As the matter that had once been the dark moon scattered, lost definition, and evaporated into nothingness, loose scraps of consciousness began to be drawn back together from the wreckage, gradually forming, piece by piece, into something cohesive. Into a mind. It was...what had happened...it had been...he had been...he...who was he? He was...had been...
With a sudden, agonizing burst of clarity, Julian's thoughts came back into focus. It felt like gasping for air after being pulled half-drowned from the water, but there was no actual physical sensation of gasping. Indeed, there was no actual physical sensation at all. He couldn't feel his limbs, his face, his...anything. He could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing, taste nothing, and smell nothing, and was only just barely sure of who he was.
What had happened? There had been that whole thing with the...the Enemy...until the dark moon had...had been destroyed...and the part of him that was - that wanted to be - fully and autonomously him, the part that had been buried, suffocated, nearly erased in the morass of un-self-ness and impersonal ambiguity that was union with them, was now fully part of him again, and the rest of him could remember what it had felt like...he wanted to vomit, but he couldn't seem to feel his stomach. He vaguely hoped that it had all been a terrible dream, but his current situation suggested that even if it was, he hadn't quite woken up yet.
Although he felt nothing in a physical sense, the feeling of loss was palpable; so much power, that he had only just gotten a taste of before it was taken from him! Why did this have to keep happening? And it was that same damn angel-freak, too! She had beaten him...again! (And this after Lilly of all people had pulled some crap that she'd never been able to do before on him...) Of everyone Julian knew, only he really understood how power was what it was all about - so why did other people keep getting more of it than he did? He felt like sulking over the sheer unfairness of it, but he couldn't quite get his mind off of trying to figure out where he was and what had happened to him. He couldn't sense anything...he couldn't...couldn't feel his body...
A horrible suspicion that he might be dead crept over him. He wasn't really sure what he had expected the afterlife to be like - some kind of candy-ass fluffy cloud heaven? Or cartoon devils with pitchforks in lakes of lava? But not this...not an eternity of...of nothing! The very idea...of never seeing, never hearing, never touching anyone or anything ever again, of being trapped in this existence that wasn't even a void because he couldn't even perceive it as empty space at all, forever... He couldn't feel panic; the adrenaline that was required for real panic was as lost to his senses as the rest of his body - as his senses themselves. He only felt horror - a horror devoid of any sensual components, but fully horrible nonetheless. If he were trapped in this state forever, unable to even end his existence...
He was so wrapped up in the horror of the idea that when he was suddenly confronted by a figure of silvery light, his first reaction was to quite violently grab and cling to it, as tightly as if he were a drowning man and it were a life preserver. Anything...anything...was worth clinging to, as long as it wasn't nothing...
"You are in a great deal of trouble, mortal," it said, none too cheerily. Julian pulled back and stared up at it. It was...it had the shape of a woman, and the voice of a woman. It...she...even had a distinct face. But she clearly wasn't human; she didn't even seem to quite be a physical being. Or at least he'd never seen a flesh-and-blood person who looked like this - wreathed in silver flame, glowing with a cool white light, and...he stared at her, trying to figure it out. She was a three-dimensional figure, on which he could see an image of...he had to look at it funny to make it out, but he knew what it was. He was a wolf; he knew the surface of the Moon when he saw it. It was in motion, slowly angling forward and back as it passed through its cycle; yet the figure itself was constant. To his mind, it looked like she was a videogame model on which the Moon had been applied as a texture - only somehow that was the wrong way around, and it was like she was a three-dimensional window into another space and the Moon was what was real here. It was very strange, and Julian felt that if he still had eyes they would be hurting.
Which raised the question of how exactly he was seeing. He looked down at himself. He did have a body, or at least the appearance of a body, but it was somewhat indistinct, and he still lacked corporeal senses. In addition, he was human again, which distressed him; he'd liked being a wolf, dammit! It'd made him more powerful...more self-sufficient. Now he was just plain old human Julian again. Just a boy...a boy in the presence of...of this. He blinked and found that he could just as easily perceive the scene from outside himself, as if he were an observer and the boy and the strange figure were separate...as if they were on a stage...as if he was detached from his own body. Which brought him back to his earlier fear.
