Florence
Content warnings: childhood trauma, SA, slavery, exposure, death threats. This work is considered NSFW. Read with caution!
This is the full version of my story for Beating the Babes: Winter Woes Whump 2025. A huge thank you to @beatingthebabesbirthdaybash for putting on this event!
My mother used to be home more.
I don’t know why that’s the first difference I think of, both of my parents acted very differently in the Before times, but when I try to think back that’s always the first things that comes to my mind. My father was home more too, and they both smiled more, and my mother used to wear these gorgeous, light dresses in the summer. I’d almost forgotten about those pretty dresses.
I think we were happy. We were never rich, but I think we were happy.
That’s all I can remember about the before times.
______
The night everything changed I was six. My father left home about his usual time, but still wasn’t back well after dark.Â
“There’s a celebration happening, they’re going to be celebrating all evening.” My mother explained, as she took us up stairs. But she didn’t even look remotely happy, and she kept glancing out of the windows.Â
Just as she turned to the door, my brother and I both tucked into bed, the first explosion shook the bed. I instantly leapt towards her, and she crouched down to hold me close. My little brother, two years my junior and even more confused was quick to follow. I could hear her heart pounding in time with mine.
“Just a celebration.” She repeated, and in the uneven light from the window I saw her smile, but it was a scary kind of smile. It was a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “They’re having a celebration, and then everyone is going home.” But her arms told a different story, holding us tightly against her as she sat on the floor and scooted backwards to lean against the wall.
The next explosion sounded nearer, and I let out a small shriek, burying my head into my mother’s clothes. She ran a gentle hand over my back, calming, repetitive motions that mimicked her repetitive speech. Her words were encouraging, but her distracted looks out of the window, biting her lip, and reluctance to let us out of her sight were not.
I tried to focus on just that arm over my back, shrinking my world down to that one room, that one bubble of stillness in the terrifying unknown, that hand moving up and down, up and down, up and down…
At some point I must have fallen asleep. When I woke up in the morning, I was still on the floor with my mother. My mother who hadn’t slept at all.
______
In the After times, I got used to putting my brother to bed. He would sometimes want to stay up talking a little, especially as he got older, but normally by the time we got home all we wanted to do was sleep.
Sometimes I would try to stay up long enough to see my mother. She always came home late in the After times. Sometimes, when she came in I heard a male voice on the doorstep, dropping her off back at home.Â
Even at eight, I had the sense to keep out of sight of them. I knew how the Others treated us, Freya’s subjects.
She always seemed cold. At the time I didn’t understand why my mother began to wrap herself in clothes like a shield, layered over each other until every inch of skin was covered. She was always shivering, and so I tried to collect extra firewood, whenever they let me into the forest. That fire used to wash the whole house in waves of warmth, until I didn’t think she could be cold. But she always was. The one time I asked, she simply said the cold as coming from the inside.
My work back then was spinning. Very simple work, and there was such a large group of us it would have been impossible to watch each of us closely. So no one noticed how my clothes always seemed to collect more bits of fluff than anyone else. And no one at home noticed me slowly adding some extra threads to the blankets, ensuring they never got too thin. I spent long evenings very warm under those blankets, waiting for her to return.
Once, I tried to make her some soup, hoping it might warm her up from the inside. I ran home as soon as I could, and got the fire going straight away. The soup was a simple enough thing to make, watery and thin as it was, but i was sure that it would be warm. I left it on the fire for the hours it took her to come home, incidentally heating the house as well. When she walked in the door she had several moment of utter bewilderment, almost breaking down in tears when she saw my small hands offering up the soup. But when I tried to follow it up with a warm hug she flinched away.
At the time I didn’t notice she barely had the appetite to eat any. It wasn’t until I was much older that her obsessive washing, and her shivering, and the haunted look in a smile that never reached her eyes anymore added up into a picture that made sense.
______
I worked in that damn cotton mill for ten years. The hours grew longer, the work more intense as more and more thread was demanded from us. My fingers were worn raw by the time i got home more days than not, but I didn’t dare bleed on the thread.
I have been told that my features are attractive. Hair that falls almost perfectly straight with minimal brushing, long, delicate eyelashes that frame a pair of soft, brown eyes and a figure with curves in just the right places. I take after my mother that way, in a way that gets you noticed.
Perhaps if things had stayed in the Before times that would have been a good thing. My mother was happy once, after all. Not in the After times.
“Why aren’t you sleeping at the mill with the others?” One of the mill Guards asked one evening, as I stepped to the door.
