Drooling, dipping jawls. 
A menacing, piercing stare that can paralyze even the strongest of hearts.
Thick, rough, bristling fur that looked unpleasant, and felt like steel wool to the touch.
A general hatred for all living things, and a desire to cause mayhem wherever it could.
These were the qualities of the average werewolf.
"You. Are. So. Adorable!!"
They were not the qualities of Aran Lup. 
"Oh, for Pete's Sake! I am NOT adorable!" he protested, as the diminutive wolf sulked past the taller kitten that looked down upon him. His fur was perfectly brushed and combed no matter how he neglected to care for it, his fangs were neat and even; not even the least bit jagged, and his maw never dripped or drooled. The only way that Aran ever resembled a menacing werewolf at all was in his bitter nature, but that was never enough to convince the other townspeople of Tabernath that he could be such a thing. As it was just then, he was always just "adorable" or "cute," words that might be a compliment to others, but to Aran, they were insults of the highest regard, and ones that he simply had to carry on his shoulders.
More than ever, he just wished his dreams of being like the werewolves of legend would come true.
Since he was a child, his then even more dainty footpaws padding along the aged cobblestones of the Tabernath streets, Aran wanted nothing more than to be big, scary and feared, but over time, he grew so little that he started to wonder if he ever grew at all, and instead of coming out even remotely scary like the demons he wished to imitate, his visage become more that of a cherub angel. His mother and sister could never get over how adorable he was, and his father, despite his best efforts, couldn't convince Aran that he was still intimidating, despite his size and appearance. What might seem like a wonderful blessing in life felt like a curse to Aran, as he felt that no one ever took him seriously. It seemed as though no one ever even got to know his real personality, because they took him at what they saw, not how he felt on the inside.
Even as he grew into adololesence, Aran would try to play the role of a werewolf every year around All Hallow's Eve, each year having differing levels of success. One year he borrowed a coat from his father's closet and tried to craft a pair of stilts for himself to walk around upon. He messed up his fur the best that he could, and even stopped caring for his teeth for a week beforehand in the hopes that his fangs would grow jagged and uneven. Though his dedication was well beyond admirable, his hopes were dashed when his stilts wound up being too short to make an impact, and his appearance still couldn't even scare the little girls that he'd grown up with. It was that night, ten fateful years ago that Aran made a vow to the full moon that some day, he'd find a way to become a true werewolf, like the one he felt he was inside.
Fog was starting to roll down and in from the Skivel Mountains as the dawn of another All Hallow's Eve was upon Aran and all of Tabernath. From the highest hills at the entrance to the mountains where the richest citizens made their homes, all the way down, miles away at the edge of the Tabernath Forest where the poorest people could barely afford to keep their shacks, everyone was getting into the spirit of the season. Bright orange fires lit every torch and lamp post, sprinkled with a hint of Hallow's Dust to give the flames an eerie, ethereal glow. Skulls and bones of scavenged meals sat on the porches of the poor, and for the rich, statues of gargoyles, skeletons and demons adorned their walkways and glared menacingly down upon those brave enough to venture out and seek a thrill on the scariest night of the year.
Aran was born and raised in the middle shelf of Tabernath, right with the middle class of society, so he'd never been poor, but he never once saw the statues of the rich for inspiration. He'd only ever heard tall tales and stories about what the creatures were supposed to look like, and where they were supposed to live. The tiny, cute wolf was always told to stay in the middle shelf; it was unwise to disturb the rich, and nobody thought the poor could be trusted, but tonight, Aran was going to break every rule that he'd been raised with. He desperately longed for the chance to encounter one creature in particular, one that he'd only ever heard about in legends, and the only place to find this mythical being was in the deep, dark and deadly recesses of the Tabernath Forest. 
When the twin moons were passing through the pitch black darkness of the night sky like a ball of milkweed fluff passing lazily along an open road, Aran made his move. He gathered up a small bag and tied it to his pants of leather and cloth, slipped open the window from his bedroom and climbed right out. He was old enough to venture out on his own if he wanted to, and certainly if he told his parents he was heading out to meet some friends, they wouldn't object, but if he told anyone the truth about what he was doing they would stop him, and he was a terrible liar, so sneaking into the stealthy darkness of the night was his best bet. As small as he was, even a hop out the window felt like jumping off the roof to him, so he lifted his leg over the window sill and let his whole body hang so he could get his footpaws as close to the ground as possible. 