"A-am...am I dead?" he asked. He hated having his voice tremble, especially since there was no physiological reason for it, no reason other than his own inherent, very much not chemically-influenced fear.
The woman regarded him sternly. "You are...not exactly in either state," she said. "I'd say you're in limbo, but I don't want to give the impression that that's a real place. Suffice to say, it hasn't been determined yet."
He bit his lip - or at least he intended to bite his lip; without sensation, it was difficult to say if he'd actually done so. Certainly it didn't have any kind of cathartic feeling to it. "Are...are you Death?"
The woman shook her head. "You will know when you meet Death. I am the Moon-Goddess, and I am the Moon. I am the Virgin and the Huntress, I am Selene, Diana, Neruite. I am she whose domain you invaded, whom you helped to assault." She sighed. Julian found himself a little surprised to hear such a human sound from this figure. "And," she said, "I am also the one that has gathered you together from what was left. I am the reason you are not yet dead."
Julian stared at her. She was the Moon...? Of course she was, he could tell that by looking - actually, he could've told it without looking. She felt like the Moon. But...an actual goddess...he didn't doubt it, but he was frightened enough that he wished he could. She was a goddess - she was power incarnate - and she was very perceptibly unhappy with him. But she had brought him here - she had kept him from death - in spite of that...why? Not to reward him, if her tone of voice was any indication. Was he...was he here to be tormented, to spend eternity at the mercy of an angry deity? "W-w-why?" he squeaked, embarassed at how frail his voice sounded.
Selene stood calmly and gazed at him. He could feel anger from her - not a human rage or hatred, but a cool, slow-burning anger that might take a million years to express itself but was as unstoppable as the tide. "To decide what to do with you, of course," she said.
Julian felt his heart sink. That was it, then - he was at her mercy. But...but...this wasn't how it was supposed to go! Didn't he have rights? "Y-you...you can't d-do this!" he stammered.
Selene's eyes widened and her mouth hung open - suddenly she seemed much more human. "Can't I?" she asked, sounding somewhat astonished. "A wiser man would be asking for mercy, Julian; instead, you try to tell me that I can't judge you? In the first place, what you did, you did in my domain - in an assault on my own world, no less. That would automatically put you under my jurisdiction. And let's consider the other options, shall we? I could remand you to the courts of Earth; do they even have a standard sentence for betraying the entire planet to an outside invader? I could request judgement from Venus, who favors the little squirrel-girl you attacked for your own sick pleasure. Or from Liber, who hates seeing power used for tyranny as much as he dislikes unnecessary imprisonment. I could ask Mars, who stands for everything about honorable manhood and might that you do not represent. I could have let you die, and go on to meet your fate beyond the veil, if not for the fact that even the gods can have mercy. Do you really think, Julian, that in all this world or any other, there will be an authority who looks any more kindly than I do on what you've done?"
"I-I...iwantalawyer-" Julian started, before cutting himself off. It was a dumb thing to say, and he knew it, but it was almost a reflex. Selene shook her head, and the human astonishment vanished and she was fully goddess again. "What good would that do?" she asked. "A lawyer is for the human courts, where not everything can be known completely or interpreted definitively. You and I both know exactly what you did and exactly why you did it - even if you like to deceive yourself about that. No, Julian. This trial was concluded before it began; we are only here for the review and sentencing."
"But...but...this can't be right!" Julian moaned. "It wasn't supposed to go like this...it was that angel-bitch! She...she cheats!"
Selene laughed coldly. "You should show more caution," she said. "You're speaking of the human I favor. But I take no offense; yes, she does cheat. That's part of what I like about her; she's just a little bit mad, and she relishes bending the rules and taking the unconventional solution. Besides," she said, smiling, "shall we compare the two of you? Lucas was given incredible power - including a power that not even the gods possess - without ever having sought it. And she has consistently used that power to do good, and to benefit others - as much as she likes to feign detachment. Even her mistakes have largely been made in the attempt to do good."
