Best Of Both Worlds

When Sasha was a kid, she had of course undergone the fascination with wolves that seems to be a staple of all childhoods. From fairy tales to books on biology she’d only checked out for the pictures, she’d eagerly consumed it all. But not even Jack London could have ever prepared her for meeting a werewolf.

Sasha had been exploring the forests behind her family’s home when she got caught in the rain. Lost and cold in the dark woods, Sasha hadn’t even considered trying to find her way home. Her best bet had of course been to find some kind of shelter and wait out the rain. The booming thunder and burgeoning hail had made for an excellent motivator.

It didn’t take long for Sasha to get lucky and find an opening in the roots of a tree, leading into an alcove underneath the tree and within the roots. She dropped down to the mud and crawled into the dark alcove.

Sasha shuffled to the far end of the alcove, away from the rain, intent on settling herself down against the back wall. She breathed a sigh of relief and started to unloop her scarf as she did so. Sasha finally flopped down.

Immediately, she tensed up, her hands still hanging onto the scarf draped over her shoulders. Sasha could feel something beneath her. She was sitting on something. Something long, thin, and moving. Her mind immediately jumped to a snake. Following that, the rest of her body jumped to the side.

She expected to land beside the exit so she could make a quick escape if she needed to be. Instead, she bounced off of something else. In that brief moment of impact, Sasha felt herself bouncing against warm, if damp, fur. She landed on the ground with a soft groan.

Sasha heard a shuffling sound, audible even over the pounding rain. She opened her eyes and looked up. Two yellow rings floated above her. Eyes, glowing through the darkness, bore down on her from above.

A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the alcove. Sasha stared up at the creature above her. Yellow eyes set above a snout, with the lips pulled back to bare a row of fangs. The head and body were covered in brown fur, with a tail swishing around where Sasha had sat before.

The creature lifted up one hand. And it was definitely a hand. Dark pads stretched across the palm, framed by a ring of black fur. The fur lightened back to brown on the back of its hand, but it remained black as it stretched over the fingers. And they were definitely fingers and a thumb.

The light from the lightning faded, leaving the creature’s glowing eyes as the only source of illumination. The eyes moved closer, and Sasha could feel the creature’s warm breath puffing out over her face. It stared to let out a low growl.

Some people might have screamed. Some might have run away. Some might have tried to fight the creature. Some might have frozen. Some might have cried. Some might have done many many things. But Sasha didn’t do any of those things. She did what quite possibly no one else would have ever even considered.

She reached up and pressed her hand to the side of the creature’s head. Her fingers buried themselves in its warm fur. The creature twitched and stopped growling. Even its eyes seemed to waver, as if they had widened in shock.

“Are you real?”

The creature didn’t respond. But it didn’t need to. Sasha already knew the answer. She could feel its pulse thrumming beneath her hand.

At this point, even the bravest of the brave would falter and at least consider their options. And, to her credit, that’s exactly what Sasha did. The way she saw it, she had two options. She could scratch behind the creature’s ears, or go in for a hug and feel its warm embrace. Before she could do either, the creature’s hand wrapped around her wrist. Its cold pads dug into her skin. The creature started pulling her hand away from its face.

“Oh, sorry,” Sasha said, having to lean and bend her body as the creature kept pulling on her arm. “You probably don’t like me touching you like that, do you?”

The creature started growling again, illuminated by another flash of lightning.

“You’re a werewolf, aren’t you?” When the creature didn’t respond aside from a continued growl, she plowed ahead. “Can you speak like this?” Another growl was all she got, though the werewolf did finally release her hand.

Sasha slumped back to sit across from the werewolf. Its eyes remained locked on her, though they did lower slightly.

“Are you going to eat me? Only, I don’t think I’d taste very good.”

The werewolf snorted out a sound that could have been a huff, or perhaps a scoff. Or even just a sneeze. It was quite dusty in their little alcove.