"I'll show them...I'll show every last one of them! When I find the Dark Spirit of the Forest, she'll make me into the monster I was always meant to be!"
Paws landed quietly on cobblestone and with a quick push, Aran stole away into the dead of the night. His claws scratched and scraped along the uneven stone and bricks of the sidewalks as he ran straight down the hill that his house sat upon, right for the poorest neighborhoods of Tabernath, more commonly referred to as the "bottom shelf." Like many people kept their dresser, the cheap and common clothes were on the bottom shelf of their clothing drawers, and the rich hierarchy of Tabernath forced the poor and lowly workers to live down near the bottom of town. In the spring and late into the summer, when rains would pass over Tabernath every now and again, the water was pure and clean when it rained upon the rich of the "top shelf," and as it cascaded down the hills and streets, cleaning them in the process, by the time the rainwater made it to the bottom shelf, it had transformed from a crystal clear source of nourishment to a dirty, brown river of filth. On nights like All Hallow's Eve, when there was a rare, late rain in the fall, the rich would pour their spoiled red wines down into the streams, creating the perfect image of rivers of blood running through the streets, and this night, they guided Aran to the very edges of the bottom shelf, where jagged and uneven cobblestone streets finally gave way to dirt, and eventually, lush, green grass.
"This is all too perfect; everything looks even spookier than I ever hoped it could! It'll be all too fitting when I come back as a werewolf and terrorize this stupid town for insulting me like they have," Aran delighted as he watched the streams of dirtied, red water run off into the grass. The diminutive wolf was huffing for breath as he reached the edges of town, but he refused to take even a brief respite. He was in a hurry to find the rumored Dark Spirit of the Forest, and as quickly as possible. Every rumor he'd ever heard from his siblings was that the only time one was guaranteed to see the Dark Spirit was on All Hallow's Eve, and Aran was running out of time. 
WHUD! A swift blow struck Aran in the chest as he ran closer to the wall of trees in front of him, and a few seconds too late came a "WATCH IT, SHRIMP!" as three other young boys sprinted right out of the forest. 
"Ooof!" The wind was knocked right out of the poor little canine as he fell down to the ground, landing flat on his rump in the dirt. "What the heck, guys?" Aran asked as he looked up, seeing three other boys that he recognized from further in the city.
Two of the boys, a coyote and a jackal, kept on running without offering any explanation, their tails flat against their backsides as they went, but the third boy, who ran into Aran, stopped for a brief moment. "Do you have a death wish or something, shrimp?"
Aran gritted his fangs, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't look threatening. "No, I don't have a death wish, and stop calling me shrimp! What were you losers running from, anyway?"
"That forest is haunted on All Hallow's Eve!" the boy replied, his fur still standing on end from whatever it was that had spooked him. "If a little shrimp like you goes in there on a night like tonight, you're never gonna come back out!"
"I'm not a shrimp!" Aran groaned, springing up to his paws and dusting himself off as he glared at the younger, yet larger boy. "And I'm gonna prove it when I come back out of that forest tonight!"
Aran's assailant didn't wait around to argue any longer. He turned back around and kept on running for the hills, but before he turned, Aran could see his pupils shrunk down to little more than a period at the end of a sentence. "It's your funeral, shrimp!"
Hmph. He'll be the first one on my list, Aran thought, as he kept walking the other direction, into the thicker and taller grass that stood between him and what was known in Tabernath as the Wall of Trees. It was the very edge of the Tabernath Forest, and before one could pass into the forest itself, they had to pass through the early thickets of branches and tree trunks, a wall of anicent wood so thick that from the edge of town, you couldn't see even ten feet past the branches and leaves. The soft candlelight from the bottom shelf that illuminated the path for Aran started to fade as he made his way through the tall grass and into the Wall of Trees, and before even a minute had passed, the light from the city had completely faded from view.
Despite all of his bravado and determination to be a big, scary creature, Aran was already spooked as he turned around and could no longer see Tabernath behind him. Trying to shrug it off as his imagination, he turned back and kept on plunging forward into the belly of the forest. The once calm, quiet air of the night stirred around him, kicking up dead leaves from the forest floor, and making a slight mess of his perfectly neat hair.
