For two weeks they cooperated silently. By day, one would sleep while the other tended to the chores of the house, and they would trade intermittently so that, come nightfall, they were rested and excited for the hunt. Entering the woods with a magnificent wolf at his side like a loyal hound filled him with boundless pride. They commanded the forest, able to reach the highest nests and the lowest burrows, epic and mighty but silent and merciless as well, and Lucina was perfect as a setter, retriever, and guard, tuned precisely to his intentions in every moment. Communication came in the form of a glance at a tree, or a foot placed particularly, or a body drawn tight in preparation for a strike. Two minds, one wavelength, that was how they interacted. By the end of the first week they had employed the service of the woods' resident wolf pack, who now deferred to Priam—the one who had defeated their leader and bore the scent of a wolf—and would scare deer into the path of the one human. He was finally one with them, able to walk through trees and brush without subconsciously fearing the one territorial creature who could overpower him through sheer numbers.
Often throughout this silence he wondered the fate of the fallen alpha. It was likely that the great beast had crawled back to his den and slept forever, but he could easily have moved away from these woods in an attempt to rebuild his pack where no creatures would know his disgrace, but the triumphant songs of Priam's newfound followers would ensure all wolves in hearing distance would shun this defeated beast. It would be a depressing, moribund existence, perhaps a greater hell than whatever afterlife awaited weak alpha males, and it occurred to Priam that the same would someday happen to him. He was able to keep the wolves at bay for now, but the moment he lost a battle, whether it be to a species of greater strength or to his companion that knew his most obvious secrets, he would fall and enter the rejected realm. It had happened to his father as well; the man had been legendary in folk tales and legends, but when he battled the reaper for the soul of his wife he had lost entirely, left with nothing but a burdensome offspring that had her eyes and an emptiness that drew him away from the cowardly world of men. He passed the essentials down, as any mammalian sire would do instinctually, and when Priam had been so very young his father hiked into the woods and disappeared. His weathered bow that Priam used in hunts now was abandoned on his favorite hunting trail, and his bones were strewn about the summer den of a grizzly, to be discovered the winter following his disappearance and buried in the snow instead of the earth. Mortality was a curious thing; to the wolf and to his father, life ended when their thrones crumbled beneath them and they were cast aside by the victor of an ultimate battle. Hunting in the woods now, picking through them as if to uproot every last secret, he felt himself growing melancholy, even when he knew that his successes with Lucina should be cause for joy. She may be observant enough to detect the shift in his behavior and attitude, but even she, who could flush a rabbit from its burrow and catch it in the same stride, would never be able to pick him apart enough to discover these morbid thoughts. He would not destroy her confidence with his uncertainty.
And in the midst of everything, he found that he truly was unable to forget her accusation, and he wondered how this instinct she labeled as love related to his increasingly frequent musings on the rise and fall of the wolves. His father, the bones beneath the snow, had once loved, and it had been a losing struggle in the end.
The rain remained sporadically throughout those two weeks. He had learned to ignore it when he was in the woods, and it no longer trapped him when he was in the cabin. He and Lucina had taken to stacking firewood inside so that it would dry, even though it constricted their space even more, and they had adjusted the chimney to free more smoke on the days they had to keep the fire constant. As they went about these tasks, they would attempt to communicate as they did in the woods when it was effortless, instinctual, but her eyes conveyed entirely different signals in the day. He could not comprehend her, and he caught himself numerous times staring at the little shield mark she bore, wondering if it hindered her sight or if it was a symbol of her curse, and when she attempted to send a message he would be oblivious. During the daytime they were ice and fire, desperate to spread a common warmth but remaining steadfast in their ignorance and newfound intolerance. He began to hate the human, as she hated the homebound him, just as he loved the wolf while she loved the huntsman. Two people, three wavelengths, four minds. The numbers confused him and only furthered his pensive proclivity.
As the half moon dawned in their perfect nocturnal world, he was growing less and less eager for the hunt. She was agitated, restless, her transformation heralding itself prematurely by mild throbbing pains, which she rubbed or scratched at until they subsided, but nearly half the night had passed before she finally succumbed to the full effects of the metamorphosis. He led the way into the woods as usual, and they brought a great deer to its knees through the help of the pack, but he lacked the motivation to carry the carcass home. She understood, as she always did in the night, and they left the glorious catch to the wild wolves, and returned to the overstocked cabin empty-handed. It was truly a nightmare; it had become too easy and they had turned a proud survival tactic into a mere sport, and to make matters worse she had another two weeks before they would face a changeless night. So that he had time to think, he led them through a longer trail home, and it was dawn when they arrived. She became human again just outside the cabin and he carried her inside so that the forest would not know her nudity. Once this was complete, she broke their unwritten vow and murmured, "What next?"
What next, indeed. Their pastime was now unnecessary, they were growing apart as domestic humans, and soon they would have to exist as simply that. He knew that the hammer to break this block lay somewhere in a conversation they were yet to have, but that frightened him more than mortality. "Something will need to be done soon. An emergency."
"You are tense," she noted, her eyes darting across him almost shyly, shielded by her lashes that formed the perfect screen. "We... We cannot survive another day like the storm. One of us will snap."
"I know. But it will not come to that." He shook his head and seated himself in the bed, slumped forward so that his chin could rest in his hand.
"I think," she asserted with sudden certainty, "we need to do what we do in the woods. We need to communicate and cooperate, but it does not work to take what the wolves do and make ourselves live that way. In the woods we can talk without words, but as humans–"
"As humans we must communicate like humans," he finished for her, only interrupting her because he was beginning to feel their thoughts aligning. "But the way we do in the woods. The details only if they are important, the instincts, that sort of communication."
"Exactly." She seemed pleased by his progression of thought, and after tugging the oversized sleeves of her borrowed dress up a bit she sat beside him on the bed. "So we have to speak with words as well as actions."
"Because that is what humans do."
"That is what humans do."
He uttered a thought suddenly, almost unaware as it passed through his lips, "Humans who are close also touch. When we are in the woods we touch and it means something different than here."
"I was just thinking the same," she admitted, which stirred his blood in an unfamiliar manner. "We must be allowed to touch also. Especially in this house." For a moment she looked back to her hands, then to his, studying the faded scar from his burn and the callouses on his fingers from the bow. "I will go first, then. There is a difference between you carrying me out of necessity and me touching you out of want."
He comprehended but still felt hesitant. The possession was back, the superiority over all other beings because he and this woman bore the same scent and she was assimilated into his solitude, but with it came reluctance to actually see her as tangible. If she existed, she could be taken. Yet, it was a risk he was willing to take. He nodded, and she reached a subtly quivering hand towards his face, and rested it so that her thumb reached his cheekbone but her palm graced his jawline.
Her skin was every bit as precious as it appeared, so delicate and intricately crafted that he almost worried his coarse stubble would unravel her flesh and she would fade into mist, but the pressure from her hand was more secure than he had anticipated. Beneath her ethereal exterior was a hardened hunter as well. He began to see the appeal of being a hound that received such a tender touch from its master, but this was better. He could touch back, and he did. They could not bring themselves to look one another in the eye, but they enjoyed the contrast between their bodies until she was taken by reaction that belonged in the obscure nightly woods; her lips alighted on his nose.