He grabs the match, his fingers shaking. When he tries to strike the blaze, he fumbles, it falls. Desperation turns his breathing into ragged cacophony. There's an ocean in his stomach extinguishing whatever sparks he planned on having. That was so long ago. This shakiness has lasted eons. He cannot clearly remember anything else.
When he looks up, his eyes in the mirror have all wolf instincts. Strangely, the expression on his face is a nervy grin-- the omega wolf trying to back out of the fight, the fire tasting the air before exploding into a form too big too hold. It's not even bravado. It's dying smiling, each shiny tooth an excuse, a con.
Run, his legs sing-scream, and his mouth almost echoes.
The match? His last.
His stomach turns. The ocean becomes a bubbling pit. He feels it eating at his innards, slowly, like a buzzard choosing which juicy parts to consume, and his realizing only fuels its hunger. He notices all the small unfortunes, and they snowballing him into madness-- here his shoe slips on the gasoline soaked carpet, there his elbow catches the door. His mind forms only fragments, each accented and painfully crescendoing. He cannot catalogue all the exact places his head splits. There is fire in failure, if it is felt right.
The rain falls quietly at first, so he doesn't realize. It's a way out. Like the games he played as a kid, rock paper scissors, only rain beats fire, and only he beats his heart, telling him truths. He lets the drops course down every part of him, body relaxing as his dazed mind shuts down. A fire burns slowly, kindling some warmer part of him into life. He lopes. He breathes to assure himself he's still there and not floating away.
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