Title: Follow the Wolves (An Embry Call Imprint Story)
Author: magicalmal 
Characters: Embry Call, OC
Rating: T/PG-13
Word Count: 3105
Warnings: mild language, mild depression
Spoilers: T, NM, E, BD
Summary: Malana, a depressed college grad, just recently moved to Seattle. She goes to La Push looking for answers to a mysterious wolf she's followed her entire life. Story of self-discovery, finding true love, and what it means to have a home.
Disclaimer: I don't own any Twilight ideas, stories, or characters

I couldn't help it. I had to run, I had to get away, from the problems, the past, just everything. It was the only way I knew how to deal. It was how my family and I spent the last fourteen years, but they were running for different reasons than I was.

Back then they were just trying to survive the economy and stay above the bills. It's different now; now I am on my own and have to learn to deal with my problems by myself. So I packed up and left my home, my friends and family, and my problems.

But maybe I was running away for the very same reason my parents were; I was surviving.

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The Long Road Home

I found myself aimlessly wondering around downtown Seattle, shuffling along a random street. Passing by everyday strangers with all the dull, lifeless buildings crowded around me. Blinded momentarily by the eastern sun beaming against the large luminous glass windows of the little stores set along Elliot Bay. I didn't turn away from the glare or adjust my hair to shield me away. I just simply ignored it. Like so many other things. I drowned out the loud mess of noise with each hasty car driving by and the obnoxious conversations that faded in and out. I just stopped listening to it as it all blended into one loud buzz, softly humming in my ears, knocking everything else out.

After looking at nothing but the road ahead, I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to look around. To make a small effort at taking a glance outside of my head. So I followed my instincts and looked towards the buildings over my left shoulder, across the street.

And there it was.

A little spark went flying down my spine then, causing my hairs to stand up. I was literally shocked with my feet grounded to its place. My astonished eyes locked onto the large mural across the street. A mural of a gray wolf.

What were the chances?

Maybe if I blinked it would disappear. Turn into just a figment of my imagination and would be able to continue on my way.

But I couldn't bring myself to blink. Or do anything at all, for that matter. It all felt to ... I don't know. It was just to surreal, wrong, unnatural. My ears ached from hearing nothing but the rapid rate of my heart and the rough breaths that escaped my swollen throat. Voices, cars, music, rippling water, cruise ship horns; they all seemed to freeze and fade away from my conscience. With only one thing holding my attention...

BBBBEEEEEPPPPPP!!!!!

I frantically looked around, snapping out of my daze, searching for the source of the extremely loud horn. Only to find my subconscious body stepping inches from the front end of a white taxi cab.

I instantly backed up from the bustling street to let the taxi pass by me. Not paying attention to any of the profanities coming from the Chinese taxi driver. My vision was already focusing on the—still existing—wolf painting across the street.

This time I carefully looked down the narrow streets and waited till it was clear to make my way across.

When I hopped onto the other side I went straight to the painting and reached my hand out towards it. As if something would come from that touch and tell me what it meant.

But nothing came from it, as expected. Only the hard, brittle bricks of the building in which it was painted on lay under my fingertips.

I made one last look over the lightly saturated fur with large ink spots and those knowledgeable brown eyes gazing back at me. I stepped back into reality with a heavy sigh and dropped my hand from the familiar gray wolf.

Wow. I could only imagine what people were seeing. Some drugged-up crazy person petting a painted wolf on the side of the street. But I didn't care about what these strangers thought and how it looked. There has been worse, a lot worse.

An idea suddenly struck me. I reached into my nearly empty bag to retrieve my camera that never left my side. Adjusting the aperture and shutter speed to the appropriate setting. I focused the lens and pushed my index finger to the small button until a little click emerged.

With all the faint dreams and bizarre situations, such as this one, it still didn't make any sense. There were so many other times where I would stumble upon this wolf, mostly when I least expected it. It was almost as if it was following me. Watching me as I moved endlessly around, making sure I was still within reach.

I halted those thoughts because of how crazy they started to sound. Then made my way back across the street to the bus stop, turning my back on the mural. But as I made it back to the sidewalk I turned around on last time.

I felt the tiniest of tugs inside me, willing me to go back to it. To find some kind of explanation. But instead I turned away again, towards the crowding Metro bus, forcing myself to not look at the streets signs. I didn't need to come back to it. It was nothing more than a coincidence. But I still needed a little reassurance that I wasn't going insane.

So I made my way to a vacant pole, seeing as all the seats were already full. Then I turned my attention back to the little screen in front of me.