“I’m going home. I have always been allowed to stay at my home.” I turned to face him, suddenly very nervous.
“Oh come now, a girl your age, still staying at home? Surely that’s not allowed.” He said, stepping closer to me.
I tried to back away, but found I was already practically against the door. “I’m only eighteen.” I replied, heart already beginning to pound as i fumbled blindly for the doorknob.
“Exactly,” he replied, a truly terrifying smirk spreading across his features. “It’s high time there was some other kind of…arrangement.” As he spoke, he trailed a hand over my side, resting on my hip.
I found the doorknob and quickly opened the door, retreating with a wave of relief. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” I choked out, turning to flee.
“You can’t go home!” His voice called after me as I began to run. “Or do you want your family dead?”
I managed to swerve into an alleyway before stopping dead in my tracks, heart pounding with fear and adrenaline. I didn’t dare go home to my mother, not after that, but my skin crawled at the thought of going back to him at the mill. I fell forward on my hands and knees, gasping for breath as I began to truly hyperventilate.
“Need some help?” Growled a voice from in front of me. My head jerked up to see a pair of eyes gleaming from the shadows of the alleyway.Â
In that one moment I didn’t care who they were. After all, things could hardly get any worse.
Right?
______
Wrong. Oh, how wrong I was.
As he led me further and further from the centre of the town I began to calm down. It wasn’t until he led me all the way into the forest that I began to grow suspicious. I stumbled over a root in the dark, moonless night, and he turned around to catch me.
Or I thought it was to catch me. But he held my wrists, a rather inconvenient place to pull one up from, and didn’t let go even when I’d regained my balance.
“Tell me.” He asked in his low, growl like voice, “What do you call yourself?”
“Florence.” I replied dubiously. “You said you would help me, I thought we were going to where you live.”
He grinned, stepping closer. He was tall, for the first time I noticed how much taller he was. “Florence, I do live here. And I never said I would help, just asked if you needed it.” I found myself rooted to the spot, the forest seeming pitch dark around me in the moonless night. He sniffed as he stepped closer again, and my scrambled brain finally put the clues together just before he kissed me.
Growling voice, lives in the woods, navigates by smell. This man was a werewolf. A werewolf hungry but not for something to eat.
My fear rose again, double whatever I had felt facing the Guard. I was in totally unknown territory now, and I didn’t know how to survive it. So I panicked, and lashed out.
He caught my foot with one of his own when it had barely begun to move, neatly taking my balance out and shoving me hard against a tree. He followed up quickly, pressing his body close in to mine. I managed to wriggle out of the kiss, turning my head to the side as he released one of my wrists, his full body weight crushing me into the tree doing a good enough job of keeping me pinned despite my desperate struggling. In a few seconds he had tied me securely to the tree and stepped back, anger written on his face.
“You don’t want my help? Fine, have it your way. But you should learn what a leader like Mack is worth.” With that, he stalked away into the forest, out of my line of sight.
I shivered, the cold of the night around me pressing in. My stomach ached from hunger, not having eaten since lunch several hours ago, and my feet were in agony after a day standing on them. The bark was rough against my skin when I tried to move, so I simply stayed put. This did little to prevent me scraping against the rough bark once I began shivering harder.Â
Sometime later a squirrel ran up to me - at least I think it was a squirrel, it was hard to tell - and sniffed around my feet, but fortunately decided I didn’t look like a tasty snack. I could only pray the other animals I heard hooting and shuffling and slithering in the dark agreed.
It was a very long night, tied to that tree, and I didn’t get any sleep at all. But eventually, the sun rose again.
______
The sun was high in the sky and getting dangerously close to setting again before I saw another person. By the clothes, he looked to be a follower of Mack. He untied the rope, but wasted no time in pressing close for a kiss. By that point I was too exhausted to even try and stop him.
I was just starting to regret my inaction, fear climbing as two of his friends rounded the corner. With a slight chuckle, he pushed me towards one of them. “Don’t say I don’t know how to share.”
Of all the ways I’d expected my first time to go, in none of them had I considered being passed around. But my worn out feet were too tired to do anything but stumble along where I was pushed. Small mercies, my brain was too exhausted to properly process what was going on, especially after I started trying to tune the world out, so I don’t remember much of that nightmare. I do remember running the thumb of my right hand over my fingers, to give me a kind of lifeline, a single, repetitive motion to focus in on. Up and down, up and down, up and down…
I almost fell over as the man holding me suddenly backed off. “Shit, it’s Mack.” He gasped, and all three of them turned to look. I must have fallen into some kind of a trance, because the sensation was just like waking up. Blinking, I followed their gaze, my whole body still trembling.
