How many times have you changed? Do you still try to stop it? Cover your ears, scream, drown it out with pain if you will; you know better. She calls. Always. And you answer. Always. Dusk and dawn, when Earth’s ruling lights slip in and out of duty. The veil thins and the protection of their stronger songs fades just enough. The star of the evening, the star of the morning, the twilight goddess claims you again. What you fought all day and ran from all night becomes too loud, too compelling to resist.

It was a gift, a blessing. The hordes came at night, and every night: the claws, the fur like a bear, the growl that raked the bone, the howl that stilled the blood. What you’ll never tell anyone, is that you loved it. You still do. The carnage, the rampage. When the beast consumes you, when all the fight in you is gone, the surrender to primal urge is near orgasmic. Rend flesh from bone with reckless abandon. Feed your senses.

Every night you ravaged your enemies. Every night you tore through flesh. Every night you mauled. And every day you returned to the form before. So delicate in comparison. So harmless. A protection for sure, no one would take you for their living nightmare. But sometimes you needed them to. Fortune did not bless with control. Yours is not the freedom to choose, yours is the prison of responsibility.

There are no more enemies to ravage. Your gift is not a gift anymore. You’re a superstition now, cursed by the full moon, they say. Some suspect it’s not the moon in full, but the mere touch of its light.

It’s neither.

Even at the dark of the moon, you change.

Like the twilight star, the moon is always there, whether or not you can see her. You used to find that comforting.