Her smile turned to a frown. "Whereas you, Julian? You sold out - sold your world, sold your family, sold your own soul - to obtain power. And for what? So you could take a position of tyranny because you felt that you were owed it? You used that power to assault me and torment my champion, all the way down to something as petty and vile as terrifying and threatening a little girl you didn't even think could fight back, and for no other reason than your own sick pleasure and a lust for dominion? And you have the gall to complain about Lucas's behavior? You didn't even engage her in a fair fight to begin with!" She turned away from him with a sigh. "What are we to do with you?" she said, half to herself.
Julian bristled. Was...was she saying that the angel was more deserving than he was? That she got power even greater than the gods!? And he was the one who should feel bad? Part of him was trying to caution him to hold his temper, but that suggestion made his pride flare up beyond his ability to control. "D-damn you!" he spat. "Don't you talk down to me! I was a god, dammit!"
Selene whirled around, her pale corona flaring white-hot. "YOU!?" she said, her voice thundering with harmonics no human body could ever produce, from seismic subsonics that should have rattled him like a paint-shaker to piercing treble notes far beyond the range of even wolf-Julian's hearing. If it weren't for the fact that he didn't seem to have a physical body at the moment, he thought that the sound would have had him doubled over, wracked with the sheer intensity of it. Even as it was, he was taken aback. The smaller voice in Julian's consciousness was berating him now. You asshole! it said. At the mercy of a goddess, and you start mouthing off to her!? He clenched his illusory teeth, trying to ignore it.
Selene advanced on him. It seemed to his perception that she was growing into a giantess, though it was difficult to even judge sizes with no points of reference, and that she was filling the space they were in, even though it wasn't really a space at all. If she was giant, it didn't seem to make it any trickier for her to grab him by the shoulders. It made his head hurt... "You wretch!" she hissed. "Is that what you think of us? That we are like you, grasping at power as if it is only a blunt instrument for your petty tyranny? I will have you know, Julian, how much of my existence lies in the context of my service to the world of my sister. Behold!"
Suddenly the void was no longer a void, but a pattern - circles composed of circles composed of circles composed of circles, an unfathomable Cyclopean spirograph drawing cutting across time as well as space, the outermost arc of which he could only perceive a fraction of - if it even was the outermost arc and not just another layer. It appeared to be a sort of unmoving backdrop - no matter which angle his mind's eye saw the scene from, he perceived it the same - but it was anything but flat. If anything, the depth to this pattern felt like it couldn't even fit in a mere three dimensions. He felt like he would be sick to his stomach, if he still had a stomach.
Selene regarded him sternly, and then turned her gaze to the pattern. "My part in the Great Dance is only the innermost of these," she said. "I circle my sister world, and she circles the Sun, and so on up the ladder. I cause the tides to flow in your world. I light your nights. I have shielded you from collisions that could have devastated whole civilizations. I stand for and define things on a metaphysical level that are more vital than even those duties - I am the Huntress and the Virgin and the Harvest, as my sister is the Mother and the Sower and the Shepherdess. I could show you beings far greater than myself who underpin this reality in ways that it would shatter your mortal mind to even try to comprehend, because that is their nature. Do you even begin to understand, Julian? You think that power yields dominion - no. Power brings servitude. Because it must be applied to an end, or it is only potential."
The Moon-goddess sighed, seeming closer to human again. "Lucas understands that, a little," she said. "Perhaps only in Spider-Man terms, and she would never admit to it, but she has the right idea. And because she understands, she has willingly put her power in the service of worthier causes - and, for doing that, she has been allowed to enjoy its rewards as well. You, for what power you have ever had, have refused to let it serve anything greater than yourself. You have given over that power to your base lusts - for dominance, for control, for the gratification of your completely untrammelled ego - and in return they have enslaved you. You didn't even bat an eye at the Enemy's offer because they promised you all of that." She made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. "At least a man who's merely ruled by his penis is only in danger of catching a disease, not losing his own self," she muttered.
Julian bristled. Him, enslaved!? How dare she! For the moment he forgot the feelings of exactly that kind of helplessness that the Enemy had been suppressing in him - well, that he had been helped in suppressing by the Enemy. "Wh-what's your point!?" he yelled. "Jesus, did you just bring me here to yell at me!?"
