Wolves and Men

He stared at his ceiling and smiled. This really was a good home and this place felt more like home to him than any other place he had ever lived. He let his thoughts drift back to his childhood. He had always been a little awkward and the fact that his parents moved around a lot didn’t help him very much. He was attractive yeah, but that was a detriment to him in most cases. Whenever he went to a new place, without fail, a gaggle of stupid girls would point him out and lower their heads together to giggle. He couldn’t stand the sight of them. Of course, they would think he was cute and he was playing hard to get so over the course of a week or so a parade of brightly clothed girls would come up and ask him if he thought this girl or that girl was cute. Then they would explain to him in hushed tones that whoever they had asked about thought he was cute. In an effort to be polite to these idiots, he would stand there and listen for several minutes about how their ‘friend’ was just so shy and wondered if he would ask her out.

“She really is a great girl but she is just too shy to come up and ask you herself. You know, you really are cute. So, will you ask her out?”

After going through that ritual about five times in five different states he had learned to just kill the interrogations early. The result was that he had accumulated several reputations over the years one was that he was an asshole, that was the most common and usually the first. He began to hear other things as well, like that he was only interested in boys. He was mocked and had to endure hurled insults from people he had never met.

This was his life.

People didn’t understand that he didn’t want to get to know anybody because he would just have to leave them again. He had only finished a full year in the same school once. He had petitioned his parents several times about the prospect of being homeschooled. His dad thought that was actually a good idea but his mom, she had been a cheerleader in high school, was adamant about keeping him in school because of the social skills that he would build in school were essential to a healthy lifestyle. She wasn’t ready to admit that moving from place-to-place and starting over once, twice, and once, three times in a school year wasn’t building any social skills anyway and after his freshman year of high school his mom gave in and began his homeschooling program.

Wow Mom, if you could see your ‘little angel’ now. What would you do if you knew that I was out here in the wilderness and those social skills you kept forcing down my throat were completely useless to me?

He threw the bear skin off his body and sat up. He reached into his dresser, and grabbed his whetstone. Unsheathing his knife, he began to sharpen his weapon. He drew the stone down the blades edge. He was bored; he could admit it and the rhythmic scraping sound of the stone upon the steel always calmed him for some reason. He drew the stone along the edge in a practiced stroke. The burrow did allow in some light though it was always dark, a perpetual dusk that never seemed to lift fully from his sanctuary out in the middle of the harsh expanses of nature. The soft scraping sound echoed off his walls and he let his shoulders and arms work the blade.

Once the blade was sharp, he sheathed it and stood up. How long had he been in here? Stepping over to his portal he unsealed the door and stepped out into the dusk of his forest. He must have fallen asleep, no wonder it had been so dark in his burrow.

Closing and resealing his portal he walked toward his kitchen area taking a circular path to help cover his passing and make it just a little harder for any predator to track him. He walked uphill and switched back away from his kitchen. He started downhill and cut to his right and he turned toward his burrow once more. He walked in the random serpentine pattern for a while and soon the sun’s light was barely traceable in the deep forest. He quickened his pace and soon he came upon his kitchen clearing.

It looked exactly the way it had when he had left this morning. He hurried across the open space, careful not to step on one of the branches he had scattered there earlier. He scanned his surroundings. The night was still, and his lunar mother had taken her place on her throne. He looked upon her heavenly glory. She was still plump, but she wasn’t full. A good-sized shaving on her side had been taken out and she looked lopsided. Even with that small imperfection showing she was still beautiful. He felt privileged to be able to look on her and know that she was confident enough in herself to show with unflinching pride that she at times was imperfect, just like he was.

The sky had been invaded by a few puffy clouds. Nothing that foretold of a storm, but the clouds were an unwelcome visitor for his mother and the stars that attended her. He lowered his eyes and thanked her for her blessings that had allowed him to truly live a night or two ago. He had gotten very good at telling at least the number of days that had passed since the last time his mother had been full. But sometimes he was a little iffy, and he wasn’t sure if two days had passed or only one.

Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise, he whipped around drawing his blade free and holding it at the ready. Even in the moonlight he could see well and he scanned as deep into the forest as he could. Every nerve ending was taught and his breathing had quickened. He turned around in a full circle, scanning the trees. If there was something out there, he couldn’t see it. He glanced up into the tree branches as they shone with the white light of the moon. A soft wind passed by and the tree branches swayed with the movement. Keeping his knife at the ready he left his clearing and headed for his burrow.

Something wasn’t right.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him. His forest had eyes that were watching him at all times, but this was a little more pressing than that. He hadn’t felt anything like this since this morning when he had found the black she-wolf watching him from the far river bank. But before that, had he ever felt this? Had he ever felt it like this, this desperate? Keeping his head rotating and his feet moving he couldn’t remember when or if he had ever felt like this. There was something he was supposed to do, or something he was supposed to see, and his stupid human senses were not allowing him to see whatever it was his instincts were telling him to see.