In a forest a crowd gathered.

Each slipping out from their beds, curfew still caging them, even if they were on the precipice of adulthood.

The lights scattered and low, flames silhouetting the forests, and lamps not needed to fill where fire couldn't. The full moon's silver light split through trees, casting a ethereal glow, while contrasting with the fire. Scattered speakers filled the forest will a rhythm, a beat, a pluse.

Flame wrapped silhouettes danced and writhed against each other, some to the artificial rhythm they'd supplied, and others, under canvas or leaves, to something instinctual and far more primal.

In the throws of instinct, everything was hot as a girl and her partner chased that high - only to stop dead. One quite literally.

The body under her felt a blade pierce her own flesh, but she froze. Memory searing across her mind. It was her instincts that saved her then, the murderous knife felt flesh and death and believed itself sated on two.

A chorus of noise, a symphony of screams came up into the air, the frozen girl begin to move. Slowly at first, not to draw attention, no, but because the body - her lover's body - on top of her was heavy.

Viola, naked and wet with her's and her lover's essence, and their commingled blood, didn't know what to do.

Last time she hid, and everyone died. But her.

This time....this time. Why is there a this time?!

Shaky knees support the girl's weight.

She moved towards the screaming. Someone besides her would live.

Blood was heavy in the air. Viola didn't realize the she could smell it, taste it. She didn't realize when she finally found her friends, alive. Horribly alive. Bodies mangled, butchered to feed something...

A choked sound of denial left her throat.

She did, however, notice when her bones started to snap and twist. Skin shucking off the husk as matted bloody fur was relived.

She was screaming.

The pain left with her perception. Replaced by a red hot furry, a Rage so pronounced that there was nothing of Viola left.

howling up and at

Memory comes to Viola in flashes. The edges seared with the moon's silver glow. After. When she's just a girl, sitting naked in a shaft of moonlight, on the wet, red grass.

She killed a man.
....but the blood on her claws under her fingernails wasn't just his.