The girl shivered a bit as she plucked the cold potatoes out of the damp ashes. She carefully wiped them off and laid them on the table. The huge black dog had been watching her from beyond her awareness for days. This time, he came out of hiding and trotted into her camp.

"Well you're a big fella. Are you hungry?" His ears pricked and his head tilted. "Do you like sweet potatoes?" She broke a potato open and took a bite, then tossed him a bite of the sweet orange flesh. He swallowed it without tasting it and looked to her for more. "Here, sweetie, you don't want the black bits." She pulled the burnt flakes of skin away and gave him more, bite by bite to slow him down, alternating his bite and her bite She reached a hand out for him to sniff. He hesitated, but then snuffled and nudged her hand for a scratch behind the ears. "What's your name?" she asked, as she felt for a collar, but there was none to be found. He looked healthy enough, but was a little too gaunt. She wondered how he managed to stay dry. When the potatoes were gone, he sniffed around the camp, content with her company for a while.

"I'm glad you stopped by. I have really been hoping for some intelligent conversation lately." She crouched and poked the sodden remains of her fire. "Welcome to my kitchen, though my hearth is cold. You don't happen to have a talent for fire do you?"

She walked around the area gathering twigs and branches, pine needles and dead leaves. He joined in, carrying a branch around, probably for sport. Most of what she found was wet, nearly all was damp. She dropped her bundle by the fire pit and sat on the cold bench of the heavy picnic table installed at the campsite. She uncovered her crossword book and contemplated a clue. The dog laid his massive head in her lap; she stroked the thick dark fur and looked into the animal's bewitching yellow eyes. "Do you know a six letter word, for 'godsend', starts with an F?" He gave no verbal reply. The warmth and breath of another creature was a comfort she'd denied she'd missed. Shutting out most of the world was her best bet for resetting herself, she thought. Somewhere out here, she'd find her lost self, she was sure, or forget why she was looking.

A noise in the woods pricked his ears, or so she suspected. She wasn't sure she'd heard anything. He gave her hand a quick lick and trotted away, as casually as he'd arrived. "Do come back to visit," she called after him, "I have enjoyed your company, Friend." She picked up her pen and scrawled the five missing letters on one of the fresher pages. Pour ecrire un mot.

Alone again, she tucked the book back into the baggie and turned back to the tasks at hand. She needed to prepare for another night alone in this less than ideal situation. It would not be a pleasant night without a fire. She hoped the great warm beast would come back; perhaps she wouldn't have to sleep alone in the cold, if she could make a pet of him. She didn't dare rely on hope, and went back to gathering potential fuel.

Crouched by the fire pit, balanced on the balls of her feet, she tried her fifth match seeking to catch the driest kindling she could find. She heard light footfalls approaching. "Oh good, you did come back." She looked up and saw that it was not, indeed, her recently made friend. Instead, it was a lean man in a thick sweater, with a handsome smile and a backpack supported by a belt perched on his hips, with straps slung loosely on his shoulders.

"Expecting someone else, I take it?" Startled, she lost her balance and sprawled backwards. Qui frappe de la sorte? His velvety accent took her right off her guard. He chuckled as he stepped toward her and offered her a hand up.

"There was a dog, huge and black, maybe part wolfhound, maybe part bear? Did you see him?" She brushed the damp soil and pine needles off the seat of her jeans.

"Ah, that would be Paddy." he replied.

"Is he yours?"

"Oh, I'd say he isn't anyone's. He comes and goes. Need help lighting that fire?"

Ma chandelle est morte, je n'ai plus de feu. "Please. If the sky clears, it's going to be cold tonight, and everything is damp as it is." She looked skyward, and saw the glow of the half moon peeking through the fast moving remains of the day's rainclouds. Nearer to the horizon, strengthening gems that must be planets showed against a clearing western sky. The light would fail soon, in an hour at most.

He loosened the belt and let the pack slide to the ground. "Check under your car, or under the tent. Anything dry under there?" He reached into the now shapeless pack and pulled out a tin, then walked around the pines and birches, collecting bits of loose bark and lumps of sap from the leeward sides of the trunks. She met him back at the fire pit where he pooled their finds and began arranging them. "Check in that patch of reeds, over there, by the trail," he gestured behind him, and opened the tin.

