Hopefully. But it's something to keep in mind for later, maybe.

For now... yes, this hunting ground will do for now. It takes a couple hours, until the sun has almost set and evening is beginning to set in, but she does find someplace that smells promising. The faint scent of prey that passes by this trail regularly, and to the north-east, sounds of trees being felled. Perfectly ordinary activities, for prey, in their attempt to build their hives bigger and stronger.

There is no sign or scent of the terrible not-prey.

Perfect, ambush time. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and starts to lose herself in the hunt again like she did yesterday—

And then she suddenly snaps back in excitement and she's nearly crying again because she could feel herself going deeper into her old self and maybe that means she's not stuck like this after all and she'll be able to be herself again and not be in this terrible horrible awful shape forever she's so happy—

Focus. Lose herself in her senses. Her claws grow again, her teeth get longer and sharper, her eyes grow farther apart, the soles of her hands and feet start growing pads, her heels start stretching away from the balls of her feet. Her shape still isn't right, but it's at least righter.

She's not consciously processing any of that, though, because the more she loses herself the more she loses herself and so now she is

smell

sound

sight

the tension of her muscles and the feel of the ground under her feet

the coiling anticipation in her gut as she lowers herself closer to the earth and hides herself in the darkness

she waits

In the last light of evening before true darkness sets in, two prey head back to their nest, their clumsy feet crunching loudly in the brush. The steps are heavier than usual, like they're each carrying something. This will make it very hard for them to run.

"Don't know why you insist on staying out this late to chop down just one more tree," sighs one, to the other. "You know the foreman's still going to be on our ass about 'quotas' no matter what we do."

...the noises the prey make bring her halfway back into humanity because what. What. What sorcery was that??? They made noises that... made things appear in her head??????? They made noises that caused thoughts in her, specific thoughts not just vague thoughts like "those are prey noises".

That is freaky. And what's freakier is that she's pretty sure prey has always made those noises? Is this her new form, is it some form of, does it have some weakness to prey sounds that make her confused, or did her prey discover some new trick of some kind? The boar didn't cause her to have new thoughts. This is extremely suspicious and she is curious but most of all she wants to eat them so they'll stop making noises appear in her head.

All of that is, of course, more wordless anger and confusion than a full fleshed-out thought, and it takes her less than a second to start to return to her more comfortable shape (even if she can't go all the way yet).

  "I don't give a damn about quotas, Malcolm. We need those walls up yesterday, and the only way that'll happen is if we all do our part."

"Sure, but... c'mon, this ain't safe. You never know what kindsa things are waiting in the dark. 'Specially in these woods. The sun's our best damn friend and you know it."

  "... I didn't mean for it to go this long, sorry," sighs the second prey, as he and his fellow come into view. The bundles they are carrying look to be of branches. "I just didn' want to leave a job half done, you know?"

"Why do you think I'm still here with you?" The first prey leans over, and punches his fellow in the shoulder with a weak fist that... has a familiar shape, doesn't it. "But c'mon, you idiot, let's stop pushing our luck, eh?"

One of the other noises she hears almost snaps her again, that "Malcolm", because the thought it tried to provoke in her was a completely different thought from all of the others and she doesn't know what to do about that, but...

...but then she sees her and she does snap all the way back to human with a loud yelp/howl of, almost of pain because she recognises them. Recognises their shape. Recognises what they are.

They're. Humans. They're humans. Like her. That's her prey, that's the delicious smell, even now she wants to eat them, but she. She has.

Has she.

Has she been eating people all these years?

The sound of her distress catches their attention. "The hell?? What was that?!"

  "... The dead don't yell, and if it were a wolf it wouldn't sound like that..." the other says, slowly.

"... Could be a vampire."

  "All the vampires is dead, you saw that hunter last month. Hunting beasts in the woods instead of anything like one of them. Hey! Are you okay?? Do you need help??"

Nope. Nope. She can't hear them can't process their—words—that's the name for those noises it's words, it's noises that put thoughts in your head like that, specific thoughts, she can't, she's freaking out, did she eat people, like eating her packmates, did she eat the equivalent of her packmates—

They come across her soon enough, one a bit more nervously than the other.

