Si Daeng

Sip See

It was 00.28 on Monday morning when the curious pairing of a colossal, silver-coated wolf and distinctively black-spotted, red-tinted, furred Eurasian Lynx padded the empty roads of Bang Haeng.

Eyes glowing in the dark of a moonless night, prehistoric gems of amber and ruby that seemed to glimmer their own light from within. Illumination.

CCTV cameras checking back in theatrical comic timing of a double-take, as the duo strutted down the midline of Main Street, prowling reflections caught in smashed window front of a boarded up pawn shop - two pointed ears, two tufted, one tail long and the other bobbed, powerful paws marching in step.

Stride by stride, past metal-grilled tower blocks and a vandals' victim of a playground, past desolate graveyards of discarded syringes and hollowed out pill packets, past a derelict church with symbolic figures and crucifix chipped almost bare of any paint.

Until at last banal buildings began to thin, streetlights' intervals spaced further between, as the pair reached the foot of a signpost that told:

'You are now leaving Bang Haeng'

Quite literally, somewhere of nowhere.

There, tilting necks to face one another - wet, black noses of canine and feline coming together in momentary pause and conspiratorial nuzzle, before the wolf raised his head to howl complaint to muzzling clouds, and they were gone - out of that place, in the blink of a disbelieving eye.

//

Human-folk slept dutifully on in beds, as the wolf and the lynx raced the tarmac route to the city.

At least, most did.

There were individuals - just a scarce few - who startled from looping, prescribed dreams, at the sound of a powerful call, or howl. Awoke with a sudden gasp, gulping oxygen into lungs, hands gripping bedsheets below.

They were the ones whose second nature wasn't so far out of reach, ancestral instincts not entirely mislaid, a muscle memory that lingered from generations ago.

Among them, a girl of fourteen who slept upon hard boards of a vibrating floor that doubled as a nightclub ceiling, ghosting daily in to school with darkly ringed eyes, but abruptly awake, then, with the strangely liberating sensation that she might just be a fox.

A night shift warehouse worker who dropped his back-breaking load as he twisted to crane in the direction of the call, and believed for bizarre, bamboozling seconds, that he was an owl.

And a woman who rose from her futon to feel her way along hallway walls of a dim condo - district's electricity cut off again - reaching her grown son's room to find the bed still cold, then spinning at a 'miaow' to meet their cat's piercing green eyes, and knowing in an instant that somehow it had been her mother all along, even before hearing that familiar voice, speaking not with words:

"Dara, my daughter, it's time we talked..."

//

Some kilometres South, standing half way across the arc of a bridge that stretched its arm into the clutches of the city, the wolf and lynx attempting similarly explorative first communications...

"You're hearing me, Red?"

"But we're not the same species, how can we even understand each other?"

"Because we're not animals na, but shifters. Though we converse in different calls, understanding is universal - we're from the same forest in origin, after all. Even human-folk with natures deeply entombed can translate the basics when they put their mind to it - think of bird watchers, tribal hunters, naturalists..."

"Hmmm. So, we've reached the city"

"Shai krub"

"What now, wolf?"

"We...paint the town red. Let the eagles know we see them, a warning shot that this territory is no longer theirs unchallenged"

Both sets of eyes glinting...

"Where do we start?"

"At their club houses of course...Congress Hall, the banks, the schools...the heart, pockets and head of the demon"

Interruption, disorder to reorder. Just as Yaai Chanthira had coached: The chance to think.

So crossing the divide - not skulking in shadows but sauntering dead centre and unblinking again - clawed paws soon quickening to exhilarating canter. Fired up and on by the adrenaline surge of a shared cause. The most moral mode of delinquent defiance. Breaking rules for best - for they were subliminal contracts that had never been signed in the first place.

Winding their bodies around the two-metre, marble eagle statues at the haughty summit of steps to Congress Hall. Ensuring their scent would be the first thing council chiefs would encounter when they strode into work in all of their careless, briefcase arrogance the next day.

Pissing on the glass doors to the bank's neon-lit vestibule...

Breathless, anarchic giggles as they were caught in the torch beam of an astonished night watchwoman - reflective cats eye bewitching for long enough for the pair to disappear with the swish of a grey tail, before walkie-talkie had yet to raise to quivering, speechless lips.

Blares of taxi horns as the wolf and lynx darted across a dual carriageway and over into the insomnia of metropolis club land and red light district - distant police helicopter propellers buzzing and whirring into action as the first took to the night's sky in pursuit of those most unconventional star-crossed lovers.

Morning headlines: 'Heroic pursuit of child-devouring forest beasts' at the ready in independent media headquarters that would somehow all go on to publish identical stories, again.

Then a lone, dishevelled, drunken figure staggering towards the two, empty vodka bottle clutched to his breast as if it was all he had left precious in the world. Lifting a shaky, pointing finger to slur - choked with emotion - "Don't let those bastards grind you down. Nong woof, Nong miaow, run for your lives..."

//

It was Red leading the way then, territory more familiar to the past underage barman of that postcode, lithe form weaving through cobbled backstreet alley ways - neurotic, whining wail of sirens suddenly chasing in from all compass points, a pack of cop cars serving the status quo - until he felt the razor teeth of a wolf in his haunches, dragged to halt by the other:

"Red, shift! Shift back now! Can you do it?"

And gut-somersaulting metamorphosis to men again - sporting clothes of earlier that night - younger pulling the second down a short flight of cracked, uneven pavement steps and into a hidden basement club whose walls were a collage of vintage vinyl covers, every passing face pierced and studded and eye-lined dark kohl. Wild thrashing of guitar above ominous, grinding bass pulsating the air, thick to choking with heady clouds of smoke and dope and liquor and sex.

Then as the consequences of constructed chaos raged beyond hedonistic walls, Sil was caging his lover - the spark to those flames - against a door frame, roughly kneading at his ass as he sucked ferociously on plump lips that were moaning his name in unending purrs of intoxicating pleasure.

"Kitty...my kitty...", Sil responded between urgent kisses, "I need you now"