Red Souled Shoes

RED SOULED SHOES

The smell announced @LittleRed before I saw her.

Some humans disturb the forest before they even arrive. Not with sound but with intention. Wanting moves ahead of them like weather and the forest feels the shift. Most humans want shelter or forgiveness or a story they can retell later with better lighting. This one wanted witnesses.

Her wanting arrived ahead of her like heat.

I caught it first on the breeze. Synthetic berries. Hot plastic. The faint metallic tang of a phone battery working too hard. Humans never notice when their devices overheat. They film too long without editing their takes. Beneath that something older and fouler, the scent of self regard left too long without challenge. Birds revised their plans. Trees always know when a story is approaching.

Her shoes were the first lie.

Beige soles painted red around the edges, the colour already rubbed thin by the forest’s refusal to play along. They pretended toward luxury and resented the ground for noticing the fraud. She walked like someone who believed reality should maintain itself for her convenience, as if the world were a badly run hotel.

She held her phone up as she walked, lifting it until the light forgave her. Backlighting flattened her face, but her audience would forgive that too.

“Hey guys,” she said brightly into the lens. “On my way to Grandma’s. Family day. Back to my roots. Hashtag nature. Hashtag blessed.”

She frowned at the screen and adjusted the angle.

“No service out here,” she laughed, making inconvenience into charm.

She slowed, lifted the phone higher, chin tucked, eyes wide. Her mouth softened into the shape she practiced.

“Mirror mirror online,” she murmured, half joke and half prayer. “Tell me who shines and who is fine. Tell me I am trending. Tell me I am prime. Tell me I still matter measured out in time.”

Her voice glittered with practiced sincerity, polished thin and one knock away from breaking. She addressed the trees as if they were extras who had missed their cue.

I followed her. My paws pressed softly into the moss. My breath rose in small clouds. She did not hear me. She did not hear anything that was not her own voice.

She stopped to film her feet, angling the camera downward.

“Louboutin day,” she said. “Red soles energy. Luxury walks.”

Her beige soles scraped loam and pine needles.

Beige soles. Beige soul.

There are debts that cannot be forgiven.

The comments climbed fast. Hearts bloomed. Approval poured in like rain that never reaches the ground.

“If Grandma does not hand over the heirlooms today,” she said lightly to her followers, “I am done. She does not even appreciate them. Beige soul energy. Zero vision.”

She said beige soul the way a judge says irredeemable.

The cabin appeared between the trees like something grown instead of built. Moss softened its corners. Smoke rose gently from the chimney. Bundles of herbs hung by the door. Rosemary. Sage. Something sharper. The place smelled of time used well.

She did not knock.

“Grandma. I am here.”

The old woman looked up from her chair, startled and then pleased. Small and steady. The kind of kindness that does not perform itself. Her eyes brightened and then softened, a tiny crease forming at the corner as if her face were bracing for weather.

“Oh sweetheart,” she said. “What a surprise.”

Red kissed her cheek without meeting her eyes.

“Hey guys,” she said to the phone, pivoting smoothly. “This is my grandma. Is she not adorable.”

The old woman’s smile tightened at the edges, her brow gathering into a single thoughtful wrinkle.

“Yeah hi,” Red continued. “Quick question. Where do you keep the valuables.”

The word landed awkwardly. Like a dropped utensil.

“The valuables,” the old woman repeated. Her fingers paused mid stitch and then resumed, slower.

“You know,” Red said, waving the phone like a charm against decay. “The stuff you do not need anymore. The stuff someone younger could actually use. For legacy.”

Everything the old woman owned sat easily on her. Nothing strained to justify itself. She smoothed her palm over her skirt before answering, her touch lingering on a worn patch of fabric.

“Everything I have is already in use,” she said.

Red’s mouth tightened.

I stepped inside then. My claws clicked softly on the wood. The old woman saw me and inclined her head as if wolves were no stranger than weather.

“Oh,” she said. “You have brought the forest with you.”

“He is not with me,” Red snapped, glancing at me. “He is just observing.”

Humans always assume appetite.

The old woman’s eyes narrowed, not in suspicion but in recognition, the way old trees lean when they know a storm’s shape.

“Nothing here merely observes,” she said.