"Where in the world did a breeze come from?" Aran thought aloud, as he trudged onward, his paws enjoying the sensation of the pillow-soft grass as it massaged his flesh with every step, a sensation he could never experience back in town. So much of the nature of this place was untouched by mortals that it was like a new reality all on it's own, and Aran felt a sense of wonder so great that it was actually disorienting and unsettling. He knew that his town was only a few hundred feet away, and yet, he was already so disconnected from it that he felt completely lost. A quick spin around of his head to try and find his way back to town revealed that despite his short time in the forest, he already was completely lost. He shot his head upwards to look for the moons in the sky to guide his way back, but through the infinite canopy of trees, no light could dare enter the forest below. If his canine eyes weren't so adept as adjusting to a lack of light, Aran would be totally blind, but he felt that he might as well be as he tried to just keep moving forward, as he started to lose track of time. "She has to be here somewhere. Remember what you're looking for and why you're out here in the first place, Aran," he told himself, trying to remain as confident as possible as he moved slowly, cautiously onward.
SPLOOSH! ...Just not cautiously enough, it seemed, as Aran stepped into a deep pond and lost his balance, flailing and falling to the side as his claws gripped deep into the dirt and grass, trying to avoid falling all the way in the water. The knapsack of supplies that he'd tied to his waist landed in the water as he fell, soaking all of the small rations that he brought with him for nourishment and survival, and just like that, the diminutive wolf was up the creek without a paddle. "Oh, come on! Of all the damned rotten luck!" 
Aran's cursing did not fall on deaf ears. "And what, my dear boy, is so very wrong with being...ROTTEN?!"
A voice traveled through the cold, dead air of the night, moving through the air like a decaying zombie that fell further and further apart as it approached, but still made it to it's prey and bit down with gruesome intent. When it reached Aran, he could feel his stomach turning in shock and fear; there was no way this was the voice of a mortal being.
"ANSWER ME, BOY."
The small pond that Aran had nearly fallen in started to bubble and steam as a pair of ears perked out of the water and started to rise, and a ghastly figure arose with them. Aran quickly yanked his leg out of the water and fell on his back, scooting desperately away from the edge of the pond on his backside as his ears flattened in fear and his eyes shrunk, just like the boys he'd seen running away before. His jaw hung wide open, trembling weakly as he watched the form of a tall, curvacious female wolf emerge from the water in nothing more than her birthday suit, but the ominous mists rising from the water preserved her modesty. Only her head and her thighs were visible, but all that stuck out to Aran were the bright, piercing orange of the woman's eyes and the crooked, jagged rows of fangs that filled a grinning, devilsh maw.
"You...you have a soul of darkness, but your body reflects the ways of the light. This pains you, doesn't it, boy?" Now that the woman was above the surface of the water, her voice normalized a little bit, but it still carried with it a hollow, terrifying echo, one that Aran couldn't explain.
It took Aran a moment to escape his fear and remember that he still had a mouth and a working pair of vocal chords. "It does. I really am scary, but no one will ever believe me, and I don't know what to do...are you...are you the Dark Spirit of the Forest?"
"I and no one else," answered the ghostly woman. "You, like many foolish mortals before you, have come to seek my guidance in becoming a terror of the night. I can smell the desperation on you, boy...do you know why I will help you now, when I have helped no others before?"
Aran started to perk his ears just a little bit as his eyes tried to get a better look at the mysterious female. She was tall, taller even than most of the men he'd ever met, and her body, though mostly shrouded in mist, was built on a powerful frame that alone made Aran fearful of her. "I have no idea...why?"
"Because you came alone, boy. And alone you shall return, and alone, you shall remain."
A singular pawtip poked out through the ominous mists, and Aran dug his claws deep into the ground to keep his paws from flying up to cover his eyes. No doubt, this mysterious creature had otherwordly powers he couldn't begin to imagine, and the way she spoke, Aran was sure it was his time to die, and apparently, alone, but he didn't feel what he imagined death might feel like. Instead, he just felt a strange, churning sensation in his stomach. 
"Return to your village, boy, and remember that which I have done for you. From now on, what was inside of you shall be out, and what was outside of you, shall be within...just as you so desperately desire."
"Okay, I will," Aran replied, standing up immediately as if he was responding to her order. "But I don't know which way to go, Dark Spirit."
The figure in the mists chuckled quietly as she started to sink back down into the pond. "A werewolf always knows the way, boy...you'll figure it out."
Silently, not even making as much as a ripple on the pond, the Dark Spirit disappeared into the waters and back under the forest floor. Aran gulped down his fears and suspicions, and hesitantly, he brought his paws up to his face.
Nothing had changed.
