Letter to the Alpha Mother Priestess

I intend to keep things on Wrizzit focused on my poetry, but I've decided to share a story from a six story collection I published in 2025, Forest Tales. They are slice-of-life stories all set in the same enchanted forest. The reader has been granted access to documents in the Forest Archives. There are witches, necromancers, unwelcome "visitors" from the royal military, and - in this story - werewolves. This is one of my favorite stories I've written.

Forest Tales is available for purchase on Kindle, but I fully understand people choosing not to buy from Amazon. I also have it available as epub and pdf in other places, like my Ko-fi shop. You can find all of my work through LKNesse.carrd.co

Content warning: This story deals with trauma that comes from an abusive system in which people have convinced themselves that they are "helping" their victims.

Priestess,

The work you've been doing in this area with holding the Gatherings will be helpful to many. I don't think I'll be showing up anymore, though, and I wanted to tell you why. I like to think it's that I owe you an explanation. Wouldn't it be rude to never explain why I abruptly stopped taking part in something you put so much of yourself into? That's what I like to think about why I want to explain. It's also possible that a priestess of the Alpha Mother is someone it is easy to release what I've carried all these years to. This letter may be self-serving more than anything. I'm willing to admit that and live with whatever it means about me.

You, of course, know how scattered we are in this part of the Forest and how broken our connection to the Alpha Mother is. I'm sure that's why you brought Her message here. I grew up in a closely connected part of the Forest. Closely connected to each other, that is. The connection of our pack to the Alpha Mother didn't break so much as stretch and fade. Elders told Her stories, festivals were held during the traditional Moons. I'm not sure even the elders really believed the stories, though, and I can't think of anyone raised during my child time who did. Both of my parents would swear "by the Mother's Moons", but my father sometimes grumbled that priests of the Alpha Mother did more to harm us than the pure humans ever could. You know what those cults have done. I believe my father would appreciate what you're doing to heal that, though he'd likely keep his distance from you.

I left my pack and came to this part of the Forest because our folk are so scattered here. Obviously, because I am in fact one of our kind, it is in my very nature not to be too far from others. For other reasons, I do not wish to have that close community ever again. I don't belong in a pack.

Why am I telling you this now? I see what's coming, Priestess. I know the Calendar of the Moons as well as anyone else. I've paid attention to how your messages of "the beauty of the Change" have been growing. I'd say you're two Mother Moons away from leading the Gathering through a pack run. Trust my words when I tell you I don't just want to run with all of you, but feel the need for it in my blood! To feel the wind carry us through the grasses and brambles and bushes! To lose that sense of my own self and know for a night what it is to be The Pack! I feel that swell in every bit of me that all comes to the chest, and a howl almost takes over as I write these words!

And that's why I have to tell you now the reason that I cannot show up that night, and why there's just no sense in showing up for any of the other Gatherings. But I beg you not to reveal my shame to the others. I have a home here, if not a strong community. I'm safe here. I harm no one and no one harms me. Let me keep that.

I've circled around it long enough, and now I'll write the truth. I cannot Change. It's never happened. I am an adult, born with womb mates who all went through their First Change within the expected time. My mother birthed four litters. Three womb mates to the first and fourth litters, four each to the second and third. I am the third born of the four womb mates of the third litter. I have a brother born of the first litter who was a little later than expected going through his First Change, but still within the normal time. I am the only one who has never Changed, and a great shame to my mother because of it.

When you say the Alpha Mother nurses us all, I cannot help but think I must be Her runt who couldn't get to Her teats before She went dry. When you say She feels each bone break and reform, each muscle reshape, each hair grow... well, obviously, not with me. The Alpha Mother has never held my heart during that precious pause in the beats during the Change. I can't trust that She will always bring the rhythym back because my heart never loses it. Watch me closely through a cycle of moons and you'll think you just wasted your time keeping track of a pure human.

My parents tried. I tried. All of my siblings tried. Neighbors tried. Our community didn't do pack runs. That was more private and mostly a thing for families. Oh, but we all tried passing me off to different families during different Mother Moons, always hoping something about this tiny pack would trigger the Change! And it never did. For a good, long while we just waited. "Don't fret about it," older neighbors would scold. "It's got to just come the first time. You can't learn to will it until it's happened on its own." Of course, eventually, they blamed me. All that warning me against worrying became accusations that I was, for some unknown reason, intentionally stopping it from happening.

As I've said, our community was not religious and my father strongly distrusted the cults. He, naturally, was not the head of the house, though. When my mother decided to send me away to see if there was any way the priests could guide or train me into Changing, there wasn't much my father could do beyond voicing his opinions about it. I think my mother probably shared those opinions. I also think they were desperate. I know I was.

You speak of how dear each of our kind is to the Alpha Mother. You speak of the times when generations of us hid on the fringes of pure human towns, and how it was the Alpha Mother who mourned each of us who was hunted by the pure humans. You speak of Her love with such passion that I reason either you know Her love deeply, or you are one of the most talented performers to ever grace this part of the Forest. There's no hint of doubt. Nothing to think over later and say, "Ah, she just says that because we want to believe it." You seem to truly believe your own words.

The priests I went with did not speak of Her in such ways. They angrily chastised me for failing to let the glory She gifted to our kind manifest through myself. They did their best to convince me that I was not giving my best to Her, my family, or the community. I'd say they succeeded in that effort. Pure wolves know the pack comes first. They don't need to be taught, and I doubt anyone could fully train it out of them. They know. An individual's best effort isn't always going to be what is best for the pack. The pack comes first. I still believe that.