Sasha nodded as if that explained everything. “Well, then, my name is Sasha, Mr. Werewolf. Do you have a name?” This time, Sasha was almost certain that the werewolf had scoffed. It eyes very obviously shifted and rotated as the werewolf tilted its head.

“Well, I can’t very well keep calling you Mr. Werewolf, can I? That would be like you calling me Miss Human.” The werewolf let out a whistling snarl. Of agreement, Sasha decided. “Perhaps I can come up with a name for you?” The werewolf made no sound of response, so again Sasha decided to take that as an agreement. “Okay then. How about Fido?”

The werewolf rolled its eyes. One hand slashed out. A claw sliced through Sasha’s sleeve, grazing her arm. Sasha recoiled slightly, lifting her other hand up to trace her arm. She could feel a scratch, yet there wasn’t even a trace of blood.

“Fido it is, then.”

Fido exhaled in a huff of laughter. The puff of air was so powerful that Sasha’s hair fluttered up around her face. If she hadn’t been sold on the name Fido already, that one act would have convinced her.

“Fido it really is, then.”

Again Fido huffed, this time accompanied by a growl. For a moment Sasha considered that maybe Fido hadn’t just laughed, but decided against that. She rather liked making him laugh. Another flash of lightning lit up their alcove, and in that brief instant of light Sasha was positive that she’d seen Fido smiling.

After the light faded, the winds raging outside shifted. The rain that had been falling safely outside of their alcove redirected and began dripping all over Fido. It snarled and growled, eyes turning to glare up at the rain. The eyes floated up and Sasha heard Fido pushing itself up.

Fido crawled across the alcove, glowing eyes bobbing closer and closer to Sasha. An arm slipped behind her and shoved her away from the wall. Sasha yelped and dropped to her hands and knees, directly in the spray of water Fido had just abandoned. She landed with a soft flump. A much louder flump signaled Fido dropping down against the wall.

Sasha pushed herself back away from the rain. She flopped down against Fido’s side. Fido grunted and shifted, pushing against Sasha’s back. She planted her legs and pushed herself back against Fido. Eventually he huffed and relaxed. Sasha nodded to herself and settled against Fido, snuggling into his warm fur.

Fido’s body rumbled against Sasha’s back. She turned to look back. Its yellow eyes were still floating in the darkness beside her, though they had drooped and become lidded.

“Are you cold?”

Fido grunted and snapped his eyes to glare at her. Sasha just blinked back at him. “Here.” She reached up and finally pulled her scarf from her neck. She reached out one hand and, after clumsily groping at the air for a moment, she found Fido’s shoulder. She looped her scarf around Fido’s neck, letting it gently drape beneath its head.

“Is that better?” Sasha asked. Fido didn’t respond. It just turned and dropped its head down, though its eyes remained tilted to look up. Up at the exit of the alcove. Up at the swirling storm outside.

Sasha patted Fido on the shoulder. She rolled slightly to snuggle against its rumbling chest and watch the pouring rain too.

“Do you live here in the forest?” Sasha asked. “Because I haven’t heard of any werewolves living out here.” Fido didn’t respond. Didn’t even huff or snort. It just lay there, watching the rain.

“Do you do anything for fun?” Fido’s eyes flicked between Sasha and the falling rain. “So not in here, but out there?” Fido huffed. Sasha was quickly coming to the conclusion that a huff was Fido’s way of saying obviously.

“I imagine you like to run around a lot. You’re a wolf, of sort, so you probably chase other animals. Deer or some birds or maybe some rabbits. Do you chase rabbits?”

Fido let out a growl and shuddered beneath Sasha’s form. She patted its shoulder consolingly. “I don’t like rabbits either,” she whispered. “They make a terrible mess of the garden.”

Fido turned to stare at Sasha. It turned so much that Sasha was nearly jostled off of it completely. It stared at her for a long time. Sasha met its gaze head on. Whatever Fido was looking for, it didn’t seem to find it. It just shook its head with a groan and dropped back down. Sasha gave it a moment, just to be sure, and then carefully lay back down as well. She and Fido lay in silence, watching the rain falling and pouring outside of their alcove.

