It was so...strange.
The thick foliage that blanketed every surface of their surroundings was a deep green as the sun swam downwards in the sky and turned the clouds a blossom pink. It was as though for just a moment, the dangerous neck-prickling of the daylight was sliding backwards in time, pushed out by the ever-fluorescent glow of the giant moon that, for a few hours, gave the wolves their gift of anonymity along with the rest of the crawling animals that slumbered in safety during the night.
There was a sort of magic that drifted through this forest. Cheza had led them here. Neither human nor beast, the artificial maiden was granted to these wolves as their guide; their support, their leader, their muse. Hige couldn't help himself as he gazed at her delicate frame, running along in front of the pack, her hair blowing around her head like flower petals as she drifted and turned beyond corners and into the trees. It must have been many weeks since the pack began their journey to Paradise, and days since their last detour into an urban dwelling, lured by the scent of abandoned human leftovers that Hige had grown so accustomed to finding in the city for as long as he could remember.
It was quiet now. Tsume's gray body curled into the roots of a tree as his eyes followed Kiba, who wandered away from the resting pack as usual, likely to find a proper rock that pointed toward the sky so that he could howl his day's journeys into the diary of the night. Cheza followed him. The two were inseparable. They slept upon each other in the darkness, the weight of Kiba's soft breast rising and falling against her head, lulling her breathless form into synthesis.
Tsume's ear flickered. The sound of the pups kept him awake. He listened to Hige and Toboe murmer to one another about the little things that may or may not have been worth any words at all.
He was alone.
"You don't know me, and I don't know you," Tsume had said to Hige on their journey the other day, after they had spent the morning galloping across a dusty plain. They spent time housing for a while under a crackling edifice that probably had belonged to human beings decades ago. "Plain and simple. So get lost."
"Hey man," Hige began, sputtering, his hand pulling on his collar nervously. "I was just askin' a question. Y'know, since you showed up with Toboe, I thought maybe--"
"I got nothin' to do with that kid," Tsume snarled. "I told you all before."
His leather outfit reflected brightly the scorching nudity of the midday sun. Though he hid any discomfort well, Hige imagined it must have felt worse than having fur.
"The only reason he found me was 'cause he couldn't tell his right paw from his goddamn left," Tsume continued sharply, frowning at the horizon. "So don't go making any assumptions. He just got lucky."
"Lucky, huh?" The brown-furred wolf muttered quietly.
"What was that?" Tsume shot back, his head turning.
Hige looked hurt, yet he continued to speak. "I just figured if we're gonna be on this long trip together, we might as well get to know one another a little bit." His fingers slowly played with each other as he sat against the building with his knees in the air. "I think we should all learn how to lighten up."
Kiba and Toboe were out together hunting rabbits. Cheza sat in the corner of the crumbled building quietly, momentarily escaping the rays of the sun as she preserved the precious water that flowed through her veins like blood as best she could. Her eyes were closed.
"Looks like she's meditating or something," Hige thought aloud, choosing to ignore Tsume's hostile attitude. He gazed at her. Even when she was slipped into subconsciousness, her form took on an aura of livelihood, embracing all who surrounded her in a cloud of gentle warmth, as though body heat emitted from her body like oxygen. "Wonder why she didn't go with the others."
"It's so she won't shrivel up in the sun," Tsume scoffed. He shook his rat-tailed head against a fly that lazily floated around his ears. "A dead moon flower won't do anybody any good."
As Tsume faced Hige, their eyes caught. One pair was menacing; the other, more or less naive. But they studied one another, for a moment, until Tsume's deep olive color pulled away from the other wolf and wandered toward the view of the plain once more, his hand reaching into his pocket for a pair of sunglasses he kept. Hige looked at his two companions, back and forth, before reaching down to the bottom of his yellow sweatshirt and tugging it up and over his head. Airing it out, he hesitantly walked toward Cheza and carefully draped the worn fabric over her body. A breathing sound escaped from her lips as her eyelids and torso remained motionless.
