The moon’s pale face stares out across the night,
Bathing in its lover’s cool and lingering caress.

The birch turns sterling in her light,
And the world fades into a universe sketched of ink,
Everyone becoming something else,
Stamped into a nameless silhouette of night.

Round as a coin she grins down wickedly,
Celestial and white and knowing.
Tonight is a cursed eve.
Tonight we shed our human skins.
Tonight we become the wolves.

The crunch of bones and the elastic snap of sinew sing the air,
A melody paired with the hushed, canine panting of the others.
Howls build in a hungry aria in the summer air,
Screaming praise to the beautiful gaze of the moon.

Not human. Not wolf. Only children bred the womb of the night,
Breathed into existence by only the cool air licking across our skin.

The grass is quiet as I run like a crazed puppy,
Tongue curled and lolling, jaws snapping teasingly at the bumbling lights of fireflies.
Not yet ready to hunt, to feed on the raw meat of man.
The smell of human flesh is faint, and I can wait.
Though time is quick by the gleam of the moon.

We are lycan.
We are what you fear only in your darker fantasies.
We are the evening air.
We are loupe-garoux.