She returned with a modest bundle, but maybe it would help. So much was too damp to bother with. He had dug away the damp soil and ashes in the pit and found a bit of dry ground underneath. First he skinned the damp outside off a few reeds, and shredded some of the driest of the gathered miscellany, and made almost a bird's nest of it, and tucked a small piece of black cloth within. He constructed a rack, a kind of cradle, from several forked sticks, and laid them over the depression. In it, he fitted his dry bundle, then built a half teepee of longer sticks and twigs over it, open in front. Satisfied with his careful construction, he began striking sparks into it from a flint and steel. On bat le briquet. A tiny spark caught. Gently he whispered life into it, producing a thready smoke. He held it gingerly and nursed it and fed it tiny bites of fuel as it eagerly consumed them and grew stronger. He laid it in its cradle and added to its cage. As it grew and grew, he held damp reeds over it to let them dry in its warmth, then fed them in as well. Slowly, patiently, he had crafted his spark into a flame capable of warming them both. He carefully lay damp wood within its warmth to prepare for when they were needed.

She watched him perform his art in complete wonder. "That's magic if I have ever seen it." she commented. "That was truly amazing. I'll get a kettle ready, a warm drink will do us good. I'm afraid all I have is tea. Do you care for Earl Grey?"

"That would be perfect," he smiled, proud of his fire and pleased that he'd earned an invitation to stay.

His unruly hair was executing an escape from the futile grasp of an insecure ponytail. It was nearly black; a summer spent somewhere warm had left it sun-kissed with mahogany. Grey hairs crept in stealthily at his temples and into the whiskers along his jawline. She thought he had to be at least fifteen years older than she was. He had clearly been a very handsome man in his day, but the signs of faded youth were etched on his face. Crow's feet tiptoed out from the corners of his eyes when he smiled. It was so endearing, so genuine, how they sparkled with mischief. Even through this spark that shone bright in him, there was clearly a shadow behind it. He had been through something life changing, something that had scarred him irrevocably, but left him with a profound patience.

"One doesn't often find a young lady alone in the woods," he observed as she emerged from the twilight of the trail's close canopy, with the kettle full. "You certainly aren't afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, nor are you lost." He shuffled a pine cone with the toe of his boot and looked into the treetops. "Most folks go into the woods to escape, or maybe to explore." He left the observations hanging, an invitation for comment.

"Aren't we all running from one thing, and looking for another, really?" She huffed a tendril of hair from in front of her nose. "Besides, I'm twenty five years old, I'm not helpless." She saw him cast a sidelong glance at the fire, which had miraculously grown quite strong in her absence. "And I'm not exactly in the woods. This place has all the amenities, a good sturdy table, the spigot is only four sites away, and the bathhouse is just up the hill." She tucked three sweet potatoes near the burning wood and set the kettle over the fire, and went to dig through her things. She quickly produced a tall black tin, a long spoon, and a large stoneware mug. She had to pilfer through her tent and her jeep to find a second mug; she wasn't accustomed to entertaining guests. She wiped the inside with her shirttail and set the mismatched pair on the table. "Do you take cream? Well, it's not exactly cream, but it works." She set down a can of evaporated milk, and a bear-shaped jar. "We'll have to share a spoon. Honey?"

"Yes dear, that would be lovely," he quipped. He noticed her blush. "I'm Sirius."

"Serious?"

"Like the star."

"Oh. Sirius. Like the star. I like stars." She regained her wits. "Claret."

"Like the wine?"

"Yes, but some of my friends call me Oh Clare, a silly joke, really, Au Clair de la lune." She glanced up at the half moon, now brightly chasing Jupiter and his consort, Venus, out of the darkening sky.

"Claret. Like the wine. I like wine." His eyes sparkled. Perhaps she was in the company of the Big Bad Wolf himself.

She spooned the fragrant leaves into the mugs, and he administered the boiling water. Patience would turn the perilous scalding liquid from a hazard, if imbibed too hastily, into a warm embrace of comfort, once allowed to bloom and be mellowed with touch of sweetness.

He saw the dog-eared plastic covered book on the table. "Oh, Guardian Crosswords… may I? I love these." She pulled the book from its protective skin and passed it to him. He flipped through it and looked over her work. "Ink. A purist, I see. Ooh, a gap. Prete moi ta plume..." She yielded him the pen from behind her ear. "'Stoneblood', nine letters," he continued. "Blank, blank, blank, R, blank, C, blank, blank, R. Hmmmmmm," he mused. His eyes searched his eyebrows, the tips of his mustache curled and flitted with his fidgeting lip. He sniffed the damp air. Pour ecrire un mot. "Pet…ri… chor!"

"Sweet." She looked over the freshly penned letters. His hand had a flair, and better yet, his mind. Intelligent conversation indeed. A Wolf, or a Gentleman? What is a gentleman but a patient wolf? The tea had steeped and cooled enough. She opened a slit in the milk can with a sturdy knife and offered it up. They both took a touch of honey as well and sipped the warming elixir while going through the rest of the gaps in her worn book. He had a sharp mind, barely any clue escaped him, but those that did were suddenly made clear to her when read in his voice. They started a new page together. "'An offering of peace', eleven letters, 5,6," he read aloud. "Olive branch," they said in unison, and he recorded it in his elegant print.