Selene stared at him, and he got the uncomfortable feeling that she was regarding him as if he were some kind of exotic cockroach. "My point, mortal," she said, the human element in her voice all but completely gone, "is that there is something fundamentally broken about you, about the way in which you think the world works. I brought you here to determine if there's anything that can be done to fix that."
That idea only made Julian angrier. She brought him back to this quasi-life just so she could yell at him for not subscribing to her bullshit worldview, and now, what, she wanted to make him change his mind!? That was...that was just...parents, teachers, and cops had all spent hours giving him lectures on how he should start letting himself be restricted by their little social contract, but this was the first time anyone had just straight-up said they intended to fix him like he was a goddamn broken alarm clock. If he'd still had blood, it would've been boiling. "Fuck you!" he screamed - or at least, intended to scream, which seemed to work out to about the same thing here - and took a swipe at the goddess, to absolutely no effect. "You can't 'fix' me! You can't make me do anything!" The small voice inside him was yelling at him to stop, but by this point he was paying it no attention whatsoever.
Not that it would've helped; the words had already left his representation of a mouth, and Selene had somehow grown even sterner. "I have had enough of this talk," she said, her voice as old as the heavens, a cold fire burning around her as she advanced on him. All the illusions of a conventional three-dimensional space melted away as she focused her gaze on him, all but his human self-image, leaving only Julian and a goddess the size of a planetoid who was nonetheless able to look him right square in the eye. "Do not lecture me on what I can and cannot do, mortal," Selene said. "You who lust for power - now witness mine."
She grasped him by the collarbone with one hand, with the slight staccato push that a huckster faith-healer would employ to give the sense of the power of God - but here and now, it went right to Julian's core. He reeled back into exactly the same position as he'd started from and gasped as sensation - real, carnal sensation - flooded him; his body was becoming a real body again. The feeling of countless individual nerves re-forming physical connections to actual flesh was exquisitely terrible; it was like he had somehow slept on his entire body funny and made it "go to sleep," and now someone was slapping bloodflow and sensation back into it. At the same time, it had the sort of intense, visceral relief that someone who's been down under the surface of the pool for too long feels with their first gasp of air. Was this what it was like to come back from the dead?
In mere moments, a re-incarnated, human Julian stood before the Moon-goddess, his consciousness once again inhabiting a brain, his perception limited to seeing the world through two flesh-and-blood eyes. Looking himself over in gobsmacked amazement, he realized that he was naked, but that was pretty much the furthest thing from his mind at the moment; Selene was reaching for him again.
She placed a hand on his bare chest. "You liked to style yourself as a hunter," she said. "You even rightfully ascribed your loyalty to me, because you were a wolf; a born hunter. But you never stopped to think that I honor the good hunters, and not the bad ones. Did you hunt out of need, Julian? No; your needs were all provided for by others, and you never even bothered to finish what you did kill! Did you hunt for honest sport? Of course not; you made a game out of tormenting a little girl, and when given a one-on-one with a truly worthy opponent, you immediately stacked the odds as far in your favor as you possibly could. You didn't even hunt for exercise, Julian; you did it because you saw it as a way to assert dominion over others - others who would all be far more deserving of authority than yourself, if they even sought it. As a hunter, Julian, you have it from the Huntress herself that you are a travesty and a mockery, and I will not have that." She frowned. "Perhaps," she said, "if being made a predator reinforced your belief that 'might makes right,' the solution is for you to no longer be one."
Julian felt his stomach knot up and his heart sink. Being given his body back had, for a brief moment, left him almost optimistic about being left at the mercy of this titaness, but now he understood. This - the body he had inhabited since birth, newly recreated by her hand - was only a canvas to her, a starting point from which to work...he opened his mouth to protest, but was cut short when she pressed her hand into - inside - his chest, grabbed at something that he wasn't sure was exactly an organ in any sense he understood, and began to knead and twist it.
"The Greeks have long since muddled or forgotten the true extent of Actaeon's transgression, but I have not," she said, as his smattering of sprouting chest hair began to thicken into a coat of short, thick fur, spreading across his torso - bright white and softer down the front, turning to a coarse golden-brown as it began to spread around the sides to his back. "He was much like you, in a way; he believed that being a mighty hunter meant that anything - and anyone - he desired was his rightful prey. I will say no more of it, except that he fully deserved what came to him - though they've exaggerated his punishment just as they have downplayed his crime."
