we’ve been here for hours.
people say it’s a good place to watch for animals. foxes, wolves, bears. those same people also warn against doing that very thing, especially at this time of the morning.Â
the wolves in particular, they’re thinner than anything, no more than bones and ragged fur. if given the chance, they’ll take anything as prey
the lines between night and day blur in these early hours.
they say it’s when the worst of them come out. i have no memories beyond ones that have been constructed from the stories. curiosity wins over fear, it always has.
there’s something here that i can’t quite explain, something that stills the very air around us. i wonder if it’s what people really mean when they say the witching hour, wonder if maybe the older stories of three in the morning had been wrong.
i can hear every shift of fabric as you move, uncomfortable on the grass. it’s still damp from the night before. there are patterns reflecting across the water, i’m hyper aware of every sound in the near total silence. i turn my head slightly, and there are flashes of light in my peripheral. glitter still lingers in your hair, on your face.
“if you keep moving,” i say under my breath, hardly louder than a whisper, afraid to unbalance the silence, “you’ll scare them off.”
you roll your eyes, always the cynical one, a half-smile curving your lips. i watch you here, a stray curl falling across your eyes. you brush it away, still smiling.
“the wolves won’t care if i’m adjusting my jacket. they just want to eat me.”
“okay, nothing’s going to eat us,” i say with a laugh, distracted from whatever previous exasperation had hung in my voice before. “relax.”
you break off, falling silent, and i turn.
there’s a wolf emerging from the other side of the clearing, heading towards the river.
i try to remember how to breathe. neither of us have moved an inch in over a minute. we’re half concealed in a cluster of pines; it hasn’t seen us yet. but somehow, i know beyond logic that it’s not interested in us, not today. if i turned around, i know I’d see the house rising behind us. we aren’t far from home, and if we ran now, i don’t think that anything would bother to follow.
you’re still beside me, all i can smell is strawberry shampoo, and suddenly i’m not sure i want to go anywhere at all.
the wolf is bigger up close, a near impenetrable wall of toned muscle and silken fur. it looks as if it’s been crafted from paper and ink, pulled straight from the worn pages of a fairy tale. there’s something breathtaking about this moment, something making my chest feel tight. it has a grace about it too, underpinned with something deadly. this wolf is like a spring that’s been too tightly coiled, too tightly wound. there’s a part of me that wonders what that breaking point would look like. there’s another that never wants to find out.
it’s like being ten feet away from an atomic bomb. one wrong movement, one wrong breath, a shift in the wind-
it bends to drink, muscles flexing in its neck, and i can feel your leg shaking where it’s pressed up against mine. dogs can smell fear, maybe this one is the same.
but somehow, i can’t bring myself to be scared. maybe it’s a delayed reaction, maybe adrenaline blocks out everything else. i can hear my heartbeat thundering in my ears as the wolf retreats from the water.
they’re thinner than anything, no more than bones and ragged fur.
maybe this one is beyond something mortal. a beast illuminated by the morning light. droplets of water reflect off its fur, a thousand tiny flares. i blink, and shadows flicker across its face, my eyes and the sunlight playing tricks on my vision. time moves slowly here, bending around us, slowing the moment down. half a second later, the wolf turns towards us.
for a heartbeat, everything is still.
they’ll take anything as prey.
but there’s nothing hungry in its gaze, nothing vicious. there’s something a lot like curiosity as it looks at me, eyes glowing in the half light of the clearing.
there’s another beat of silence and it turns to go. i can’t hear anything past a shift of leaves, a faint whistling wind, and then nothing.
it’s almost like it had never been wholly real at all.