"Awww...what a rip! I knew that was just my head playing tricks on me! That's what this whole forest does! It's not even a little bit haunted!" Aran cursed his bad luck and turned away from the pond, now looking an inconspicuous as the moment Aran first saw it. "Oh well...at least I can return to the village without feeling as lame as those other guys."
In reality, Aran only wished to return to the village because the water had ruined all of his supplies, and the churning in his stomach was making it difficult to tolerate being awake. He imagined that it must just be his fears still making his body feel unsettled, and did his best to ignore it as he started to walk back towards Tabernath.
Wait. How do I know that this is the right direction? Aran thought, as his paws just started moving toward the city on their own. With each step, the ground appeared to get further and further away from Aran, and the grass between his paws looked shorter and shorter. All sorts of new scents and sensations were starting to fill his nostrils as he made his way back through the thickets of branches and overgrowth; rotten berries on the forest floor filled his head with a sickly-sweet smell, and the scents of meat cooking on poorly built stoves on the bottom shelf were all starting to tease his stomach with the prospect of a midnight snack. And how can I smell all of that stuff from so far away? Why is the grass so...short?
Suddenly, the darkness of night wasn't so dark at all anymore. Aran blinked, and in an instant, he looked up and knew that the moon was right above him, even without being able to see it through the canopy of the trees. "Arrrroooooooo!" he howled up at the sky, before covering his maw with his paws and looking around, worried that anyone might have seen him, even if he knew that there was no one around. Why did I just do that...?
Aran's mind was already starting to change as the transformation slowly but surely took effect. His center of balance was completely thrown off, and he stumbled down to all fours as he tried to keep moving onward to Tabernath, but found it a growing struggle. His ears were perked high to all of the sounds of the forest that he couldn't pick up before, and combined with the enhanced senses of smell and vision, he was undergoing a sensory overload. His mind became hazy as he reached the edge of the Wall of Trees, and before he was even back to the bottom shelf, his memories of the moment were all but erased, save for the haunting cackle of a mysterious female in the woods.
**
"HONEY! GET IN HERE! I THINK A MONSTER ATE ARAN!!"
Sprawled out across a bed that was far too small for his new body, Aran Lup was playing the unsuspecting villain in a crime he didn't commit. Shreds and tatters of his jeans remained to preserve his modesty, but a wide chest and broad shoulders completely tore apart the jacket he'd been wearing the night before. 
"Zzznm...wha...what's all the racket about, mom?"
Gone was the soft, youthful voice that Aran considered to be such a curse, replaced with a low, throaty rumble of a voice, akin to a constant growl. Even as quietly as Aran tried to speak, his voice was now menacing, and sent chills down his mother's spine. 
"You...you foul creature! You're not my son! You're a monster!"
Aran's mother was a short, tiny woman, and no doubt, he took more after her, genetically, but she had a sense of conviction about her when it came to right and wrong, and the scene in Aran's room, from the broken glass of the window that Aran had crashed through the night before to the claw marks that tattered up the wooden walls and furniture in his room told a story of a struggle, though his mother couldn't possibly know it was as much internal as external. 
"Mom...?" Aran replied groggily, still heavily fazed from the night before and unable to remember why his head was reeling so badly. "Why are you calling me that?"
"You beast! What have you done with our son, you heel?!" Aran's father, a tall, powerful and stately wolf entered the room, brandishing an axe in his massive paws, but next to the newly transformed werewolf, even he looked insignificant. 
Did it...did it really work? Aran thought, as he looked down at his body, his fur gnarled and mangled up in knots from the dirt he'd fallen in the night before. His paws were gangly and large, with claws like jagged knives and fangs to match. Though he didn't remember exactly what had happened the night before, his foggy mind was starting to gather flashbacks of an eerie, cackling voice and a horrible, twisting sensation in his stomach. He couldn't confirm exactly how, but somehow he knew that what he'd always wanted had come true...he was finally a werewolf!
So...why don't I feel like scaring my parents?
As confused as Aran could be about his body, he was suddenly far more confused about his intentions. All of this time, all of the nearly twenty years of his life, Aran had wanted nothing more than to scare the fur right off of his parents, sisters and friends, and wreck havoc on the city of Tabernath. Now that he looked at the horrifying scene in his room and the dismayed look on his parent's faces, he felt a wallowing of regret, and a sudden urge to calm them and ease their fears, one that he couldn't begin to explain.
"Dad...I am your son. Can't you tell?"