Julian had no idea what she was talking about, but he was too terrified to care anyway. The fur had covered his body by this point and was running down his arms and legs. He could see his feet reshaping before the coat even reached them - elongating, twisting into a shape that lifted his ankles clear off the nonexistent ground and left him balancing on the balls of his feet and his toes, which had begun to fuse together as the toenails grew out, turning opaque and black as they covered over what had separated into two...two sort of...claws, yes, they were claws, definitely, they had to be - curved and pointy and...and...and he recognized them. They weren't claws at all. They should be, but they weren't, no matter how much he wanted them to be. They were two halves of a split hoof, the kind he'd followed the tracks of when he'd hunted and killed and only partly ate a...a...
No! No, this couldn't be happening! How had it come to this? How had it come to this!? His legs had changed, now - the forelegs shortened and slender, almost scrawny, but powerful haunches, excellent for...for running away...this couldn't be happening! His arms were undergoing a similar change...God, no! She wasn't going to make him into a full...a full...but his hands only elongated a bit in the palm, leaving his thumbs back up by the wrist like the dewclaws on his new feet, and his fingernails became black and somewhat stubby. That was...that was almost like a relief, except for everything else about the situation. He could feel his head beginning to reshape, his neck lengthening slightly...
"No!" Julian yelped. It wasn't that he thought it would help - the matter-of-fact manner of the Moon-goddess in her splendor left no doubt about what the final outcome would be, or his chances of affecting it in even the slightest way - but he couldn't just let it happen without protest. "No no no no no no noh nol nll-" He stopped as he found his mouth filled with a lengthened tongue that his skull was just starting to accomodate. His whole face was pushing out into a muzzle...he could feel it, from the fur growing on his face, down to his teeth reshaping - no longer even the human assortment for a mixed diet, but the plain incisors-and-molars set of an herbivore. He clasped his hands to his face, as if he could make this stop by holding it back, but it continued on.
His nose was flattening out, the skin on it becoming black and damp, and he could feel his ears lengthening, taking on a leaf shape and twitching this way and that as his brain adapted to the muscles it could now use to move them. He felt two stubby growths sprout from his head, winding their way up above it as they branched out into what were unmistakeably a deer's antlers. The whole time, there had been a pressure building in the base of his spine; now it gave with a sudden, almost audible pop as his coccyx unfused and unfurled into a short, perky tail, brown on top and the same soft, bright white as his whole front underneath. The suddenness of it caught him off-guard; he started and gave a very embarassing, very cervine, and not in the least bit intimidating squeal.
This couldn't be real. This couldn't have just happened. But everything he could feel told him it had. He could feel his tail, feel his muzzle, even feel the weight of his antlers when he moved his head. She had turned him into...into a deer, into a whitetail buck, only separated from his aborted meal of a couple weeks ago by a degree of anthropomorphization. He felt himself trembling and half-consciously looking for a direction in which to bolt - but even his subconscious knew that there was no running from this being that now held him captive.
"Did you like that, Julian?" Selene asked, a very human sing-song tone in her voice, and now seemingly back to human size. "Was it fun, being completely at the mercy of someone much more powerful than you? Do you think this is how Lilly felt? Do you think this is how all the other people you've bullied felt?" She observed her handiwork. "Mm. Still not quite right...and there's the other consideration, too..."
She reached out to him and touched him - first on the chest, and then on the abdomen. "Because it's not, Julian. They felt worse, because they couldn't even write it off with the knowledge that the person who was pushing them around was a god. Lilly at least had the knowledge that you were using supernatural power; the people you mistreated as a human have had to live with that continual why didn't I do anything? feeling that only comes from being pushed around by someone who is just as much a flesh-and-blood, mortal human being as they are." She scowled. "And you know what the irony is, Julian? Some day one of them would have pushed back, and then you might be anything from bruised to injured to dead. It would've caught up with you eventually, you must have known that; you just managed to get yourself possessed, transformed, and vaporized before it did."
