Ane ran as fast as she could to keep the wolf in sight. She ran until her legs ached and she could no longer hear the hunter behind her. At last the darkening forest obscured her vision so severely that the wolf slid from her vision. It was twilight, and she was off the path. Alone in the woods, and lost besides. In that instant she was five years old again, paranoid and terrified with it, but this time she couldn't even make her legs move. Paralysed with fear, she clutched the basket with both hands and watched the tree disappear into the darkness. When something brushed against her leg she jumped sideways into a tree with enough force for it to return the favor and knock her over. The basket rolled away from her, and through the crack in the lid her rose fell out. She stretched a quivering hand to it, but instead of petal her fingers stroked fur. Ane's eyes slid up his leg, followed the gentle slope of his shoulder, and gradually came to rest at the great yellow eyes of her silver-haired wolf. He sniffed the rose, then slowly turned to nuzzle her forehead. Ane sighed, and let her head rest upon the forest floor.
She was only dimly aware when her wolf stepped over her shock-frozen body and into the deepening night. Slowly she righted herself; tree attacks were not something which her body was accustomed to dealing with, and she figured a moment or two to get all her brain cells back to where they were supposed to be was not to be counted as a thing of weakness under the circumstances. Ane avoided using the treacherous tree for support, and as a result sway with the breeze as her legs reaccustomed themselves to this standing nonesense. A hand reached out to steady her; her head snapped to its source with an alacrity that the rest oher was not prepared for, and as a result she overbalanced and fell into the person who had meant to help her. The texture of unclothed skin underneath; she stiffened against his chest automatically and her head shot up, trying to pretend that her confused and swimming eyes directed a glare of reproach- at a pair of brilliant yellow eyes.
Before Ane could convince her brain to conceive the possibility before it her hand had lifted itself and sought some mark of familiarity in this strange man's face. He neither blinked nor fliched as her fingers stroked his forehead, ran down his nose, drew slowly across his lips and skimmed his cheek. Only when her hand tangled itself in his shaggy dark hair (how exactly did a silver-furred wolf become a shaggy dark-haired man?) did he move, and it was to take the arm which had been offered to her and slide it around her back, gently drawing her to him. She noticed in passing that he wore a roughly tied wrap rather than trousers, and wondered whether this was some strange shapeshifter's tradition.
Shapeshifter?
Her brain was finally waking up to the notion that she stood in the arms of a man who, less than an hour before, had been a wolf. Impossible, it said. The man must have been here waiting. But no, see? said her hand, His eyes, his eyes are that same shade of yellow. They are the same eyes. He saw her confusion mounting, and with a grin lifted his other hand from his side: between his long fingers was a crimson rose. Ane looked to the fallen basket- there lay hers from the morning. She turned her gaze back to the wolf-man, who handed her the second rose. "I...feel I must apologise." Ayn shuddered slightly: if before she had had any doubts that this man was not entirely human, the unnatural, no, not unnatural, unhuman quality of his deep voice, rich and soft like the roses he had given her, not unlike the growl of a wolf, put them at once to rest. "This was not how I had intended you to encounter me for the first time."
Ane started slightly. "Then this isn't the first time you've watched me?"
"I have...protected you...agaisnt the untoward creatures of this place for many years."
Shapeshifter.
Either her good sense or her fear instit kicked in, she had neither the time nor the inclination to bother discerning which it was, and she ripped out of the wolf-man's arms, fought with her body to stay upright and failed; she fell, fell and rose again to keep on running. Through the forest she ran, away from that thing, her whatever-it-was, away. Leaves whipped across her face. Her panting breaths punctured the quiet night air. At last her lungs ached and her legs begged her to stop; she obeyed, and looked around. She did not see much- here a trunk, there some leaves, that might even have been a rock off to her left. Ane laughed bitterly- had she really hoped to see the path? As the glances she threw around her became more desperate, the forest seemed to come alive with sound. To her left, a leaf flicked. Behind her, crickets mocked her confusion. From every direction came little sounds that, in daylight, meant nothing more than the healthy noises of a healthy forest, but in the abysmal dark of night resounded like warnings against an enemy that she knew not how to evade. Far off in the distance, Ane thought she saw a light. She heaved a massive sigh of relief; perhaps all was not lost after all. For the first time in living memory she was happy that the hunter had come looking for her; at least he would take her out of the dark, and out of the warpath of her fears. A voice in the back of her head would not stop niggling as she walked, it would not stop insisting that the path from which she had strayed to follow her wolf (Ane shivered slightly) was in the other direction, surely this light was leading her farther away, not closer to.
Ane paused. With every step the voice grew stronger, and as afraid as she was, desperate to escape the darkness, she could not escape the feeling that the light led her falsely. But who other than the hunter would be out looking for her? And who would know where to look but the man who had followed her so far into the woods? She had nearly resolved to squelch the little voice back into the corner of her mind that it had come from and pursue the light, when an object flew before her. Ane could not hold back a sharp shriek of shock, but calmed somewhat when she saw that it was naught but her basket. She looked around, expecting to see her wolf-man somewhere, but her eyes saw nothing but darkness and dark shapes protruding from it and the little light, jiggling as though the holder waited for her impatiently to follow. Ane took a step to do so and nearly tripped over a large furry mass before her. She looked down, and his great yellow eyes gazed levelly back up at her. The light jiggled, and the wolf's paw landed on her foot, snapping her head between to two too quickly and again she had to greet the ground with her hands to steady herself.
Ane blinked rapidly, trying to reconcile her eyes to cooperation. I really, really need to stop doing that, she thought. A cool, damp nose shoved between her palm and her face; her eyes still swam slightly, but she could make out the great silver wolf before her. A tanglible, clearly visible point of refrence had established itself for them, and her eyes wept wih glee that here at last was something they could see, and why hadn't she gotten it through her head yet that people don't see in the dark. Ane made a mental note to grapple with her eyes later about the whole issue of seeing things, and for the time being contented herself with wiping the tears from her eyes, and burying her face in her wolf's shoulder. (Apparently she had missed the part where she actually leaned into him while her eyes had held her occupied.) Like his human form, the wolf did not move an iota while she clung to him, but she could feel his eyes scanning the forest around him, and the feeling of protection from whatever she needed protecting from gave her such relief that she forgot to be disgusted by the embrace of a shapeshifter.
When at last she had calmed herself enough to move, she thought she heard a voice, that same rich, wolfish, nonhuman voice, but almost (Ane thought) with a touch of sadness, in her head. Take your basket, Ane. I will lead you to the house you seek.
She bent to pick up the basket. On top of it lay a crimson rose.
