small village of Mitrah, a village full of taverns and honest trades. Though, much like Frockly, Mitrah had outlawed the presence of werewolves. Anyone known or thought to be a werewolf in Mitrah would be driven out of town by fire and pitchforks and forced to roam the rather empty and deserted countryside.

Sighing with frustration at her run of increasingly bad luck, Abney lay back down on the soft grass, rolled onto her front for some semblance of comfort and weighed her options.

On one hand she could hop, bound and gagged, into Mitrah and hope that the fat bearded drunkards in any random tavern were too hammered to realise that her fierce yellow and black eyes screamed werewolf as they untied her.
Or, on the other hand, she could summon what little strength she had left to change her form and pray that the ropes binding her limbs would snap during the transformation and set her free. Though, if the ropes didn't snap, she then faced the danger of breaking her own arms, legs and teeth...

Alone and at the mercy of her weary mind, which had proven itself incapable of making the decision she sorely needed to make over the last few minutes, Abney turned her attention to the faint scent of death that had hung in the air since she awoke.
For Abney, the scent of death, however slight, had a quality to it which warmed her blood and during a night as cold as this, warmth was exactly what she needed.

With a long stifled groan, Abney struggled to her knees, balanced herself on the balls of her feet and, via a short period of less than beguiling swaying, stood upright in her bonds. Each embarrassing hop Abney took towards the source of the scent ignited embers beneath her skin and behind her eyes, the world became lighter as the scent grew stronger, as if the night were slowly turning to day. Closing the distance with each uncertain hop, Abney eventually found herself standing over the source, her heart beating, skin burning and eyes glowing with the scent and sight of it.

The scent emanated from the corpse of a small badger lying just outside of the thick woodland.
It had been the victim of a hunt rather than a natural predator, a runt not worth bothering with once an arrow had struck it dead in the name of sport. The arrow, which had since been removed from the badger's skull leaving a rather sizeable hole, had become host to maggots and decay.
Still, the runt's decaying corpse was enough to whet Abney's appetite. Although, there was precious little she could do to indulge her hunger while the thick metal bar which served as her gag was still firmly lodged between her teeth.

Both wholly exhausted and increasingly hungry, Abney allowed her mind to function on animal instinct rather than meditated logic and soon she found herself digging a shallow hole in the soft soil with her bare toes.
As a wolf Abney could comfortably survive for thirteen days without food and only the slightest intake of water, but as a human her body would fast succumb to hunger pains and dehydration. Thus, digging a shallow grave with her toes to hide the dead runt of a badger, would keep her fairly found morsel hidden from other predators and game hunters for a time when she could return free of her bonds and on all fours.

As the soil beneath her feet became harder for her toes to push away, Abney caught herself thinking just how easy this simple act was and always had been as a wolf. As a wolf she never had to worry about cramp or that burning sensation in her tendons after expending too much effort, but here she was, curling her human toes in and out to quell the ache of such hard work.
Hungry, exhausted and lost within her little reverie as she nudged the corpse of the decaying badger into the makeshift grave with her mud covered feet, Abney had neither heard the voices nor smelt the putrid odour of three of Mitrah's loudest, fattest and drunkest men approaching from the east.

Quickly kicking the loose soil over the runt's corpse, Abney bolted up onto her knees and pushed herself into the thick area of woodland as fast as she could to avoid being seen. Kicking her body further into the woodland, cutting her skin on the rough thorny ground as did so, Abney mentally scolded herself for not having noticed the three stinking rotund men with any of her acutely honed senses any earlier than she had done.
Edging into a small, cramped opening in the dense woodland, Abney kept as low to the ground as she possibly could and watched the three men through the shrubbery as they continued their advance in the direction of the woodland...