Raising the axe up over his head to strike, Aran's father made it perfectly clear that he couldn't. "Don't try to lie to me, you pitiful monster!" he cried out, swinging his axe down at Aran with a sense of fiery vengance. The axe missed flesh, but cleaved the wooden frame of what was left of Aran's bed, sending splinters flying about as the axe blade hit the floor. 
Deftly, Aran dodged back up to the wall, and seeing another imminent strike, he dove out the window, jagged shards of glass tearing into his fur as he flew through and landed on the street below. Having never had a chance to adjust to his gangly new frame, the werewolf landed gracelessly, his paws just barely stopping him from faceplanting onto the cobblestones, but he couldn't help wobbling into the house next door with a dull THUD.
"Come back, demon! I'll have your skull on my mantle yet!"
Father...why would you do that to me? Aran thought, tears welling up in the corners of his now bright, piercingly yellow eyes. Knowing he was no longer safe in his own home, Aran stole down the street, but now in the light of day, he knew even more that there was no place he could hide in the city of Tabernath. There was only one place that he could imagine a creature like himself being able to be left alone until he could make sense of the situation.
"MONSTER!!"
Most of all, he knew that getting back to the Tabernath Forest would not be easy.
The three boys who impeded Aran the night before and made fun of him happened to be just around the block from his house, heading up towards the Top Shelf. It didn't surprise Aran at all that the would-be tough guys were actually just rich kids from up the hill, but what did surprise him is that he didn't feel even a hint of anger or desire for revenge on them for wronging him. He didn't bare his fangs at them, or try to fend them off with his claws. Instead, he felt a bitter sting in his heart at being called a monster, something that he'd always wanted the formerly bigger kids to call him.
"You guys! It's me, from last night! It's Aran!" 
The horrible, mangled sound from Aran's vocal cords was enough to make the fur on each of the three boys neck's stand on end. The boy in the middle who had pushed him the night before was the first one to take a step back. "N-n-no way, man! That's not...you're not Aran! You're that creature that we heard about, tearing up the Middle Shelf last night! RUN GUYS!"
Tails flattened down between their legs, all three boys took off running for the Top Shelf even faster than they'd run away from the forest the night before. "WAIT!" Aran called out to them, but they didn't dare to turn back. Every single one of them feared desperately for their lives as they fled, and Aran found his sense of smell so heightened that he could smell the very fear that lingered about behind them; much to his surprise, he found it a disgusting and putrid scent, unlike the sweet and satisfying scent he imagined it to be his whole life.
"Tearing up the Middle Shelf...?" Aran thought aloud, scanning the area with his eerie, yellowed eyes. He could see a couple things amiss, from smaller things like claw marks on the cobblestones and a couple of broken street lamps, to much larger things, like doors torn off of the front of houses and street lamps simply torn down and tossed into the street. "No...I couldn't have done that..."
Aran had no timepiece, but he could guess by the position of the sun overhead that it was just past noon, and only now did he notice how eerily quiet the city was. Usually, the hustle and bustle city of Tabernath would be alive with commuters from the pass through the Skivel Mountains, and the poor from the Bottom Shelf would be returning to their homes for a short lunch after a day of service for the rich. Today, Aran could tell scarcely anyone even left their homes. It seemed that for just a little while the night before, Aran was exactly the werewolf he'd wanted to be before. It wasn't the werewolf he wanted to be now.
What was inside shall be out, what was outside shall be within...hehehe...
"That voice!"
Aran looked around, ears perked up and sensitive to any noise, while his eyes scanned the area for any people, but no one came forth. Even his father seemed to have given up the chase, despite the small trail of blood that he left behind from being cut by the window. It left a nasty, streaky patch of dark red in his fur, and he could tell just by looking at it that it would be tough to get out.
He was terrifying. He was disgusting. He was fearsome. He was powerful.
He wasn't happy.
"All I can remember from last night is that I went into the Tabernath Forest...I've got to get back there and find out what's going on..."
"There he is, daddy! Go get him!"
It seemed that Aran's father wasn't done searching just yet, and Aran spun around to see his two sisters, tall, stately and powerful just like their father, each one carrying a hatchet in their paws, and Aran's father still holding his axe. "No, wait! Tamia, Lucia, it's me! I promise you, I'm Aran! Please, you have to believe me!"
"You're not our brother!" Tamia yelled back, taking a step forward and readying her hatchet. Her headfur was short and her body was thick with muscle, even under the modest blouse and long slacks that she wore. She was born to be the next warrior of the family, something that Aran always resented. "You're the evil beast that killed him, and I'm not gonna stop 'til you suffer every bit as much as he did!"