It wasn't all words from the priests, but they could certainly talk for a long time and did so in shifts. One of them recited The Laws of Fang and Fur to me during every meal I ate. Of course, they were trying to prepare me for what the Change would cost my body, so it was five times per day that a small feast was spread in front of me while Brother Whomever (I was never told their names) chanted again and again to, "Know each Moon as your own soul," and, "Never deny the howl." I thought the Laws to be useless, and I suspect they aren't as divine and ancient as the cults would have us believe, but at least hearing them recited didn't do any harm to me. I can't say that about all the methods they tried.

Too many details are a danger to my awareness and focus. They can make my mind exist in a different environment, as if I'm no longer sitting at my desk and writing this letter even though my body would still be doing that very thing. So we won't dwell too much or for too long on each movement, scent, sound, and all those bits of terror that have lived inside of me ever since that time. The most direct path of telling this is just to say they beat me into rage and exhaustion, then Changed and darted back and forth to take turns biting at me. They moved in the circles of the dance of wearing down the big prey. The idea was that the success of this hunt would be the Change being forced out of me. I would be broken down mentally by the pain, terror, and exhaustion. I would have no choice but for the adrenaline to take over, and then we would run as a pack!
But the Change never happened. It's been several years since the last time I curled up under my bed screaming and vomiting in the middle of the night. The scars have become such a part of me that I no longer remember what I looked like without them.
Now you know how far we all went with trying to get my First Change to happen. What does all of this mean for my sense of self? I'm not sure I can explain that, to tell you the truth. Did you ever hear that story about the pure human child who was raised by our kind? It was a popular story during my child time. I'm not sure if it faded in popularity as other stories came along, or if it simply stopped being told around me after a certain time. I can give you a short version of it in case you've never heard it.

In the story, a pack is out running during No Moon and they hear a pure human child crying in the Forest. They don't smell or hear anyone else out there with the child. There's some debate about whether or not to show mercy and then bury the body. The child was too young to have wandered into the Forest alone and there had been no signs recently of pure humans in the area. At this time, as it is told in the story, our kind could not possibly safely approach a pure human village. Naturally, the pack couldn't eat a pure human any more than they could eat a pure wolf. The very idea didn't even occur to them! But how could they just leave the child there to suffer and eventually die? Mercy and burial seemed the best thing to do. One of the men couldn't accept the idea, though.

He and his wife took the child home and raised them as one of their own. Everyone in the pack accepted that this one never Changed. The child ran naked through the Forest with the others, faster than anyone would have expected a pure human child could run. And when the pack howled, their voice added a new sound to the choir.
There's an ending to the story that comes down to the child being an adult and having to choose their people someday, and of course they chose our kind. Stories told during the child time are meant to have happy endings. It's just a story, though. It's something to tell children who will never experience anything like it so that a picture can be painted of how loving our kind are. How any pure human would want to be one of us, if only they really knew us. It isn't meant to tell anyone what to do with someone who doesn't Change. Who expects that to happen?

Thankfully, there was nothing to make anyone question how my mother's choices might have caused this. It's not that the community would have judged someone with no mate or children having physical intimacy with a pure human. That was the decision of the individual, as long as they did whatever was necessary not to put the community at risk. Someone married within the community having physically intimate relations outside of the community, though? That status changes things, and such a situation would not be viewed as kindly. Had I been one of those rare single births, that could have raised even greater trouble for my mother.

I've told you enough by this point that there's no reason not to be fully honest. I don't actually concern myself anymore with how my existence did anything for the rest of them. I had enough years of that. What has it done for me? Look at the story you told at the last Gathering. The one about living in that between space. How it is part of the beauty of our kind that we are neither pure human nor pure wolf, yet also both. Something neither pure humans nor pure wolves can ever know. Now look at what I've been telling you in this letter. I'm not some pure human child raised by a pack like that little tale from my child time. I am one of us. But am I really? The Change is possibly the most defining thing about us. So what am I? Not pure human, and somehow even further from being pure wolf than any of the rest of us. Without experiencing the Change, though, can I really be one of us?

I've asked myself that nearly every day for most of my life. I don't expect you to have an answer. As near as I can tell, I experience all of the things each of us does outside of the Change. I know the ways our physical sensations are different from those of the pure humans. I know the ways our thoughts are different from the pure wolves. I feel the silent songs that the Moons sing in our blood. As I said before, I came to this area to be among those of us who are scattered because I cannot stand the idea of truly being a lone one of our kind. The pack calls the soul. But I cannot know what all of you know within the Change. I can't be as bonded to all of you as you are to each other. I am alone.

There's no magical ending to my story. I can't tell you that, by sudden blessing, I finally Changed in the middle of writing this. My child time was complete many years ago, so stories don't all have happy endings now. Please continue the work you came here to do. I wish you well with the Gatherings. I think you can form a pack out here. If they ask where I am, though, please don't tell them my truth. Just tell them I am doing well and that you hope I'll be at the next Gathering. You should only have to do that a few times before they stop asking. Like the rest of our kind, I can blend silently into the Forest.

May the Alpha Mother run with you on the darkest nights, and may She always bring the rhythm of your heart back when you Change.