Chapter 4. Wolf
By the time Relena had finished dinner, her fear of the wolf beside her was long gone. It was more like a big dog, really, the way it sat with her companionably while she ate. If it wanted to do anything to her, it would have long ago, and she honestly did not feel a single thread of malice from the creature. Plus, she was aching for a friend right now.
With the empty pot set aside now and nothing to do for the moment, Relena resigned herself to spending another night alone in the prison-mansion. She sat there for many minutes, hugging her knees to her chest and gazing with unfocused eyes into the fire, while the wolf settled itself comfortably beside her on the rug. It leisurely stretched out to its full length, which could still be alarmingly long, but it did not put its head down; it preferred to stay alert and aware.
Finally, something broke inside her and all the physical and emotional weariness she had been fighting back started to grab at her heart.
Heero saw her breathe a shaky and audible breath. Then she turned to him. The pain was written clearly on her face.
"Wolf, where is your master? Will he come again tonight to tell me that I'm not wanted here?" she gave a little chuckle that carried a slight hint of bitterness. "I remember trying to leave, but somehow I am here again. Your master will be very angry when he finds out. Perhaps he will glare at me and reprimand me again."
Her words had an almost physical impact on Heero. He felt like he had been struck by the anguish that he caused her as if it were a mallet, and he was stunned.
She paused briefly, and when she spoke again, she had abruptly changed her tone.
"I miss him, Wolf… My father." She hugged her knees a little bit tighter. "He died two days ago. He was killed by…" her sentence trailed off as she darted a quick glance at her silent companion. "He was killed.
"We were on our way to the next town. We were moving because father wanted to try to make a better life for us. It was hard to farm our little plot of land, and we didn't have much money—" Her voice broke a little, but she continued on. "Mother died seven years ago, when I was eight years old. Ever since then it was just the two of us, but we were all each other needed.
"We grew cabbage, carrots, radishes – things like that – and I helped father with the sowing and harvesting. At the end of every week, I would gather the crops and sell them in the market, and with the money from that I would buy the week's bread. It was a simple life, and sometimes I caught myself wondering if there would ever be anything more to life than this. But then I would look at Father and think how much I love him, and how happy we were, and I would be ashamed that I ever wanted anything more.
"And now he's not here anymore, and I'm all alone. I don't know what to do, and I have nowhere to go." She dropped her forehead to her arms that were folded atop her knees and her hair fell forward, hiding her face. "I'm scared," he heard her whisper faintly to herself.
Heero wanted to see if she was crying again, so he nudged her arm with his nose. At the contact, she looked up from the cradle of her arms and met his eyes. Her own eyes were moist, but she was not crying. She drew a deep, steadying breath. "No, I guess I'm not alone, because you're here with me." There was an unreadable expression in her eyes again. She reached out tentatively.
Heero tensed in anticipation of the unfamiliar contact again, but he did not move away. Taking that as permission from the animal, Relena placed her hand gently on the top of its head and gave it a few timid pets. Despite his better judgment, Heero found himself leaning just slightly into the touch. It must have been his canine instincts, he told himself, craving the contact.
"Thank you, Wolf. Thanks for listening to me talk, even though I know you don't understand a single word I'm saying. I feel a little better, just by talking about things." Unexpectedly, she was struck by the sense of a great intelligence within the beast that had been keeping her company this whole time. She stopped and looked deeply into its dark blue eyes, eyes that seemed to draw her in.
"Wolf, I've never seen an animal with eyes like yours. And your coat is dark brown, not grey like the others of your kind that I've seen." She cocked her head slightly to the side. "You're very unusual, aren't you?"
Suddenly, she remembered.
"Oh! There is another strange wolf too. I saw it two days ago." She thought out loud, more to herself than to the beast. Her eyes became distant as she tried to recall that hypnotic moment. "It was a great beast… golden… almost white. It didn't attack us, but rather it just sat there a distance away. And it had blue eyes, just like you… endlessly blue…" Her eyes lit up. "Could it be that maybe you two are related?" she pondered out loud with a little bit of amusement.
Heero flinched mentally at that description. The intruder in his lands that the other wolves had reported to him! And though he had been suspecting it all along, with nothing to base it on except an instinctual feeling, that was the moment that he knew, with absolute certainty, just who had come to challenge him. The white-gold wolf was not unfamiliar to him; their lives had crossed a long, long time ago. And now their lives are about to cross again, just as the witch had foretold… just as the witch had cursed.
Abruptly he jumped to his feet, his hackles raised and lips beginning to curl back in growl. Beside him, Relena tensed at the sudden motion, her eyes widening in awe and no small amount of fear at the raw, wild power the beast was emanating.
Without even a parting glance at the girl, Heero stalked darkly out of the room. He had things to take care of.
Relena looked after the retreating four-footed figure. She could feel its tension, but its actions still confused her. Soon, she was alone in the room again. Truly alone. With a sigh, she moved onto the sofa to settle in for the night.
Heero was running through the powdery snow again. Whenever he was agitated, he felt the urge to run, to sprint, to eat up the ground with a pounding pace until his paws barely touched the ground and it felt like he was flying.
And he was more agitated now than he could remember being in a very long time. Nothing had riled him up like this, not since that incident.
