A Familiar's Place

“Yes, yes, good job, dear. Set it there.”

The Witch pointed to the table beside her. She had an assortment of plants strewn across it with some dried ingredients that Wulven did not recognize. They had a fierce smell to them that made Wulven’s nose scrunch with wrinkles. It felt like acid in his nostrils, so he quickly dropped the ingredients from his jaws onto the table. He shook his head to get the odor out of his snout as he took to his witch’s side. He gazed inside her cauldron while standing on his back legs.

It was not often that a witch would take a wolf as a familiar. Cats were the standard choice. But Wulven did not have a standard set of circumstances in his life when he met The Witch. After taking him in when he was an abandoned runt, the two discovered Wulven’s affinity for magic as a familiar. As her familiar, Wulven would provide his Witch with the energy to complete her spells and empower her workings. A spell like the one she was preparing, which was receiving additional herbs from the bundle that Wulven had gathered. He spotted roses, dahlias, belladonna, and an odd mushroom that reminded Wulven of when he smelled root rot during a rainstorm. What a strange spell, he thought. He wondered if it was because of the man he hated.

The Witch was a fool in love, you see. She was secluded for years in her cottage in the woods, an outcast runt from her own village nearby. Occasionally helping a villager or two when they braved their own fears, she garnered a reputation as a helpful witch, albeit eccentric. It was because of this reputation that the Witch happened to assist a traveller by directing him to said village. A man who was worldly and rarely judged others- she fell for him immediately. Wulven could smell the change in her pheromones the moment she did. But as smitten as she was with the Newcomer, supporting him when he crossed into the woods and even going as far as providing him with a protective amulet, he never seemed to take notice of her heart.

But she would make him see with this spell, and she threw in an herbal powder.

Wulven watched the witch stir the concoction as it slowly shifted in hue. The cauldron changed to hold a deep red liquid that refused to reflect light. Wulven’s ears drooped.

“There, there. I just need you to do this one thing for me. I won’t ask you for anything again. Just need your help…” She seemed so pitiful to him as she pleaded. The Witch gently stroked the fur on his face, and Wulven let her. He closed his eyes and felt the cold draw of The Witch pulling magic from within him. There was a voraciousness in her siphoning, and it disrupted Wulven’s concentration.

He opened his eyes and lifted his head to see that the Witch’s gaze focused on whatever images flashed within the cauldron. Her other hand was in the red liquid as her right continued to drain magical energy from her wolf familiar. The icy feeling was spreading from his paws and up his legs. It was overtaking him, but his body had paralyzed, a new symptom of the ritual they had performed hundreds of times before.

Wulven realized while observing the Witch’s face that she might not stop this time.

“Almost…almost…” The Witch’s unblinking eyes continued to peer into her cauldron. Her maddening irises embodied the same red color as her potion. A tempest was growing outside in the forest, whipping the branches of trees against the walls of the cabin in warning. Wulven felt his body weaken. He tried to focus his eyes on the witch’s fuzzy outline while fighting with the tunneling darkness. She needed to stop. He needed to make her stop. Wulven remembered one of her early lessons, from when she had first taken him in, that if a Witch ever took too much from her familiar- it would die.

Wulven snapped his jaw to the left, biting the Witch’s hand.

She fell backwards screaming, her red hand clutching her wounded one. Wulven heard her unleash waves of frustrated curses in his direction. The bite marks were bleeding through the wide leaves the Witch slapped onto her hand from the worktable. She had never spoken to her familiar like this before. Wulven merely sat on his haunches as she threw dagger after dagger of hateful words at him.

“I just needed you to do this ONE thing! One last thing!” She screamed while looming over him. Wulver averted his eyes to the floor with his ears pinned back.

No matter what she did to him next, he never bit back. Not once.

[...]

The Witch had finally calmed down after storming off into her room, and the silence had returned to both the forest and the cabin. She had accepted her spell was a failure and chose rest over trying again. Wulven had not moved from where he sat by the cauldron since the Witch berated him. His eye could see that some of the scarlet concoction spilt on the floor. His tail bristled. This was all about that man, Wulven thought. She was only thinking about that man, he growled.

She was sleeping in her bed when Wulven found her. Not even The Witch was intimidating while at rest. Her breathing was light beneath the furs she slept under. Wulven watched her through the darkness and counted each breath. He could not bring himself to hate her. Of all the things they shared, in the home that he considered his, Wulven never revealed his one secret to The Witch.

The Familiar was also a fool in love.

Wulven slinked up onto the bed, stepping carefully with his noise-reducing paw pads. He then stood over her body and quietly breathed in contemplation. Through his eye, he could see the Witch’s face relaxed and unassuming. His other eye could no longer see in the darkness. Or the light. In the witch’s rage, she had slashed his eye with her nails as a response to Wulven’s bite. The only time he ever raised a tooth to her skin.

But that did not matter now. One eye was enough to do this, anyway. To fill the hole she dug within his heart. To stop her from chasing the Newcomer. To stop that man from indulging in the Witch’s affections when visiting the cabin but ignoring her elsewhere. To go back…back to when he was a puppy and it was just The Witch and her Familiar, the little wolf. Wulven unhinged his jaw and dripped saliva onto the fur blankets. He wanted to kiss her for the first and last time.

She tasted so warm. And Wulven was no longer cold.