Frostpaw

Chapter 3 - Questions

As usual, when the alarm of the center started ringing, Zèon had already opened his eyes. He was starting to think that, for better or for worse, he had developed an intuitive ability to know in advance at what time he should wake up. Silently, the arctic fox sighed, waiting for that horrible sharp sound to stop ringing.

Suddenly, he heard the human scream in terror, which made his fur stand on end. That could have been a morning like any other, but it was definitely not going to be such.

Zèon sat up in his bed, startled, and looked to Luca's bunk bed, where the shout had come from. The human was seated on his bed and held his head with a hand, his face contorted with pain. Luca had already got down from the upper berth and looked at him, worried.

"What happened?" Zèon asked, blinking.

"I think he was startled when he heard the alarm... and he tried to get up so quickly that he hit his head against the upper berth," Luca explained, containing a little smile. Zèon was about to smile too. After the first night they had spent there, the same thing had happened to the wolf.

Then, after rubbing his head insistently for a few seconds, the human's eyes fell on the figure that rose beside him. A new scream of terror escaped from his throat and he pounced on Luca, who was not expecting that reaction and could barely hold him back. After a brief struggle, both of them fell to the ground and rolled on the floor tiles; the human, attempting to escape, and Luca, trying to prevent him from doing so.

"Careful!" Zèon exclaimed, worried.

"What's happening...?" Koi's sleepy voice asked, from his bed. "Has the Bareskin woken up already?"

Zèon would have answered, but at that moment the human was shouting:

"Let go! Let me go! Damn beast... Help! Help!!"

It was difficult for Luca to stop him from running away and he received several painful blows, but he finally managed to contain him against the ground and place himself on top of him, holding him by his wrists. He was going to say something, feeling furious, when he saw that the human was trembling with fear and that his face, contorted with fear, showed that he was about to cry. Luca realized at that moment that the human was younger than what he had thought at first glance: he was maybe fourteen, fifteen at most. It was difficult to guess the age of someone who did not have any fur.

"Don't kill me, please," the human begged, near tears.

"I won't," Luca promised, gently. "I'm just here to help you, okay?"

There was a brief silence. The wolf would not have been able to tell if the human had believed him or not, but a few seconds after, the boy asked:

"Wh-where am I? And who are you supposed to be?"

"You can call me Luca," the wolf answered, kindly. "Regarding where we are, I'm afraid I don't know. We've been trying to guess it for long time now, but we haven't reached any satisfactory conclusion yet." He made a cautious pause, before adding. "Now, we're prisoners in this place... just like you."

The human held his gaze for a moment, unable to believe his eyes. Then, he squinted and murmured:

"You are... a wolf." There was a tone of astonishment in his voice. "And still, you can reason and talk to me... Oh, this is crazy. I must be dreaming."

"I wish that was it," Zèon whispered, from the other side of the room.

Luca stood up allowing the human some freedom and then reached out in order to help him stand up.