Julian was about to stammer out an attempt at a retort, but he was distracted by the feeling of a weight leaving his head, as the antlers he'd only just grown clattered to the ground on either side of him. She couldn't...but he knew perfectly well that she could, and when he felt a sudden wrenching in his gut, he knew that she was. He felt himself shrink slightly, his shoulders narrowing a little as his hips broadened. He felt a pressure building in his chest as the flesh underneath his nipples began to expand out into a pair of white-furred breasts. He found his hair - now a darker, chestnut brown that contrasted nicely with the golden-brown of his coat - falling into his field of vision as it spilled down his back, stopping about halfway to his waist. And last but certainly not least, the penile sheath which had formed in his transformation into a buck deflated as its contents withdrew into his - into her - body.
Julian stared down at herself. "N-n-no," she murmured, hearing a softer, higher voice coming from her mouth. "No, no, no! This...this can't be! This can't-" She trailed off as she noticed something - a sort of spark of light - appear to condense from the empty space around them. It hovered in mid-air for a moment, then drifted towards her. She didn't know what it was, but given the circumstances, she didn't think it was anything she wanted. This time she even tried to run - but she was unaccustomed to her new legs, and she stumbled, fell, and rolled over onto her back, just starting to sit up as the spark reached her, touched her abdomen, and disappeared into her body.
The deer-girl stared at Selene. "Wh-what the hell!?" she stammered. "Wh-wh-what w-w-was that!?"
"That was your child," Selene said, matter-of-factly.
Julian's jaw dropped. "M-my...but...b-but...no! That can't happen, I haven't...no!"
The Moon-goddess shook her head. "Just because you didn't go about it in the usual way doesn't change the fact that you created a life," she said. "You very deliberately set about inculcating your way of thinking into the Enemy, or at least the part of it that merged with you into the Dark Moon. And while your only intent was to exploit their power and naïveté to your own ends, that began to form a mortal mind - the nascent core of a person. You made them your child, Julian. All I have done is started you making a body for it."
"B-but...but I c-can't...can't be a...a..." She couldn't even bring herself to say it.
"Can't be a mother? By the simplest definition you already are," Selene said. "I admit, you're not remotely the most qualified candidate for the job, but you were the one who started this, Julian. You created a life, in an act of your own deliberate free will, which makes it your responsibility, and you taught it human failings, which doubly makes it your responsibility to start teaching it human virtues. This is your job and not anybody else's. It would be the father's as well, but I'm afraid you picked one hell of a deadbeat baby-daddy."
Julian leapt to her feet, stumbling as she tried to balance on hooves with the added weight on her chest, and feeling her breasts bounce as she stumbled. She stood up and glared daggers at Selene. "Y-you can't do this to me!" she screamed. "You can't! You can't make me be...be this! I won't do it! I won't let you! You CAN'T!!!"
Selene shook her head in amazement. "Have you not been paying attention, little doe?" she asked. "We already settled the question of whether or not I can. I can, and I did." She closed her eyes and sighed. "But...I will not force you to live as this, or to bear your child. I will give you a choice, not because you have done anything to deserve one, but because I am Neruite, goddess of sleep and dreams, and I am merciful as well as just - even if you, fool that you are, have never once asked for my mercy." And, she thought to herself, for the sake of my champion, who values freedom above all else. "Behold."
Suddenly there was a third figure in the void. It was a woman - tall, slender, and pale, with long black hair, and wearing a long black dress. She stood beside a door - a simple, unadorned mahogany door that was nonetheless the most imposing thing Julian had ever seen in her life. You will know when you meet Death - and Julian knew what was on the other side of that door. She stared bug-eyed, first at the woman and the door, and then at Selene. "A-are you f-f-fucking kidding!?" she yelped, a hint of that cervine squeal creeping into her voice.
Selene shook her head. "This is your choice. You were destined for death, Julian, but I have given you a second chance at life. You may take it, or you may leave it."
She couldn't believe this. This couldn't be real - but all the evidence said it was. She could live as...as a doe...as a pregnant doe...or she could...could die...how could she even begin to weigh those options? But...but she couldn't just give in, couldn't let her tormentor win...