“You ready to respect the leader yet?” Mack asked as he sauntered over, hand reaching for me even as his glare swept the group.Â
By that point I would have agreed to almost anything if it meant only serving one person at a time. I nodded.
______
Once, when I was young, naive and still living at home, I remember a day in the After times when my mother slept in. I had tried to stay awake long enough the night before to see she got home safely, but it had gotten really very late, so I’d eventually had to put myself to bed, fire still going to warm her up when she arrived.
The next morning she was so tired she slept in, far later than she normally would have, even for a Sunday. Back then I had Sundays off from the mill, so I was there when the strange man came. He said he was there for my mother, to which I told him she was just sleeping after her very late night. He glared at me and I think called my mother something extremely rude. But what I remember most was him saying to bite my feelings, and bite my tongue. I can see his eyes now, staring at me through my memory, haunting me across time and space.
If unsaid words and unexpressed feelings are something one can bite, that would imply they were something one can eat. By that metric, my time with Mack was an elaborate feast.
I bit down the bile that threatened to rise every time he touched me, his hands wandering over my arms, my sides, my whole body. I held my tongue when my opinion wasn’t wanted, which was almost always. I made sure to stay beside him each night, stay under his hand where he wanted me.Â
Days turned to weeks turned to months. I think at some point I turned nineteen. All the while I sustained myself on my feast of unsaid words and invisible feelings.
______
At some point I stopped even the pretence of being human. Nothing had ever truly belonged to me, not since the Before times. I could no longer remember having rights.
It wasn’t very often I saw another wolf pack, but I knew there were some around, glimpsed occasionally from across a clearing. Forever at the side of Mack, I was there when he met up with the leader of a different wolf pack, Antony.
“I’ve brought you a gift.” Mack said, pushing me forwards.Â
I managed not to stumble as I was suddenly thrust into the space between the two wolves. Neither of them had come very far into the clearing, preferring to posture at each other from opposite sides. I would have preferred to keep my head down, not draw attention to myself, as usual. Instead I found myself face to face with Antony, who was looking me over with an unsettling mix of hunger and contempt.
“Pretty little thing, I can see the appeal but,” Antony sniffed the air, “no wolf. What use is there for it?” Antony said as he began to circle around me.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something. She knew how to pick out the best firewood even before she came.” I didn’t have to look behind me to know Mack was smirking. “And I’ve taught her well.” I shivered only a little.
Antony stepped back in front of me, extending one finger to lift my chin. “In that case, I’m sure she’ll do for our deal.” His eyes flickered back to Mack, nodding once before he focused again on me. “Come now, little bird, let me see your feathers.”
And with that, something had shifted. As I heard Mack’s footsteps retreat, I fell in step behind Antony, heart racing at this new rearrangement of my life.
But the wolf packs were no longer totally unknown territory. The leader protects me from the others. I must simply keep myself at his mercy alone.
______
Antony was different from Mack. His pack seemed to change members more frequently, and though I’d never had any intention of learning names he didn’t seem to know some of them either.Â
In some ways it was easier. I already knew not to talk unless it had some meaning, or to agree with the leader. Things didn’t hurt as much, emotion replaced by a numb cold. There was even another one of Freya’s subjects. I did learn his name, Damion, but I was never quite sure what to make of him. He seemed to be helping Antony of his own will, which stuck me as too strange for me to trust him.
Because in some ways it was harder. Antony’s pack was crueler, with routine fighting matches that left at least one participant bloody and bruised. It was every man for himself at the slightest sign of danger, Antony remaining in charge only by constant growling, and threats, and endless posturing as leader. Each night I placed myself under his hand, hoping it would be enough.Â
And until the night Damion came to steal me away, and bring me to yet another pack, to Hector, it was.
______
Hector doesn’t try to touch me. I’m still not sure why. It feels odd, yet again being in unknown territory. I don’t think I want me life to keep shifting.
I’m not feeling constantly sick anymore. Now I have something more substantial to sustain myself on than unsaid words.Â
But I’m cold all the time now. I could sit by the fire for hours, or wrap myself in the thickest clothes I can find but I still feel cold. This is a deeper cold than the biting winds of winter, lingering even as spring comes again. This cold seems to sit in my very bones, detaching me from the warmth of being human. I think the cold has been here a long time. Perhaps all of the After times. Perhaps only since I entered this damn forest.
I know now this is the cold my mother felt. I can never face going home.