As I tucked the camera back in my bag I remembered how my dreams where always so distant and blurred when they came to that wolf. But ever sense I made my way into Seattle from Wyoming I noticed something. I noticed that the dreams were becoming incredibly clear, more focused. A lot like the perfectly sharp photograph of the wolf painting that was blocks behind me now. Meaningless to ever single person that passed by it, nothing more than a beautiful mural of a lone wolf stranded in Seattle.

But I couldn't deny the fact that something was happening. And I couldn't quite place what exactly it was. All I knew was that my life was making a change. I could just feel it. Whither it was for better or for worse, I didn't know that either. But I was confused with what was going on with my life right now. Why I had brought myself here, away from family and friends, to find something. Anything.

But maybe it will become more clearer some time from now. It seemed that after each move my family and I made, it always got worse before it got better. I guess I would just have to stick with that and continue on.

Once I left Gillette, Wyoming after finally finishing high school I maneuvered towards college life in Powell, Wyoming. With just my digital camera, clothes, and dirt bike packed into my large Chevy truck, I took off. I arrived with no stings attached, no regrets, nothing at all. This was where my life would finally become something worth living!

But with only two years of finally becoming a normal human being with the parties, drinking, and stupid pitiless mistakes. I had had enough. But I fell somewhere along the way.

I fell in love. Again. But this time is wasn't the sweet bliss of first love. It was my second and it wasn't pretty. He dragged me down without me even noticing. Then left me behind to clean up the mess of it all. I never thought it could happen to me. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could get sucked in.

But I did and could never get a hold of myself again. I was long gone, fleeing Powell with a degree in Photography and winding up here. Lost within these large city walls, in this crowded bus full of strangers. Strangers roaming these lonely streets of King County that led to nowhere. Leading us on an endless journey of nowhere.

Nowhere. Yes, that's exactly what I was doing here, going absolutely freaking nowhere. But I was still falling. And falling fast. At least, that's what it felt like. An out of control spinning sensation that sucked me in even further. And I wasn't exaggerating, either.

It wasn't the normal my-life-sucks kind of feeling. The moping around, wondering when life will pick up kind of thing. No, I've been there before—too many times—and that was nothing. This was more like a heavy burden. A black nothingness pressing against my shoulders and neck. Leaving me constantly hunched over, my face forced to the ground I walk on. It sank into my knees, boring down on my stone feet to shuffle along an empty path. The shadowed lids of my eyes even held the weight of my loneliness.

When I was talking with someone I couldn't even bring myself to look them in the eyes. Not even a glance to see if their pitiful expression would pierce me again, by seeing how emotional obvious I was. It was just too much pressure to bear and I was just too damn tired. So painfully tired.

Shit. My stop.

I violently jerked out of my solid stance of dark wondering. Causing my ipod to jump from my hands and fly onto the floor while popping the headphones from my head. Hearing the snap of the small device hit the floor slightly brought me back down to earth.

A heavy sigh escaped my dry lips before I finally bent down to retrieve my ipod. I shoved the ipod into my bag, not even bothering to attempt to listen to the heavy music. No matter how loud and intense the music was, it still couldn't reach past my quandary. I was so absorbed inside my thoughts that the world was rushing by without grasping me at all. And it was useless trying to escape this dark hole I had dug for myself. Something will eventually come along and pull me out. Just like every other time I found myself lost in this dreary abyss. I just needed to keep it together for a little while longer.

With another exasperated sigh, I stood up from the stiff, blue seats of the nearly vacated Metro bus to pull the rubbery bell cord from behind me. Instantly hearing the excruciatingly loud ring it made pound against my eardrums. Within a couple of minutes I was off the bus, barely registering the bus pushing off down S. 212th street. I looked past the bland flashes of cars, noticing the familiar Starbucks across the street, immediately knowing where I stood. There was only a few blocks to be traveled before I found my place of refuge—my newest settlement.

I numbly laughed at myself for thinking of the word “settlement” as a term for this newly found residence. But there was just no other way to describe it. After moving across the western states—city to city, state to state—for almost fourteen years, I started to lose track of what exactly having a home meant.

Was it in Murrieta, California, where I spent the first six years of my life? Where my parent's deeply buried a past that now lays hidden. Along with my nearly forgotten childhood that remains tucked safely away in the darkest corner of my mind, never to be brought up again.

Perhaps in Sparks, Nevada I found a home. With all the bullies and torment I endured my first year of high school, plus the confusing anguish I felt toward my father's rapid alcohol addiction. I think not. That point in my life was the lowest road I ever traveled down out of all my high school years. I was only fourteen years old and somehow wound up in a tight black hole that took a year to finally get out of. Then shortly after, I was abruptly thrown in the world of back-stabbing bitches and unpleasantly learned where my loyalties lie. Yeah, it definitely wasn't a homely time to me. Remembering it even now, so many years later, still brings a hollow ache to my heart. It was the first time I cried, the first time I buried myself inside.

