One Soul

The blood slewn across the snow told a tale. Here a battle had unfolded, one so muddled with hate and love. Love for a family. Hate for the outsider who had tried to penetrate it all. The outsider who limped away with her life dragging behind her and the cruelty of fate blazing under her eyes.

A cavernous gash reached from her shoulder and swept across the expanse of her chest, hidden by her drooping head. Globes of red glistened atop the bedraggled strands of raven fur that glinted blue when the weak Winter sun strained through the layers of snow-pregnant clouds. Her black claws tingled from the burn of the frost, pads on her weary paws blistering against the elements. The low temperatures stung at the bare patches of skin, where clumps of hair had been ripped from their roots by voracious jaws. Her ears had been shredded to ribbons and clung to her scalp in velveteen strips. Useless. That was how she felt, that was how her body reacted to her moment of total loss.

Once she knew she was past their territory's borders, the she-wolf collapsed and let her misery take its toll. It was a heavy burden, to be unwanted. It was the hot breath of a bear on her hackles, the stench of rotten meat infiltrating her nose. Them. The pack. How she had desired to be part of it all. Several minds working as one. Legs pumping in a single unit. Teeth, the horrible blades that they were, she now knew it herself, together scissoring into the flesh of the unfortunate beast that they would devour. Warm blood in her belly. Tongues lapping at each others' noses. Exhaustion, the good kind, that came from toil and labor and sprinting to the ends of the earth, just because it was done with the family you loved, never letting anyone fall behind, the pack working like one soul.

But it was not meant to be.

No intruders. No others allowed. It was not enough to want to be part of something; no, it was about connections by blood. Blood that now flowed relentlessly onto the swan-colored expanse and stained it with its unreadable words, until it would evaporate into the air. Would it not be nice if sadness so easily disappeared? That is what the coal wolf wanted. To belong, somewhere, anywhere, to someone, breathing what they breathed, feeling what they felt, knowing no more and no less than what they knew.

She clenched her muscles against the pain. Everything ached against the snow's touch. Her back splintered horribly above the tail when she attempted to stand. Not only had she been turned away, she had been half-murdered it seemed. Her reddened tongue gingerly removed the crunchy precipitate from the grooves in her paws yet still they were inflamed. But out of all her poor conditions, it was her heart that swelled and throbbed against the enclosure of her ribs that hurt her the most. Would the blood ever highway through her veins properly, ever beat at the same optimistic pace, ever ring after a long run in her ears that now hung like lace on the sides of her head? What could heal an invisible wound? What could eliminate impossible desire?

Perhaps it was minutes; perhaps it was days. The she-wolf felt as if she had walked forever, trying to avoid the inevitable frostbite. She couldn't hunt, she couldn't sleep; stopping or using energy would just make death come faster. Fear racked her small frame. She let the winds bowl her over like a petal at their mercy. Once she gave up on withstanding it.

A few cuts had begun to scar; the rest remained openly raw and faced the torrents of the blizzard, pinpricks of cold that settled into their deepest recesses. She tried to sleep, but it was not the right kind of sleep. A nightmarish sleep. Inescapable. Moaning unintentionally. Against the now, the later, the past, how wrong and painful it all was.

Until she saw them.

Two brilliant yellow beacons, the only form of color in the black and white landscape, aside from her own sanguine trail. They enlarged as they moved closer, black spheres levitating inside.

It had seemed to approach her from Winter's iciest depths. And as the beacons looked down on her with a questioning look, she did her best to shift into a groveling position. The she-wolf wanted to be spared. She needed no more ripping and bleeding.

She winced when she saw rows of sterling fangs sheening in the light and prepared for the worst.

But it was not the teeth that met her. It was the tongue.

Surprise and curiosity enveloped her mind. There he stood, tending to her cuts, violin string whiskers brushing through her fur, warm breath gently curling around her punctured skin and into the frozen sky as if a part of his spirit were released with each exhale. The beacons that had peered forth were his eyes, each a swirling pool of melted gold, focused intently on the task of cleaning each scrape and slash and tear. And he was white as the snow itself, though she could now see up close that their were flecks of gray tipping his ruff. Their was a graceful nobility about him. The she-wolf wondered why he was being so kind - and to her, an outcast no less.

Or perhaps... was he an outcast too?

His scent was individual, no others hanging about him. It was true then. He was just as alone as her. And so invisible against the bright world. The black dot of his nose was just a dribble of ink against the paper, overlooked and ignored.

He finished his doctoring and blinked down at her. For a loner, he certainly held his head with an unusual divinity. A large head, one now dappled around the muzzle with blood he had swept away, triangular ears focused on her, intent.

The black wolf tried to stand. The small amount of heat that rolled off his body, though so little, melted the icy feeling off her tendons. So she stayed stable under his gaze, yet she was still nervous. His intent was not to harm -- he had made that quite clear -- but than what was it?

Suddenly his tongue protruded from his black lips for a final time. It slid slowly up the gap between her eyes. There was no cut there.

The beacons locked on hers. A question dangled in the air like a snowflake caught in an updraft. She watched it as if it were real, processing it, feeling it on the roof of her mouth, roiling, alive. It was her future. Her future with him.

Her tail wagged. Their noses pressed against each other. His head found the crown of hers and rubbed, back and forth, massaging the creases of her sad ears. But she could not be happier, for her days of wandering and searching were coming to an end. She could smell the change. It was not the smell of a long-dead carcass; no, now it was freshkill, still steamy as it hit her taste buds. They walked off, tails intertwined, throats pulsating with howls that shattered the silence...

That is where the blood trail ends, along with the story. Some say that the last few droplets that dripped down the she-wolf's tail were in the shape of a heart. Either way, wherever the two wolves, black and white, light and dark, day and night, may be now, rest assured they run side by side, their eight legs pumping, four eyes searching, two hearts beating to the same rhythm, spreading their love through veins that connect to-

One soul.