  "Hell," says one, as their pathetic prey (HUMAN!! They're HUMAN.) eyes get into sight range of the hyperventilating and very naked woman. There are assumptions they could make, and they are not nice ones about what must have happened to her. "Someone must've, just dumped her out in the woods when they were done with her, those Silverlight bastards..."

"Hey, hey, it's okay, you're okay, you're away from whoever... we'll get you a blanket and a bowl of stew, it's okay. You'll be okay, shhh...." says Malcolm, because that is the human's name, isn't it, that's what the sound meant. All of his very reasonable and completely justifiable fear has evaporated upon seeing someone in such distress. Upon seeing what he thinks is another human in such distress.

YES because she IS a human in distress. She is DISTRESSED and she is HUMAN and SO ARE THEY and despite all of that she jumps away from them on sight and crouches down in a defensive position with her teeth bared but they are HUMAN TEETH and she ATE HUMANS and now she's crying again, crying for real, and everything is badwronghatred she is a MONSTER she ATE PEOPLE—

The people in front of her help her anyway.

She is soon bundled in a fur coat that is not as strong as her own fur, but much softer. If she won’t walk on her own, they will carry her, even as they cringe at setting off her obvious fear. They don’t want to leave her alone in the woods, especially not at night.

Sure, that might as well be happening. Who cares. She flinches at the touch and definitely flinches when they cover her in furs (and they might find that she runs a lot warmer than most people) but doesn't actually stop them or try to flee.

Then she is carefully carried back to their... camp. It's a camp. The people there look at her with concern and there's a flurry of explanation between the humans, if she's paying attention to anything that they say. Either way, she's given a tent of her very own (there is some shuffling to make this happen) and then given space. And a bowl of stew. Space and a bowl of stew.

She manages to stop actively freaking out in the middle of that and drops to a more passive kind of freakout once she's satisfied she will not in fact accidentally wolf. Paying attention to the words help; she is not tuning them out at all, words are a kind of thing wolves definitely don't do and so if she has words she is not a wolf. By the time she's given stew she's just looking intently at people and trying not to growl whenever she sees them showing teeth, reminding herself that prey humans just show teeth a lot while using words and expressing emotions.

And the stew is... food? She guesses? She's not really sure what to do with it and might be staring at it blankly a bit.

Mostly what the humans are talking about is her.

"Just dumped in the woods, naked as the day she was born, it's those pricks in Silverlight, I'll bet one of them-!!"

  "Hush," says his fellow. "Save your crusading for later, yeah? If you want to help her then she could probably use some clothes, poor thing's like to catch a cold."

"Yeah, all right," agrees the first man, mollified. He then begins going around the camp, apparently acquiring a set of clothes for her.

The woman who served her the stew (everyone seems very agreed that humans of the male persuasion should give her space, for some reason) shows her teeth at her. "It's a bit thin, mind, but Johanson caught a couple rabbits this afternoon, so there's some meat to the broth. We do what we can out here. But what's ours is yours, yeah? No questions asked."

She will show her teeth right back and then remind herself that it was not threatening and then... try to show teeth in a non-threatening way? How does she. Do that. Can she mimic this woman's face? She is not sure she can. She is failing to communicate and she's always been the best wolf at communicating and now she is the worst human at communicating and that's terrible. She should probablu use words but she... doesn't feel particularly capable of that right now.

She doesn't seem offended by the communication attempt. Actually, if anything, the attempt at showing teeth seems to have soothed her a bit.

“What’s your name? I'm Helena."

She doesn't know.

And now she's crying again. She's not sure why. Why is she crying? She never needed a name, she has a scent, she has a voice, other wolves could talk about her fine. But suddenly the idea of not having a name sounds like the absolute worst thing that could possibly ever happen.

"Oh, oh, it's okay, shhh, you don't... You can take some time, all right? Do you need anything? Um. Another blanket???"

A blanket??? Why would she need a blanket. What does that have to do with anything.

She needs a name.

She is not going to get a name if she's making her emotions other people's problem. So instead she stops crying, almost as abruptly as she started, and takes a deep steadying breath so she can try to say words about things.

That... doesn't... really work very well at all. She lets out a sound for sure but that sound is not even a single word.

Helena is giving her a very concerned look, but doesn't say anything else. Her hand sort of jerks towards the once-wolf, like she wants to reach out and touch her, but she doesn't.