A whole year goes by before I let any of them se me again. I growl if if they come to close. Celia learnt it the hard way, last summer.
Her end Nesbitt had come, and come to close, we had seen them as a threat to our denn.
We hurt her, hurt her bad. Like we had always wanted to. She is blind on one eye now and she has a limp that will never go away. There were so much blood. I nearly forgotten how much blood there is in a human body. And how it tastes.
I had forgotten how how easy it is to snap and how much it hurts to get short. Nesbitt did what he said he would do, if he ever met my animal, he shot me in the leg.
He stayed with Celia until she was healed. He moved into the capin and never left.
I am not really sorry, but I feel some sort of regret. She did beat me up every day as a kid for years. She kept me in a cage. She was right, she did break me, but not my sanity.
She broke my humanite
She might not have given me the gift of violence. But she harnessed it. She didn't make me a killer. She trained me, tortured me, she made my anger grow. She taught me to supress my feelings. They tried to make me a machine, but I am an animal. She grew to trust the puppy I was back then.
You can't trust a wild animal. Or maybe you can, but just not this animal.
Wild is an interesting word. We imagine wild to be untamed and out of control but, of course, nature isn't like that; nature is controlled, ordered, extremely disciplined by all its elements.
I'm not totally wild, only half and that is what makes me the most dangerous, trusting this half animal, that was her biggest mistake.
It nearly took her life. Trust nearly killed her.
I didn't trust myself not to finish what I had started. So I stayed away, it took a year in isolation for me to go back to the denn. To go home to Gabriel.
"You've been away a long time. Were you lost?" Gabriel asked. Looking up from the drawing I made a few winters back. He is smiling, he looks happy to see me.
"Wounded, not lost." I say as I sit down beside him.
"Don't leave me again." He says
"I won't." I mean it when I say it, but know I probably can't keep my word.
"Good." I feel his arm around me. I look and he is still there.
He is still here.
I grin like a loon. I grab him him close, afraid to let go.
"Why do you keep disappearing?" I ask still holding him to tight.
"Just because you can't see the moon that doesn't mean it isn't there. I never leave, Nathan." He pulled out of my death grip. I keep touching him to make sure he stays. He puts his forehead to mine and look into my eyes.
"I never leave you, it is you that disappear. You stop seeing me. And it kills me to see you break apart every time."
"Then why can touch you now?!"
"Look at the moon." He says without taking his eyes of me. I look out of the leaves of the denn. It is red as blood.
"A blood moon, what does that mean?"
"Don't know."
"How come I couldn't touch you on blood moons before?"
"Did you try?"
"No I guess not." I look back at him and I kiss him again. Soft, his lips are so much softer then I remember. I might have forgotten how they feel. How they taste. I feel him igniting the fire in my blood. I burn in agony, I burn for him.
"Lay with me?" I ask him.
"Always"
We undress each other slowly. I feel tens. I feel nervous. And for some reason, I feel sad.
The trick is to stay in the present, get lost in the detail of him and enjoy the time we have together.
I must stay in the present. However it isn't as hard as it use to be.
Not when he touches me or shower my body with kisses.
After we lie naked twisted together I hear his heartbeat slowing. When he sleeps I wet his chest with tears.
I wake and he is gone. I stick my nose into the sheepskins where he were laid last night. I bares no sent of him.
I might have been convinced it was a dream if not for the fact I could still feel his weight on me, in me.
I leave my denn stil stark naked with my clothes in hand, I go the the river to wash.
I wash my clothes first. I concentrate on the task at hand. When they are washed and hanged I go back to the water and wash myself.
It surprises me how sore I am. I look at my reflection one last time before I get up.
I look older, my eyes are the same, but my hair is longer, to long.
And my beard, witch in reality isn't really beard but more like long individual strands on my face. I look horrid.
I need a shave and a haircut.
I hear the click of a gun. The safety being released.
I turn and see Nesbitt standing there, the gun pointing at me.
"Are you gonna shoot me?" I ask
"It depends mate, are you gonna eat me?" He sounds cold.
I sign "No."
"Good." He is still pointing the gun at me as I get up. He stiffens, I look up at him and see his eyes travel my body, my scars.
I spread my arms and turn for him to get a full look at my body. Before I let my arms fall and turns to him I ask if I am allowed to take my clothes back on.
The sound of my voice startles him. He look back into my eyes, before speaking.
"Hell kid, you look like shit. Did you have a fight with a wild animal?!" I frown, that was far from what I had expected to come out of his mouth.
I look down at my body and it's true i have bruises and bitemarks all over.
"For fucks sake" I swear before I march to my still damp cloths. I feel the heat in my cheeks. Nesbitt laughs, it makes me smile.
He puts his gun away and my breaths comes just a little easier.
"Come on kid join us for breakfast." For some reason I want to join so I follow him back to Celia's cabin.
"See what wanted to be found, this morning."
Celia smiles at me, there is no hard feeling in her. That makes me feel bad, she should feel scared, at least disappointed or angry. I don't understand, she rises and comes over, she checks my eyes for something before she throws her arms around me and hold me tight. I think it is the first time Celia hugs me.
I hug her back, she might have been nasty. But she gave me the tools to survive.
I think that is what makes parents. She is the closest thing I have to a patent left.
Im sorry. I think the words, but don't say them.
"You look like shit." She says as she pulls away. She frowns before turning my neck to study it with her good eye. "This is a human bite."
"What?!" Nesbitt scrambles up choked. It took him a second to come up with a comeback.
"Well he is covered in them all over so… did you have someone visit you last night."
I don't answer. Celia looks surprised at Nesbitt.
"You look close at all naked people in the forest?" And that had the Australian red in the face.
"Who wants coffee?"
I haven't had a cup of coffee since the war.
"I'll take one" I say absent minded, because there in front of the kooking fire sits Gabriel, smiling at me just like before.
"She is right you know, you do look like shit." He says in his french accent
"Hey Celia du you guys have a razer? And maybe scissors."