Reasoning with his family was proving to be pointless, and Aran knew that he couldn't evade both of his sisters and his father forever. He'd be dead long before he reached the forest at this rate, and at the hands of his own family, no less. "Did any of you stop to notice that there wasn't a body? Or that I climbed right back in my own window and went to bed? I'm telling you, all of you, I swear, I'm Aran!"
Aran should have been angry with his family for not listening to him. He should have been furious with his father for trying to kill him. Instead, all he could feel was compassion for their imagined loss. This time, the rage was all coming from his family. "A hideous monster like you could eat our cute little brother in a couple bites...and I'll cut your greedy stomach right open and make you wish you'd never picked him for your next meal!" Lucia threatened, and as she spoke, her arm flung forward, paw releasing a deadly hatchet at his skull. Though he was faster and more agile now, Aran still wasn't used to his figure, and what should have been a skillful dodge turned into a sloppy, lucky duck under the hatchet, but Tamia was already about to throw her own, and Aran was certain she would not miss. 
Thankfully, his mind was working much faster than his body. "You pitiful cretins want your brother back?"
Tamia hesitated, no doubt saving Aran from a terrible, possibly fatal wound. "You...didn't eat him?"
"I stole your cute little brother away in the dead of the night last night and took him into the Tabernath Forest," Aran lied, doing his best to live up to his lifelong dream of being a terrifying werewolf. He bared his fangs and ground them together to make a terrible, shrill grating that made his sisters flatten their ears. "But you've caught me...so if you spare my life, I'll return the little twerp, unharmed and uneaten, on one condition."
It was Aran's father that stepped forward this time, elated that his son might still be alive, but his expression was still the picture of unbridled rage. "Just one condition, creature. Go for a second and I'll cut your head clean off and find my son myself!"
"As you wish, mortal fool. You must let me go back to the Tabernath Forest, alone. When the twin moons pass overhead once more at the peak of the evening, your son will emerge from the wall of trees, and you will never see me again."
"HA! As if I'd trust such an offer from a snake-tongued monster like you!" Aran's father replied, clenching his axe tight in furious paws. "I'll accompany you all the way to my son, and if I'm feeling generous, I'll let you walk away with all of your limbs!"
"You can't!" Aran contested. "If you enter the forest after the sun goes down, you'll end up a hideous creature, just like me...and you'll never change back! Your son will suffer the same fate if you don't let me go!"
Tamia and Lucia looked to their father with pleading eyes, desperate for an answer. All three of them wished for nothing more than the safe return of their kin, but none of them felt that they could trust him, ironically. "...Mark my words, werewolf, that if my son is not returned to me safely this evening, I will march right into that forest and suffer whatever fate awaits me so I can personally skin you alive and hang your pelt over my fireplace!"
Aran knew all too well that his father was a man of his word. The werewolf had bought some time, but now, he needed to find out what happened the night before. "A fate worse than death, I'm sure," Aran said in his sickening voice. "I'll go gather up your boy now. Wait by the edge of the Tabernath Forest at moonrise, and no matter what you hear or see, do not enter!"
Tamia opened her mouth to threaten Aran once more, but time was already short, and Aran wasted no time going to all fours, just like the werewolves of legend, and sprinting down the hill towards the forest.
**
Night was rapidly approaching, and Aran wondered if time was speeding up now that he was a werewolf. Just like the night before, he'd run down and through the Bottom Shelf, into the Tabernath Forest, and tried to get himself lost, but now that he was transformed, the mysteries of the forest had vanished, and he felt like he was truly in a place that he belonged for the first time in his life. Due to his change in attitude, however, he still wasn't happy with it.
"I was walking around here, and there was a pond over there to the left, and a lady came out of it...where's the pond?" Aran asked himself, his eyes easily adjusted to the darkness and deception of the forest in his new form. Even having only been there once, he was navigating it like the captain of a ship expertly navigates the endless seas. "It's just some brush and ferns now..."
Carrying onward, Aran decided that the only way he could possibly change himself back was to relive his encounter from the night before, and what was a lost memory was starting to return, piece by piece. Being transformed, the fear that he felt, and the Dark Spirit of the Forest changing his body, but further, somehow changing his mind. He could remember all of his desires to scare and terrorize his family. He could vividly remember how badly he wanted to be the snarling, darkened creature that he now was. He just couldn't embrace any of those old desires anymore.
