Now I would have new ones and I wore them proudly, much as I wore the tattoo around my belly button and the piercings in my nipples, and the one lower, the bone ring through my pubis. I could hear their songs echoing at night and it was an emptiness inside me which I knew would never be filled. The doctor would come as well, and he was a man I didn’t like. He arched his back and put more of his weight upon me than he normally might, merely because we were outside and he did want to finish quickly. The wind was in my favor. He was close. The whole affair had lasted only a few seconds, but time moves differently in a fight, even a friendly one between brother and sister. He pressed his cold damp nose to my sex briefly, perhaps smelling the wolf on me, but I’d washed myself well and in truth they’d grown accustomed to that scent, although they neither understood nor appreciated it. Barley paused to lift his head high, his ears stiff and flicking in the wind as it came from behind him.