"You refuse to help an old woman? Very well then. If you will not fight him, then you will join him. I curse you into his form until the day you face your destiny and defeat your rival in combat. Until that time, you will never feel the warmth of the sun on your skin again. Until you can face yourself and your responsibility, you are no man, and the waking world will see you as such."
He shook his head clear of the memories that still haunted him. He had not forgotten the more pressing issue at hand, his mental promise to the girl and himself. He had spent a good part of the night keeping that girl company, and he needed to finish the task before daybreak if he wanted to utilize the knife-using ability of his human hands.
Tonight he would get that doe.
*****
He caught her scent quickly. She was out foraging tonight, and she had passed through here not too long ago.
Soon he tracked her down. He could see her in front of him, just beyond the tangled tree branches. She was picking at a few blades of grass, and she had not sensed him yet.
He crept closer on silent paws. He was close now. So close. He could almost taste her.
That was when she tensed. She raised her head, ears swiveling this way and that, nostrils flaring to catch the scent of a predator that she could feel nearby.
It was now or never.
The doe took a few uncertain steps. She was about to bolt.
Now! Do it!
He bounded out from the shadows and snapped at the doe's hindquarters. His teeth just grazed her, but she had leapt out of the way at the last moment.
Shit! He cursed mentally as the doe tore down the path. Now he had to chase. It wouldn't matter in the end though, because he always caught his prey. But it was a minor inconvenience.
His canine instincts sang as he chased her. She ran from him in zig zags, trying to shake him by taking an unpredictable path. Her twig-thin legs allowed her to jump daintily out of deep piles of snow, and she had the frantic speed of a creature that was running for her life, but he still gained on her.
With a final burst of power he pulled alongside her and jumped for her throat. They both went tumbling in the snow from the force of the impact. Rolled onto her back, the doe kicked her spindly legs jerkily in the air, but it was already too late. Heero lay beside her on the snow that was already being stained red with hot blood, his jaws clamped tightly around her neck. His sharp teeth had pierced her windpipe, and she was suffocating. Her blood seeped out from the bite wounds and into his mouth. He looked on emotionlessly as she spasmed in her death throes beneath him. Briefly an image flashed in his mind of her young fawn, the one that he had killed early that morning. He, too, had jerked and spasmed in his jaws like this. Then, unexpectedly, the image in his mind's eye was replaced by that of the girl hugging her knees in front of the fire, talking to him as if he were an old friend.
The doe stilled. Its large, watery eyes lost its franticness and dulled. And Heero began the long work of dragging its body back to the house.
He reached it, prize in tow, just as the stars were beginning to dim in the sky. It looked like he still had time tonight.
He changed into his human form and went to find a knife in the kitchen.
It always felt strange to make the transformation. Since he spent almost all of his time as a wolf, it was the form that he felt much more comfortable in. Before this, the last time he had changed was over a month ago. Now, because of that girl who suddenly came into his life, he had changed three times in three days. She turned his life upside down just by appearing, and he didn't like it one bit.
He cleaned the carcass and cut it up. He chose the tender meat of the torso for the first meal. The tougher muscles of the shoulders and flanks could stand up better to being frozen and thawed for cooking tomorrow. He buried the unused parts of the doe in the snow, where he knew it would still be waiting for him tomorrow, and proceeded to make two dishes this time. With human hands to work with this time, it was much easier to make another, larger pot of stew. And he prepared some of the fattier cuts of meat for frying in a skillet as well. That, he thought with anticipation, would make for a satisfying meal.
The sky was growing lighter by the second.
When he brought the food to the fire for cooking, he saw the girl sleeping soundly on his sofa. It was strange being in her vicinity as a human again, since the last time they were together like this they had argued until he stormed out.
Quickly he arranged the food over the fire, thankful that he did not have to burn his nose this time around. Then he turned to observe her some more. She hadn't stirred this entire time, even though he had been moving around just a few feet away from her.
He bent to look at her more closely. She was such a deep sleeper. He examined her features carefully. He noted the clear but still pale skin, the small, high nose, and the lips that were slightly chapped from the alternating cold and heat she had experienced that day. He looked at her closed eyes, and imagined their blueness. Although he remembered looking into them while he was a wolf, he longed to see them again as a human. Their color was the same as his, but they were so different at the same time. The blue was lighter, like the sky on a sunny day, and they shined with innocence.
He had lost his own so long ago...
It was then that he felt the heat stirring in his chest, starting from his heart and radiating outward. The sun must have been rising outside. Usually he had no real reason to stay human and changed himself back of his own accord long before his time limit was up. This time, he had wanted to grasp every last second of his time as a human, just because he had been studying her face while she was sleeping. He had almost forgotten it, but now he was reminded again of the pain that comes with a forced transformation. Without the mental preparation, the usual discomfort was magnified into fiery pain by the arriving rays of the sun, so that he fell to the ground gasping.
Relena felt the air in the room changing somehow. Through the dense fog of dreamless sleep, she imagined hearing gasps and muted grunts.
She willed herself awake. What she saw in the room was nothing out of the ordinary. The fire was burning, and there was food cooking in it again. And lying on the fur rug before her was the form of a wolf, with his head down and his eyes closed and his breathing slightly quickened.
