Historical Setting, cold unknown
The pack returns from the hunt. The matriarch has food for the pups. The pups didn’t eat from the deer that was left for the wolves here in the snow. And gratefully, this human flesh wasn’t sampled either. I don’t know whether the deer meat makes it more tempting to add me to the feast, or if they will already have their fill. Maybe they aren’t hungry for any of this offering of a deer and a man.
When the mother arrives ahead of the pack she finds the pups curled up against me – one nearly inside of the palm of my hand. At first, the pups played with my fingers, mouthing them, discovering these were nothing like their mother’s nipples. They hadn’t encountered such things before. But I can tell you, their tiny teeth are sharp. They played with my fingers until they got tired or maybe bored with these meaningless appendages of human. Then one tired puppy discovered hands are gifted with scratching a pup behind the ears. They took their turns then slept.
Now, when the she-wolf arrives the cubs are curled up next to me, warm and soft – may I be warm for them as well. I’m not shivering anymore.
The she-wolf explores the scene blazing eyes, ferocious, snarling, then snatching the pups by the napes of necks, one by one she scurries them off to their den. And again, I am just a shivering offering in the snow lying next to a nearly frozen deer carcass.
Vultures make circles straight above as the rest of the wolfpack arrives dragging a fresher kill. This meat has already been torn up and divvied among the fangs. Now the investigation of me by the adults is no tender face licking. The nosing and nuzzling is rough and intentional, growls and howls that could be language. They describe the find, but I have no idea what this means. Two of the nearly grown pack wolves apparently, are settling a dispute with mouths and fangs, rising up from the pack in something that could be a dancer’s embrace, or a wrestle. Is it play or fight? The large male who is sniffing me, turns and stifles the competitive play simply with a show of his size and snarl of power.
But what of me? Large in size, fragrance of meat, frail like the weakest fawn left laid out here by another smelly human as a sacrifice to be devoured.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 