"What was inside will be out, what was outside will be within...what could it mean? What did she do?"
The brush was growing thicker and the ferns taller as Aran plunged further still into the forest. Even with his heightened senses, he could no longer see the city behind him, but the inane sense of the position of the moon that all werewolves shared told him that the moon was already starting to rise over the city, and time was running short for Aran to ever get his old life back.
"She tricked you, young man. She does that to everyone."
Calm, quiet and comforting, like the sound of gentle waves rolling up on the ocean shore, a voice called out to the confused werewolf. 
"Is...is that you, Dark Spirit of the Forest...?"
A mist rose up from out of the moss-covered ground, and where there was no water before, a gentle stream came forth, and a pond started to fill right before Aran's eyes. Just like the night before, a figure started to rise up from the slowly filling pond, but this time, instead of inconceivable fear and desperation, Aran felt a wave of calm wash over his whole being, and a warmth filled his heart that reminded him of the touch from his mother's loving arms.
"Not even close, young man. You can simply call me the Light of the Forest, and I can sense a deep sadness in you. Did you come here seeking to undo the wrongs that have been done to you, werewolf?"
Aran nodded silently. In the presence of such a lovely figure that was starting to appear, it didn't feel right to speak with his now terrifying voice. Long, raven colored locks of hair that fell around lovely, gentle features and a kindly smile kept his maw shut tight.
"Well, I'm sorry to have to be the bearer of bad news, but the Dark Spirit of the Forest will not undo any spell that has been done, if it is found to create darkness in the world, and the spell she placed upon you has already sent a world of darkness upon your life."
A pair of sensitive, perked ears fell flat, and Aran fell down, slumping to his knees. "Why would she do this to me...? I just wanted to always be the werewolf I felt I was born to be!"
The Light of the Forest tilted her head. "Why in the world would you want to be a werewolf, young man?"
"Because I was tired of being treated like less than a person because I was small and 'cute!' No one ever took me seriously or treated me like anything more than an accessory! I was always just the cute little brother, or mommy's little man, or the weak little shrimp that got picked on at school, even by kids younger than me! I was so tired of it...but now that I've got what I wanted, I hate it, too..."
"That is because the witch you visited before didn't want to help you," she explained. "When she told you that she would take the inside out, and place the outside within, she gave you the outward appearence you desired, but inside, you became a reflection of what people saw in you before...all very good qualities, I might add!"
"But now that I have that personality, I can't stand what I've become on the outside!"
"That was the darkness of her spell, young man. She knew all too well the chaos that would ensue in your life, and she will never undo what she has done. I, however, may be able to help you."
Despite their creepy appearance, a certain happiness shined in Aran's eyes. "Really?!"
She nodded. "I can, but you need to learn to appreciate who you are, young man. It's one thing to want to change negative qualities about yourself, but everything you wanted to undo was one of the good things that made you who you are! It is truly a sad time that we live in where someone like you can be so blessed, and see it as such a curse!"
"It is a curse, though," Aran argued. "Being picked on, not taken seriously, no one actually getting to know me as I really am because they just take what they see on the surface!"
"That isn't a problem with you, Aran, it's a problem with the people around you. There is a wealth of complexity to you, and if you give up on it now, people will never appreciate who you really are," she replied. "But furthermore, I certainly hope that the real you...the you that you keep hidden inside, isn't a werewolf who terrorizes entire cities out of spite."
Aran processed what he'd been told, and looked down at his paws one more time. They really were hideous to look at, and as he mulled it over in his mind, he could imagine why his family thought, upon seeing him that way, that he was actually the killer of their kin, and not the kin itself. "That isn't the real me, good spirit, but I worry that if you change me back to normal, before too long, I'll just go back to the way I was."
"If you let fear dictate your actions and how you interact with others, you will almost always end up bitter and spiteful, but if you trust that there are people out there who can see past your diminutive size and adorable features, then you will meet others someday who get to know the real you, and you'll both be much richer for the experience."
"...Do you really think so?"
"I know so, young man, and if you believe it too, then I will change you back to the way you're supposed to be."
Only a day before, Aran wanted the complete opposite, but after just a day of seeing how his transformation had truly ruined his life, all he wanted was for things to be back to normal.
"I have nothing to lose, really. If you'll do me this favor, I'll give it a try, Light of the Forest. I'll try to embrace and project who I really am inside."