Tsume glanced at Hige as the younger wolf walked back into his spot, shirtless, his unkept brown locks brushing upwards against the sky like a roller coaster. Scratches were dented in the skin on his soft stomach; strangely placed, as though some had been self-inflicted. A small tuft of hair sprouted from his chest. Pawing at it, Hige lowered himself back down again into a sitting position, waiting.
Tsume put a hand to his own short white hair as his posture lowered, an unusual smirk on his lips as he looked from the boy to the girl, still sitting as a lotus flower does atop a pond.
"Cute."
Green specks of forest caught the depleting light of the day as they drifted up from the mossy ground. The volume of the conversation between the two brown wolves decreased as their exhaustion crept up on them; Tsume's tail moved slowly closer to his own body as he lay there, brooding. Kiba and the girl hadn't returned.
He looked at the collared punk again.
In the perilous trail to Paradise, who was right?
His fur stood straight on his back as he dreamt. The sight of Hige leaned against an icy rock was very grave, uncharacteristically so. A girl lay at his side. He had seen and experienced much more by now on their journey; it was reflected in his brown eyes. They were darkened and his insides were crawling. His hair was still tangled. A slow, bubbling fountain of blood fell down from his neck. The girl was dead.
Tsume's body was rigid. He was in pain, and was probably bleeding as well, but most of the feeling that paralyzed him was from shock. It continued to pound against him in waves as Hige's tired face stared at him, and carefully, he spoke. The words that spilled from his lips fell short and never reached Tsume's ear, but as he watched the blood flow from Hige's button nose and his neck, he understood.
As he bit down on Hige's neck, tears flowed from his eyes, and his saliva mixed with the screaming he could no longer suppress. Paradise and Hell both stared him in the face, and though he still wasn't sure how his story was destined to end, he knew then what was right.
Tsume's eyes shot open. He shivered as he wildly looked around himself in an attempt to recognize his surroundings; once again, the only familiar things were a flower, the moon, and the wolves. He wasn't sure what was happening, but realized as he saw a cocked head staring at him that he had merely been dreaming.
The head belonged to Hige, and his neck stood upright from his body lain beside Toboe's, alert. They watched each other from across the burrowed space. Tsume panted, and the scar on his chest itched. He suddenly became self-conscious and looked away, blushing slightly, recalling to himself the tension he was supposed to have with the boy. But as he thought about this, and imagined for a second how his attitude set himself in comparison to the others, a vision of clarity dawned upon him and he found himself somewhat ridiculous. Before he could hide his temporary embarrassment, he looked again to see Hige rise to his feet and tiptoe carefully toward him.
"Don't whimper," Hige said softly, crouching next to the wolf. Tsume was still lain on his side, avoiding Hige's gaze, but when he finally glanced back he became lost in the boy's gentle brown eyes; light-colored and bright against the chance moonbeams reflecting from the leaves and the fur. They were starkly different from the ones he had seen in his dream.
Pure emotion furrowed between the two as they stayed that way, gazing at each other silently. Tsume's breathing calmed. The filled sound of the forest spoke comfortingly. Eyes still locked in concern, Hige sank slowly into the spot aside where the gray wolf's body was wrapped around, curling face-first into the fur exposed on Tsume's stomach.
He nudged a small bit to make himself comfortable, and stayed there. Hige's eyes fluttered sleepily, before drifting off into subconsciousness once more with the metronome of Tsume's rising and falling stomach. Tsume watched the collared one curiously at first during this strange interaction, then let his head move away onto his own paws pensively. His mind still raced, and he could not go back to sleep right away. But before his eyelids grew too heavy and carried him off again as well, he came to the notion that it wasn't exhaustion that would put him to sleep this time, but rather, a feeling a safety -- one that, perhaps, he'd secretly yearned for throughout the journey to Paradise. Perhaps this was what he wanted. And if the fabled Paradise meant sleeping in security each night under a clear night's moon with another being, then the peril to get there was worth it. It was worth saving Hige for.