There are reasons to love the rain besides matted fur and darkened claws, splashing on pavestones with the velocity and anger of the heavens. There are reasons to love the way it coats your scents, your smells, the way that it sounds on a window pane on a sad day, the heartening and disheartening that warm, fat drops splash upon your head. There are reasons to close your eyes in the evening shower, push your whiskers back against your face, and bask in the downpour, allow it to wash along you like it is making you born anew.

There are reasons to love the snow besides cold winds and frosted whiskers, flakes dusting the fur atop your head. There are reasons to love the way it amplifies the biting wind in your nostrils, the sharp sting as it pierces your fur to lance across your skin, as sharp and forefront as a whip. There are reasons to roll in it, revel in it, accept the cool wind as it lavishes on your hide, ruffling the loose skin on your back, making it hard to breathe with the sudden and inescapable chill of it.

There are reasons to love the hunt besides the thrill of the chase, the finality of the death of your inferiors. There are reasons to love the way it feels to have the forest beneath your padded feet, the wind whistling through your ears as they're pinned to your skull, your body bouncing and your vision blurring with the speed, the adrenaline, the lightning. There are reasons to revel in it, to draw it out before reaching its satisfying and ultimately final end, with gore smeared across your lips and staining your claws.

These are the reasons you do what you do. You hunt because you love it, in rain and snow, in sunshine and wind, in sickness and in health. You feed because you crave it, not just because you need it. You survive because you want it, not because you're good at it. You are the wind in the trees, the aching in the enemy's bones, the whisper of doom that sends a chill down your prey's spine. You are the reason they turn their heads at the slightest sound, twisting and wide-eyed, fearful that you may be mere footsteps and a growl from them. You are the reason women tuck their children closely at night, and men don't stray far from the village. You are the reason why the glowing yellow eye is so feared, so viscerally angering, so bleak.