“I’ve always liked the rain.” Fido let out a very soft sound. A hum or a whine. One Sasha was half-convinced she imagined. Still, she took it upon herself to answer. “I’ve always liked the way it sounds. To lay back in bed and hear it bouncing off the roof, maybe pitter-pattering down the window. It sounds like music. The music of nature. I like it.”

Fido snorted in response. Its eyes shut. Sasha was relatively certain she heard a wafting sound as Fido shook its head. When its eyes opened again, they pointed up at the roof of their alcove, then at the sheet of rain through the exit.

“I suppose it doesn’t sound like much in here, does it?” Fido snorted again, shaking its head once more. Sasha nodded sagely. “It’s different when its outside. You prefer clear nights, don’t you? So you can howl at the moon?”

At the end of her question, Fido started growling. The sound was accompanied by a scraping of some kind. It took Sasha feeling its arm moving around to realize the sound was claws scraping against the rocky floor.

“At the stars?” Sasha asked instead.

Fido stopped scraping the floor. Its growls weakened, though a low hum still remained. “Do you not howl at the stars?” Fido finally stopped growling, replacing it with a single huff.

“But you do like the stars, right? I can’t imagine anyone not liking stars.” Fido let out a huff of obviously.

“I like the stars too,” Sasha promised. “I like looking up and connecting the lights together, forming pictures, you know? Real, proper pictures. Not the squiggles that people try to pass off as constellations.” Fido snorted out a laugh, its chest shaking with amusement.

“Would you like to find our own constellations? We can’t use the real stars, of course.” Sasha gestured to the downpour for emphasis. “But I came up with a workaround.” Fido didn’t respond, just watched her. “Not me, look out at the rain.” Sasha leaned forward, moving until Fido’s yellow eyes weren’t visible to her at all. There was no source of light for her at all. She watched the falling rain, barely able to make out the shuffling and twisting lines against the darkness.

A flash of lightning illuminated the rain. Each and every drop lit up with sparkling lights. “Now! Close your eyes!”

Sasha clamped her eyes shut. Pinpricks of light bloomed to life against her eyelids. The afterimage of the rain, held in place as if frozen in time. Sasha found the dotted lights and connected them together, imagining lines snaking over and around each other. Even as the lights themselves started to fade, the lines and Sasha’s image remained.

“I have a wolf.” She kept her eyes shut, but tilted her head in the direction of Fido. “Do you see it? With the head in the upper left, tilted up to the sky? The tail is kinda curved over the back.”

Sasha held onto the image for as long as she could, but eventually it started to fade. She opened her eyes, blinking at the expected darkness before her. She turned and met Fido’s eyes. “Did you see it?”

The yellow glows bobbed up and down. Sasha relaxed and dropped back against Fido’s side. She rolled over and looked back to the rain. It was dark again, and she could barely make anything out. She settled in to wait for another flash of lightning.

“I wish we could see the stars and the rain,” she said softly. “But the rain covers the stars. And for there to be stars, there must not be rain. I think I’d like both. The best of both worlds.”

—————————————————————

Sasha woke to the sound of birds chirping and singing. She sat up with a groan, one hand lifting to rub the sleep from her eyes. The other braced herself against the warm stone beneath her. Sasha looked up at the exit of the alcove. The morning sun’s rays shone down on her.

After a few moments of just sitting and basking, the night’s events came back to her. Sasha jolted and looked around the alcove. She was all alone.

Sasha sighed and dropped back down, laying on the stone. She was directly in the sunbeam. It was very bright. Perhaps too bright. She draped an arm over her eyes, but that did little to block out the light. After a few moments she gave up on using her arm and reached to her shoulders. She found nothing there. Sasha sat up and looked around the alcove again, and again she found nothing there.

Her scarf was gone.

Her lips twitched into a soft smile.

Sasha crawled out of the alcove and stood up, bracing one hand against the tree.

She could still smell the rain.