"Wh-what...what'll happen to me...in there?" she asked, her voice trembling.
"The only way to know for sure is to see for yourself," said Death. Her voice was quiet and somber, as free of pomp or melodrama as the door was free of ornament.
"B-b-but, the...the...?" Julian couldn't even bring herself to say "baby;" she just gestured at her stomach, trying not to think about it too much.
"The child will be spared," Selene said. "If you decide to die, I'll give it to someone who will be alive to look after it."
Julian felt her face grow hot underneath her fur. "B-but...y-you can do that? Then do it!"
Selene laughed coldly. "Why, so that you can just go on your merry way? Was I not clear, Julian? The baby is your responsibility; the only reason I would separate it from its mother is because she planned to die rather than live with something over a hundred million women go through every year. I'm not doing it just for the sake of your convenience; you of all people have no right to expect a made-to-order miracle. Now what's it going to be?"
Julian felt herself shaking. She looked down at herself, and then at the door. To be forced to choose between...between this, and that... "I-I need t-time!" she stammered. "G-give me t-t-time!"
"Nobody gets more time just because they want it," Selene said. "And what would it do for you, Julian? If I gave you a thousand years, the question would be the same. Do you want to live, or do you want to die?"
The deer-girl stared wild-eyed at the Moon-goddess, and then back at the door. She...she couldn't let her win - she couldn't give in, couldn't...couldn't be this, couldn't live as this, but...oh God, that door got more terrifying every time she looked at it, and at the woman standing next to it, and thought about all the things that might await her on the other side...she wanted to spit in the goddess's face, give her the finger, march through the door, but...but she couldn't want it badly enough. Her entire body was shaking. Every breath was a reminder that she wanted to keep breathing, every contraction of every muscle a precious, precious treasure. Every minute, every moment, every microsecond meant more to her than all the money and all the power in the world. The very process of living made her desire to live, and she'd bet money that the goddess knew it. She...she...
"AAAAAAAUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!" she cried, starting off with a scream of rage and ending in a quavering wail that was immediately followed by sobbing. She ran to the Moon-goddess and wrapped her arms around her, clinging to Selene and burying her head in her chest.. "F-f-fine!" she blubbered, the hair on her face wet with tears. "Fine, do anything! Just don't let me die please please please don't let me die!"
Selene gently stroked her fur. "I won't," she said softly. "I promise. No matter what happens, you won't go before your time." She looked over at Death. "Thank you," she said. "You may go." The woman vanished without a word.
So did the void; they were standing in the middle of the woods, on a moonlit night. Selene waited until the deer-girl's sobbing had died down, then stood her back up straight. "You won't die," Selene said. "That means that you're going to have to live. You're not a wolf anymore, and despite what you think even wolves aren't meant to go it alone. So you'd better be thinking pretty seriously about how you treat people, and whether it's anything like the way you'd want to be treated. About whether it's such a good idea to try to be an island unto yourself, too. Your parents could tell you a lot about what to expect during a pregnancy. Not to mention how not to be a violent jackass thug."
Julian stared at her. Her parents!? Oh God... "Wh-what...what'm I gonna tell them!?" she squealed.
Selene shrugged. "That's up to you, isn't it? But I promise you this: if you tell them the truth, they will believe you."
The doe-girl gaped. "I-I...I can't d-do...do that!" she stammered.
"Well, it's your call," Selene said. "You'd better get going if you want to get home before sunup; not that it matters to you, but you might as well catch them before they go to bed. You want to go east - that way. Maybe be thinking on the way: what would this walk be like if the predators all had the attitudes you did?" She suppressed a smirk; Julian wouldn't run into even a bobcat, she'd see to that, but this would give her something to think about.
"Oh," the Moon-goddess added. "One more thing: I will be watching you - so don't even think of trying anything with the baby."
Julian stared at her. "I...do I really have to...to...?"
"See it safely into the world," Selene said. "You owe it that much at least. I'm not going to force you to raise it, you could give it up for adoption, but there's a hell of a lot you could learn from serving someone other than yourself, Julian. Just a thought - you've got a few dozen weeks to think it over."
And with that, she was gone.