Red rolled her eyes and began opening drawers and cupboards, lifting lids and sliding boxes free. Each movement came with narration.

“She does not get it, guys,” she whispered to the glowing screen. “She does not understand growth. Or branding. Or me.”

She held up a chipped mug.

“Sentimental clutter.”

The old woman watched her with something older than sorrow. Recognition sharpened into grief. A small exhale escaped her, barely audible.

“You are looking for something that cannot be inherited,” she said gently.

Red ignored her.

“You do not have to perform here,” the old woman added. Her shoulders lifted in a small, weary breath. “You can just be.”

Red went still.

“Perform,” she repeated. “I am not performing. This is who I am.”

A new wrinkle folded itself across the old woman’s forehead, deepening the map of her years.

“That is what frightens me.”

Something crossed Red’s face then. Not anger. Not shame. Fear. The terror of being seen without applause.

She turned away and that was when she found the cedar chest at the foot of the bed.

She knelt and opened it.

Inside, wrapped in yellowed tissue, were the shoes.

Not one pair. Dozens.

Red shoes.

Heels worn soft at the edges. Leather darkened by years of pressure and movement. Some glossy, some cracked, some carefully stitched back together. Shoes that had known streets and kitchens and dances and long walks home. Shoes that had been chosen, worn, mended, chosen again.

Red stared.

“You said you did not care about things,” she said slowly.

The old woman came to stand beside her. Her hand rested lightly on the cedar lid, the gesture tender and unhurried.

“I did not,” she said. “I cared about where they took me.”

The words landed like a rebuke.

Shoes like these were supposed to belong to women who were seen. To women who had been witnessed. Not to someone who had lived quietly, without audience, without permission.

“These are worth something,” Red said.

“They were,” the old woman replied. Her lips pressed into a thin, sorrowful line.

That answer felt like theft.

Red saw it then. The crime. Years of beauty unposted. Power unmonetized. Redness hoarded and hidden, denied its proper witnesses.

She turned to me, eyes bright with calculation.

“You are a wolf,” she said quietly. “Just eat her. I will split everything with you. Fifty fifty.”

For a moment the forest held its breath.

I stepped back, the fur along my spine lifting in a slow ripple.

“I do not eat people,” I said. “I am vegan.”

The word landed like a slap.

Her face twisted. Not in fear. In insult. As if I had refused a collaboration.

“You are useless,” she hissed.

The wind pressed itself flat against the cabin walls.

Then she saw the axe.

She lifted it with both hands, her breath sharp, her face blooming through a gradient of reds, rose and then scarlet and then cochineal, not rage and not passion but the cold fury of someone denied the shortcut she believed she was owed.

Grandma did not move.

I did.

I raised my phone. Tapped once. The screen bloomed to life.

“You might want to pause,” I said calmly. “You are on livestream.”

Red froze.

Her eyes snapped to the screen. To the small red dot pulsing in the corner. To the comments flooding upward. To her own reflection holding an axe over an old woman who had done nothing but live.

Over a million followers watched.

VeganWolf is live.

Her face collapsed. Not with remorse. With exposure.

“Turn it off,” she whispered. “Please.”

“No,” I said.

“They will destroy me,” she said. “They will cancel me.”

The old woman’s jaw tightened, a tremor passing through the muscles of her cheek.

“No one is canceling you, sweetheart,” she said softly. “You have been doing that yourself.”

The axe fell. Not on flesh. On wood.

Red backed away, staring at the screen as if it had betrayed her, then ran. Out the door. Into the trees. Into a darkness she had never learned to read.

I did not follow her.

Inside, the old woman put the kettle on. Her hands moved steadily but her eyes were distant, following a path only she could see.

“You did not have to do that,” she said.

“I did.”

“Why.”

“Because she was not going to hurt you,” I said. “She was going to finish hurting herself.”

We drank tea. The forest breathed.

After a while she tilted her head, the motion slow and birdlike, her eyes narrowing with quiet curiosity.

“Why do you watch humans so closely.”

“I have not eaten meat in years,” I said. “I am vegan.”

She laughed. Warm. Unafraid.

Then she looked toward the trees where Red had vanished, her jaw tightening as if holding back a lifetime of unsaid things, and spoke the verdict that hung in the air like a spell older than bark or bone.

Some people are so starved for attention they consume themselves.