two beasts with breaths held

She had been born a wolf, and so her fate decreed she would die like a wolf: at the end of a man’s gun, cornered in a pasture she had mistakenly slipped into to rest. Not to eat his lambs and ewes, not to dig through his trash for scraps like some mongrel or mutt—but just to rest her eyes for a while, straw warm beneath her as the winter’s snow fell gently to the ground. A respite from the day and night’s running and searching for somewhere that would take her in, where her parents had strewn her out from the pack.

It was their right, of course. She did not resent them for what nature asked of them. She only hoped she would be able to make a family of her own come springtime, when the weather was warmer and the grass was greener and the rabbits were out and more plentiful than in the overcast days that had been shadowing them since the leaves begun to fall.

She stared down the barrel of the gun, ears pinned back and body pressed as flat into the ground as she could manage it. Her breath escaped in short, white puffs in the night’s chill—the same as his above her, his gloved hands gripping the handle of his gun, finger on the trigger.

She did not want to die. Her parents had cautioned them that man held no mercy for their kind, and that they must fight and trick men in order to get away. She might have been able to do it. She might have been able to dart between his legs or go for his arm, and she might have been able to put him to the ground and put her jaws around his neck and tear it out the way her mother and father had told her she should. She lowered her head and tensed her body, even though she felt as if a branch had fallen onto her back and balanced there precariously, ready to tip her over.

The air stilled between them, two beasts with breaths held.

He lowered his gun.

He looked straight into her eyes.

He told her in a gruff and tired voice, “Get.”

She got. She got out there fast, twisting out of her prone position and bolting blindly beneath the wooden fence whose splinters caught in her fur like claws, trying to drag her back to the man and his gun and her fate at the end of it. She kicked up snow and rocks and leaves, heart pounding in her chest and in her ears to the same beat of her paws on the freezing ground. She only stopped when she could not run anymore, dragging herself to beneath the boughs of a tree to rest. She circled twice, pine needles parting in the wake of her aching feet, and she laid down.

She already missed the warmth of the hay she had found.

He had been born a man, and so his fate decreed that he would point his gun at any carnivore that trespassed his lands. He grew up at his father’s knee learning this lesson, surrounded by the pelts and paws of wolves and coyotes and mountain lions hanging from the wall of their cottage. He ate his mother’s soup, filled with the meat of the beasts who threatened their livelihood, and tonight he heard his sheep cry in alarm and knew it was his turn to bear the burden. His parents had passed in early spring, and he lowered his eyes as he crossesd by their graves covered with snow near the house.

He would do them proud.

The wolf was not hard to find. It had curled up in a corner of the pasture on a bed of hay the sheep were fond of pulling from its bale and snacking on. When he approached, it raised its head and looked him in the eyes. It looked weary and thin, as if it had been running all day and night, and it had only just found a place to rest.

He raised his gun and pointed it at the wolf. Its ears pinned back and its breath came out in short, heavy puffs of white in the night’s chill. His did too, matching its rhythm. They came quicker than he expected, and his hands shook more than he thought they would.

It was probably the cold. It was probably the lateness of the hour. It was not because he beheld a beast whose kind hunted his flock and snatched their lives in its gaping, drooling maw. It was not because those same sharp fangs could turn the tide of this stand-off in an instant, if the wolf thought it had a chance and it was faster than his finger.

The air stilled between them, two beasts with breaths held.

It lowered its head.

It looked straight into his eyes.

For a moment, it felt as if it was asking him not to shoot.

“Get,” he told it, mouth dry and voice rough from disuse.

It got. It got out there fast. He waited until he couldn’t see it anymore, and then he got too, turning and making his slow and steady way back up to his house where the warmth of his bed awaited him. He kicked the snow off his boots and shed them by the door. He peeled the gloves from his fingers already aching with the cold and left them and his jacket on the floor. He rested his gun against the wall and looked at it for a long moment, then moved on.

The fireplace had died down to embers in the time he had been away, and he tended to it just enough to coax the heat out of it. His hands prickled with the warmth, and he climbed into bed. He drew the covers up to his neck and closed his eyes.

He wondered if his parents would have been ashamed of him.