Page 6 of The Healer and the Wolf, Part One

6

LEO

I was much less hungry. Not full. Not at all. But less hungry.

That was a good thing.

The woman had fed me again even though I made her nervous. My instincts told me that was good. But it made me feel…

Melancholy.

Melancholy? What was that?

I couldn’t remember.

My whirling thoughts were cut off when a truly awful yowl came from inside the woman’s other shelter. She bolted toward it. It was the fastest I’d ever seen her move, the door of the clear house swinging in her wake.

I was concerned. If I was hanging around, it meant this was my territory, right? And if it was my territory, I needed to protect it.

I followed her to the open door of her home.

What a strange place.

I poked my head in, my instincts, once again, screaming not to go into another animal’s den. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I began to sniff the air.

There was a lot going on. More than I could puzzle out. The next thing I knew, I was face to face with a tiny wolf.

No.

Not a wolf.

A giant fox?

No. Too silver. Smell was wrong.

The not-fox-wolf regarded me with reproach, it’s hackles beginning to rise. I very much wanted to responded with bared teeth and a snarl, but something stopped me.

Maybe the creature was a charge of the woman? If it was, I didn’t want to threaten what was hers. Not after she had cared for me.

I lay down on my belly outside the door and stretched out, appeased since I could scent the woman wasn’t in danger.

The gray not-fox-wolf held his ground, still staring at me. I focused on staying still and not alarming it, which scratched at my brain so oddly. I was bigger, stronger, faster. Why was I making myself so docile for a thing I could kill and eat without so much as blinking?

I wasn’t sure, but it felt right. Like more… me , somehow. But I was just a wolf, so what was me beyond that?

I was so lost in thought, I didn’t realize the woman had returned until her shrill scream filled the air around us.

Pandemonium broke out. The not-wolf-fox was joined by two other, much smaller versions of itself, with drastically differently colored coats, all hissing and yowling, their backs arching.

Now, that was just annoying.

Huh. Annoyed. Yet another new emotion. And yet I couldn’t even process it because the creatures were all still warbling like the world’s most angry crows. It grew to be too much, too quickly, and I tried to tell them to stop.

Short, sharp barks. The kind that would tell my pack members to?—

Wait.

Where were my pack members?

I had a pack, didn’t I? What kind of wolf didn’t have a pack? But if I had one, where were they?

All those questions only made me bark louder.

“Stop it right now!” the woman yelled.

Silence actually fell, and something strange formed in my gut. It took me a moment to understand what it was, and I realized I was embarrassed.

What the fuck was ‘embarrassed’?

The woman said something else, and her voice was trembling so much I almost didn’t understand. But after a bit, I understood that she was telling me I couldn’t be there.

But… but I didn’t want to go.

There was something about her shelter that seemed both incredibly familiar and so foreign. Like a place I was meant to be. Plus, it smelled nice.

It smelled like her .

I hadn’t noticed it before, but she really was beautiful in her strange way. Her only fur was atop her head, but it was thick and shiny. Her eyes were deep and dark, but they were kind. Her figure was… lacking two legs, yet I liked it. Was drawn to it. Liked watching the way that she moved.

So, I lay right back down, belly pressed to the floor once more, and let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Are you really not going to leave?”

She was asking me a question. I didn’t really understand how I knew her language, but I huffed back at her.

To my delight, she didn’t insist I leave. She herded her strange creatures into another space before returning to the room I was half-lying in. While she didn’t pay attention to me, she did proceed to do a lot of things that confused me but seemed important to her, including summoning water from a… from a…

Some very deep part of me knew what the thing was called, but I couldn’t bring the word to the forefront of my mind, as if it was from another life that was just beyond my reach.

I watched her, enjoying her company. She put a small, squarish flat rock on the table, and pleasant sounds came from it. I liked it, even if it sounded a bit shrill and tinny, but nothing could prepare me for when she started howling.

Wait, no, it wasn’t howling. Something different. Her voice went from note to note, and it was so utterly beautiful that I truly wasn’t prepared for the emotions that surged through me. Soft. Sweet. A rumbling sort of undertone from it. Was… was she some sort of bird? Because that was the only other creature I knew that could create such melodies.

I was wholly enraptured. Some of the clouds in my mind were drifting away, leaving the true me—whoever and whatever that was—and her in the space.

Wait, I remembered.

She was singing.

My entire brain lit up in such a strange way that I could not describe, and the next thing I knew, I was howling along with it.

The woman froze, and for a moment, the entire room stank of fear, but I persisted, keeping my body language and yowling gentle, hoping she understood. I was pretty sure she did, because after a painfully long pause, she started singing with me.

We were singing together.

Together.

The word echoed through my mind, something beautiful and sacred. I had been alone for so, so long, and now I wasn’t. It was overwhelming in a painful, beautiful way and, once again, my mind was growing confused from it all.

But that confusion couldn’t take away from the beauty, not even when it grew dark, and the woman looked out the window with a sigh.

“It’s time for you to get some rest.”

Ah. I was being dismissed.

I didn’t want to go, but I understood that she was asking me kindly, so I should respect her wishes. Letting out a sound I couldn’t rightly define, I retreated to the greenhouse.

But even though I was alone again, I felt so much less lonely.

Maybe soon we could sing together again?