Maybe Gillette, Wyoming was my real home. The place where I truly grew up, where I matured into an adult. There I thrived in the Arts, I turned my loneliness into an independent streak, and I washed down my grudges, and learned to accept things as they were. But I also fell in love, a beautiful moment in my life that I couldn't ever let go of, yet I still couldn't quite grasp it either. After just a few short months together we went our separate ways, searching for something, neither of us knowing exactly what that was. It wasn't a painful process, nor heartbreaking, it was just hard to realize that we were not going to be together forever. But that it was just something that challenged ourselves to the different kinds of love than what we were both used to. And we succeeded in loving each other, with all the late nights spent talking about our theories on life. And all the gentle caresses and sweet kisses kept hidden from the outside world. Never going far enough into the bliss of those moments to keep us permanently tied to each other. I was always the one that pulled away with the little ring of doubt going off inside my head. Losing my virginity was something that shouldn't hold any insecurities, none at all. And that little shiver of doubt I always felt was something else that said we weren't everlasting. It was just another theory to life I had and I shared this thought with him one day. Which resulted in other little hints of detachment. We both saw what was to come and finally bid ours farewells to each other. Looking back with no regrets at all.

But, walking down this fretful street now, with the unusually bright sun setting in front of me, I felt rueful towards my past.

I couldn't help but look back and wonder what life would have been like if I didn't choose the paths I did. I always asked the same questions. What if I never came back up from that water and instead let the quiet blackness completely take me? What if I decided to blind myself from the truth, feeling what it would be like to back-stab a friend? What if I never had the chance to fall into something so amazing and gracious as falling in love? What if I did and decided to never let it go? Would I have saved myself from the burning pain that stabbed into my chest now? The twisting fire in my stomach that left me endlessly sickened. An eternity of darkness that covered me as the revolting flames viscously slapped me around, sending waves of pressure into me, continually knocking me down with every chance it had.

Daniel did this to me.

It wasn't my family or my so-called friends, or even myself. It was him who threw me out to the sharks to fend for myself. To leave me lost inside this clamored city while I had to walk around with his filthy habit burned into my flesh as a constant reminder of what he did.

I caressed the tiny scar on the far side of my left cheek, as the memory of that night crawled it's way into my mind. But instantly flinched back my hand and picked up my pace, trying to refocus on my destination.

Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.

I slowly chanted to myself, attempting to keep my mind blank. And as I finally started to calm down I started to concentrate on all the noises around me. The soothing swoosh of the cars driving by. With the occasional nonrhythmic beat of blaring Rap music and feeling a heavy gust blow past me as a semi-truck passed. There was also the light sound of leaves dancing with each other in a slow breeze along with distant wind chimes. Silent squeaking coming from the heels of my ancient Converses as I walked.

Taking a deep breath, I turned down the sidewalk and into the KOA Campground where I now resided. Automatically spotting my over sized white Chevy truck parked next the same old dually, just like any other day. I fumbled for my keys, impatiently awaiting the relief of being inside, away from everyone else. Even though I didn't consider this a home, it was still the closest thing I had to one.

A sense of ease washed through me as I finally stepped inside my trailer. As I took off my jacket the trailer started to rock slightly. Looking around the corner to my right, past the bathroom and into the small bedroom, I noticed Lovella scrambling to her feet.

“Hey, Love.” I greeted her as she came running up to me, her small nails clanking against the fake tile floor. “How's my girl?”

I bent down to wrap my arms around her petite body and breathed in her stale scent. I brushed my hands up and down her back, feeling her soft spotted fur run through my hands. When she started to squirm from my grasp I let go of her. I then looked into her intelligent caramel eyes seeing where my comfort came from.

Lovella was an unusual border collie with large black spots that were splattered along her long, white fur. She also was smaller than the average border collie, but was the perfect size for all the traveling I did. She might of been different looking from normal collies but she still had that wise light in her eyes that I've seen in so many other collies. Sometimes I thought she really understood what was going on. Like she could feel the mood I was in with just the cock of her head or how she would whine at me when I stared off into space. Instantly snapping me out of it.

Lovella was also a lot like me in a way. We both were unique—unlike anybody else—and we both were quiet and reserved. The only time she ever barked was when a guy approached her. I believe she was abused by someone that she loved and then was kicked to the curb.

Just like me.