Once a Wolf

The wolf eyed me warily, sizing me up, always keeping a good distance away. Was I a threat? Was I a meal?

We circled each other, snapping twigs, breathing hard. If either of us died today no one would know. Maybe no one would even care.

I was half bent over, keeping low to the ground to keep eye contact at her level. If I were to look down on her, she might decide I was a threat that needed to be taken out.

But I couldn't let her do that to herself. Couldn't let her become a murderer, especially my murderer. Once she became human-- if she became human, I reminded myself-- she wouldn't forgive herself. I imagine her standing over my dead body, naked, recently Turned. I couldn't let what might happen next become her life.

She stopped suddenly. Her ears perked, nose lifted skywards. I looked up through the dense canopy of green as if I could hear what she could, sense what she did. A loud hoot broke the tension, followed by the rustling of leaves above. I let this encounter carry on too long. Night would be falling soon.

Once she realized the absence of a second threat, her familiar hazel eyes clicked back on mine. I searched in them for light, but found darkness. There is no human in the eyes of an animal.

Before I had to go, I gave her a once-over and was happily surprised. For a new full-time wolf she'd taken good care of herself. Her stomach was rounded as if she wasn't just grazing like cattle but properly eating like a real predator. Her legs were lean and muscular. I could imagine her as the wolf I saw from my window, springing up and snatching a bird out of its roost. She is no longer the girl who kept me up at night with her growling stomach. She doesn’t exist anymore.

This is it, I realize. The goodbye I will never get to have. I stared at her, and she stared back. Her hackles were raised. She was distrusting but still, like the human inside recognized me while the wolf was just curious.

I wish this never happened to her. I wish we’d never met. I wish she never had to Turn. I wish I could forget loving her. But it’s those moments we regret that we can never take back.

Carefully, oh so carefully, I stepped backwards. Then again. No leaves rustled, no twigs broke. It was like I was the ghost here, not her. She lowered her head, lowered her suspicions. Quietly, I disappeared behind a tree, never expecting to see her again.

It was just me again, groping around in a darkened room that turned out to be a mansion, heading toward an inevitable something that some higher being put in place for me ages ago. I was going through the motions of my regular life: going to work everyday but not actually there; drinking and eating but not really tasting. In actuality, I was in the woods with her. The real her. The girl I’d found hiding out in a disease-ridden treehouse that was just waiting to collapse.

She fixed the treehouse later. Well, we did but she did all the work, really. She provided the plan, the paint, the laughter. She was the light I’d been fumbling for all along.

When she was attacked in the street one evening, when the disease started, when I started to lose her, I hadn’t known what to do. I started taking days off from work to spend with her, bought her books with money we didn’t have. The first time she Turned, we realized the enormity of it all. It became secret we’d keep, a burden we’d carry.

At first the arrival of the wolf was a monthly thing. We made plans for when it would happen: If she wasn’t home by midnight without notice, I’d leave raw meat out for her in a random place, hoping she’d get to it before the local wolves. Clothes, blankets, pillows, books, anything that might make her comfortable would be in the treehouse until I came for her the next morning. Then, there came a time when I didn’t find her there the next morning. Or the next. Her time as a wolf was growing, and my little light was fading.

It’s been a month now. I check the treehouse everyday. Her lingering smell fades from the comforters in the treehouse. I’m beginning to abandon the hope that she will ever occupy that space again.

Maybe the wolf is better than what she has with me. When she was with me, she was starving. I worked as a bartender at a restaurant, and she was a temp. We clung to every dollar we earned. I couldn’t give her much, couldn’t even afford to eat at the restaurant I worked for. Now she thrives beneath the cover of leaves.