He leaned against the tree.

He was supposed to be meditating. Finding one thing to focus one. One thing to keep coming back to like breath or how dead leave felt beneath his hands. Something to bring him back from the hundreds and thousands of thoughts that flew through his head. He was supposed to be able to watch them. Like cars passing by. Something he saw but didn’t run after like a dog running after a car.

And maybe he could have. If not for the beast that was now a part of his mind. A dog that when it saw that car couldn’t help but chase. A wolf after a rabbit.

Meditation had never been the same since the turn. Never as peaceful. Never as calm.

It couldn’t be. Whenever he tried to expand his mind the curse worked even hard to swallow it. His intelligence, his sense of self, his human thoughts….!

He stood as suddenly as a corpse rising from the grave. Dry foliage crunched underfoot s he paced. The earth was there, he could feel it. Cool and calm. Able to absorb anything he could through at it.

The anger was there as well. Beneath the earth? He wasn’t sure. The Blood called to it. Stronger than it did to the earth. Yet as the same time, which called deeper? Did it matter?

He scratched at his temple like he was trying to bring the thoughts to the surface. Dig into his brain. Stop hearing the empty nonexistent beat of his heart. To stop hearing the vast… slow… steady… pulse of something else.

He realized he was breathing. Fast. Not because he had to. But because he could see the breathing… the pulse coming from beneath his flesh. From beneath the crimson finger nails he could see it growing. The anger. The peace. The changing blood.

By morning the tree was a red stump.