"That's all anyone can ask of you, young man," she replied, and reached out, resting a single pawtip upon Aran's forehead. "Use the instincts you've been given to find your way back out of the forest, and as you pass through the wall of trees, delight in knowing that you'll have become your true self again."
The paw slowly moved away from Aran's forehead, and as he looked up to see the face of the one who'd blessed him, he marvled at the sight of the paw slowly turning into little more than dust and snowflakes, breezing away in the wind. The arm behind it slowly followed, and a kind, happy smile was the last that Aran saw of her before she vanished.
He had to see if it worked.
Staying on his knees a moment longer as a sign of reverence, Aran bounded up to his footpaws and sprinted back towards the wall of trees. Sure enough, he still had the instincts of a werewolf, and he could tell just by the position of the moon overhead that he was headed in the right direction. He also knew that he was just about out of time, and preventing his father from enterting the forest and suffering a similar fate was his top priority.
The sounds of the forest that were once so clear to him started to fade, and his hearing was already almost back to normal. The scents of late night snacks being prepared in the Bottom Shelf were already starting to fade, and now, Aran was simply worried that his instincts might disappear before he reached the edge of the forest. His claws started to shrink, and the grass appeared to grow as he picked up the pace, huffing and puffing out tired breaths as he sprinted desperately through the thickets and trees. 
Gritted fangs started to fit together more appropriately as Aran could feel his body edging so very, very close back to its normal state. Yellowed, glowing eyes softened into a cool blue, and it seemed that all Aran had left to guide him safely out of the forest was the enchanting pull of the twin moons overhead.
It ended up being just enough.
The wall of trees was dead ahead, and Aran's face lit up into the brightest smile he could remember as his exhaustion faded, and the endorphin rush that came along with it took care of any pain he felt from changing back. Navigating through the thick, maze-like entrance had become easy for Aran, and he expertly pushed on through to the small clearing where dirty grass met with poorly kept cobblestones. 
Maybe he'd made it by a minute. Maybe he'd made it by an hour. He couldn't be sure, but he knew when he saw his father standing in the clearing, axe handle in his paw and the head of the axe resting on the ground, that he'd made it in time, and that was all that mattered.
"A-a...Aran? Is that really you, my son?"
Aran didn't slow down for even a moment. He sprinted the whole way across the clearing to his bewildered father and right into his arms, overjoyed as they closed around his back. "It's me, Dad! I made it out alive!"
Aran's father was sure that when he'd trusted a werewolf, he'd forfeited his son's life as well, but in the end, fate conspired in his favor, and the small, cute wolf that he'd grown to love so much was back in his hold once more. "Thank the gods...Aran, I'm so sorry I let this happen to you! I'll replace that window, and batten it down, and add another lock to your door, and-
"Dad?"
"Yes, son?"
"You don't have to do all of that for me. In a way that I can't really explain, I feel like this is just as much my fault as anyone else's. There's only one thing I'd like you to do for me, really."
"Anything, Aran. Anything at all."
"Can you teach me how to fight like you and Tamia?"
**
The Light of the Forest had done her job, it seemed, and a few weeks later, Aran was back to being picked on around town, despite the harrowing trials the town assumed he went through. Some of the kids joked that because he looked so cute, the werewolf picked him because anything that was cute had to be sweet as well, but Aran knew better, and he'd learned to just laugh off silly accusations like that. 
It didn't hurt that his father finally taught him how to brandish a hatchet and throw it like a pro, as well. Aran was becoming a living example of big things coming in small packages, and while the teasing was there, he realized that the Light of the Forest was right; people were going to be who they were going to be, and there was nothing he could do to change the ignorant ones who made fun of him. He could only change himself for the better.
"Ready to go, Aran?"
One such soul who noticed that change was Venita Cross, a lovely young lady from the Top Shelf that Aran had been admiring from afar for some time. Before, he cursed his looks and his "cute" appearance, but with a little confidence from his pep talk and his training with his father, he found that Venita was in almost the same boat that he was, and had simply been too shy to ask. 
"Yeah, just gotta make sure I've got enough silver to pay for dinner," he replied, as he counted out a couple pieces and dropped them into his satchel. "Shall we?"
"Sure! I just need to remember to save room for dessert. You're so cute I could just eat you up!" Venita replied, smiling brightly at her date and pressing a series of teasing kisses to his cheek.
Aran smiled and held the front door open for her. I guess being cute isn't such a bad thing after all, he thought.