I have come to dread the raven's caw that signals moonrise. It is the dread noise that warns me of worse to come, when I can feel the change come upon me. I beg this of the sun, do not set, do not leave me. Leave me alone with myself and the thing that I carry within me.

This is my anti-aubaude. Leave me with the rest of humanity, walking on two feet. Leave me to tools, to society, to love and all the rest that makes us man. Keep me from hunger, keep me from rage, keep me from the primal joy of running through the wet grass, my snout flaring for scent of prey. Everything is prey.

I wish for mornings where I awoke and knew that nothing had passed through the night but poor dreams brought on by tinned beans. I wish for mornings where I awoke where I bedded, the tang of blood in my mouth. I wish for mornings where I did not wake with scratches all over me, and the sense that the beast was sated only for the day.

Damn you raven, it is your call that brings on the moon. Without you, there would be no baleful eye to stare down upon me, and without any witnesses, perhaps I could remain alone, in whatever shame I had left. But there is always a raven, and there is always a moon. And there is always me, and there is always it.

It cannot be stopped, and I have tried. It laughs at running water, it laughs at silver. Cold iron is nothing, nor is hot lead. Blood, sacrifice, and hex, none give it pause. I may be broken, bleeding, and dead, but in the morning I will be back, and I will be whole.

Less perhaps, for every bite it takes, it takes another of me. One day, there will be ravens to blot out the sun, and there will be only the moon. And only it. I dread that day, but perhaps it is only then that I can rest. Only then, in endless night.