A wolf trots alone through a bare white field, his paws crunching lightly on the frosty earth. Snowflakes twirl and melt on his eyelashes, and he blinks them off as his eyes scan the wide horizon. Far off in the snow, he spots a single black shape and decides to examine it, muzzle twitching, sniffing the earth for a recognisable scent. When the wolf reaches the shape, he finds it is only a gnarled piece of wood, twisted and bonelike. The snow has made it black and frozen. The wolf turns it over and sniffs it, then moves on.
Soon the wolf arrives at a very large black rock stuck between two other ones. Its surface is wet and slippery with ice, and it is very tall. In order to keep moving forward, the wolf must go past the rocks, but he thinks climbing over it would be dangerous. He hasn’t eaten in days and is too weak to risk a big fall.
The wolf paces for a while, wondering what to do. He lays his head down and stares at the rocks.
After some time, he notices a tight passageway running between two of the rocks. With a little digging, he might be able to pass safely under them. The wolf leaps to his feet and begins tunnelling through the snow, quickly disappearing under the rocks. Cold, wet frost engulfs on his muzzle, and all he can see is white – but his nose keeps him straight. He feels he is almost on the other side.
All of a sudden a sharp, hot pain shoots into the wolf’s left front paw. He can’t tell why. The only things he feels aside from the pain are the snow all around him and the slick, smooth rock over his back. Panicking, he quickly plows through the rest of the tunnel, and before long his head pops up on the other side and he emerges, shivering. With a whimper, he lowers his head to examine his bloody paw.
It is worse than he feared. There must have been a piece of broken glass buried in the snow, or perhaps the rock itself somehow cut him. Whatever it was, it has made a deep gash which runs from under his pad up to his elbow. The paw now dangles lifelessly from the wrist. Blood is oozing out distressingly fast, landing in delicate crimson spots on the white snow.
The wolf looks back at the tunnel he has just crawled from. A messy trail of red connects it to him. He whines and licks his wound, steady waves of pain now pulsing up his arm. He limps onwards.
Half a mile away, across the field, a second wolf is watching him. Her fur is black. She thought she had smelled him before he crawled under the rock, and now the scent of his blood is unmistakable. At first, the injured wolf does not notice her – he is too anxious about his mangled paw – but as she approaches, he picks up her scent too, and darts his head darts up in her direction. They both freeze.
Slowly, the black wolf moves toward the injured male. Their eyes stay fixed on one another. He watches her go from a dot on the horizon to a clearer picture, coming closer and closer, and backs away ever so slightly. Although he is weak and scared, his body is becoming overwhelmed by her presence. A growing heat swells within him. He does not know what to do.
She is right in front of him now, her yellow eyes still boring into his own with an intensity that is hypnotising. The male whines. The female circles him, inspecting him; he is nearly paralysed with indecision. She begins sniffing his coat, and without a moment’s thought, he does the same to her. Her nose is tickly, pleasant against his fur. The pain in his arm is all but gone. He nuzzles her thick, wet coat and closes his eyes, lost in her warmth, his tail wagging.
When he opens his eyes, he sees that there is blood on her muzzle, and moves back, startled. She ignores him. She is licking his wound. He recoils further, but she ignores this too, continuing to lick and slurp at his shredded paw. Again he recoils, with a snarl this time for emphasis. The black wolf simply stares at him for a moment before moving in yet again, with her long, pink tongue extended.
Exasperated, the male gives a final, loud bark, and hobbles away. As he does, he leaves a trail of bloody drops, and the black wolf follows it, contentedly licking up the speckled snow. The male turns a few times and barks, but she doesn’t even slow down. He cannot understand it. Before he knows it, she is back on him again, licking his wound as if it is the most normal thing in the world. Then she bites him.
The male yelps out in a pained roar and pushes her away with his muzzle. She growls back and lunges towards him, sinking her teeth deep into his wrist and shaking vigorously. The male wails and bites hysterically into her neck. For one brief moment, they are locked together; again their eyes meet, and each feels again that same peculiar swell of heat. Then they pull away, him holding a bloody chunk of her pelt in his jaws, her with his severed paw in hers.
The male wolf charges, a mass of teeth, blind and stupid with pain and rage. The female quickly drops the paw and meets the attack head-on. Within seconds she has ripped off his ear, while he shoves his remaining front paw into her neck wound and claws hard, sending a small geyser of blood spurting directly into his eyes. He staggers onto his back, allowing her to slash at his soft, exposed stomach before moving in to bite his genitals as he desperately kicks the air. Now, blood is pouring from her opened neck, and as his hind paws strike her face she makes a gurgling, growling, whining sound. Her eyes are wide and manic. She bites at his kicking feet, and as he tries to get away, she latches her teeth onto his tail and pulls.
A loud cracking noise like a tree falling down echoes through the snowy field as the tail leaves the body. His pain is overwhelming. He is overcome by it; all he can do is flail in the snow, smearing blood everywhere with his darkened fur. The black wolf, dazed, chews the tail a little before dropping it. She herself is losing blood rapidly; wheezing, she stares at the injured male as he writhes and mewls on the ground like a cub, flashing her the glistening mess of meat that was his crotch.
The female stumbles forward and begins to eat the area where the tail used to be, her strong tongue lapping up the torrent of blood spilling from the hole even as she rips and tears. The male wolf lies on his back, curiously still, as his lower half is devoured. He stares into the sky.
After consuming most of his intestines, the female feels a good deal calmer and more lucid. She pauses briefly, wondering whether he is still alive, and decides to check. His eyes are open, and he is breathing, but not moving anymore. She leans in and licks idly at the gnarled stump where his ear came off.
At the warmth of her tongue, the male springs alive again and thrashes, rolling his head from side to side, reality returning to his world with a terrible immediacy. The female is surprised at first, but quickly licks his stump again. The heat of her breath against his skin is powerful; it seems to fill his whole head, pouring down and electrifying what’s left of his small body. His tongue begins bobbing uncontrollably from his jaw, making him drool.
The black wolf slurps at the stump of severed ear, and peels the meat away with her teeth to reveal a bright, white segment of his skull. The male feels no pain anymore; in fact, his anguish has become replaced with an overwhelming vigour. Her tongue feels good. She has him now, his killer, and somehow, he cannot resist her. With newfound strength, he lifts his head to lick ferociously at her drizzling, bloody neck. She does not fight back. A few feet away, his severed tail wags, bouncing and jerking rapidly on the spot, and squirting tiny red droplets.
It carries on. The female licks and bites and gnaws at the male’s face until almost all the flesh is gone, his skull grinning with delight, an absent-minded eyeball dropping from one socket and rolling away, while he sucks and gulps and drinks at her neck until it is little more than a shredded sack of stringy ligaments barely holding her head to her body, until all the lifeblood from her jugular vein has bubbled and trickled down his throat to leak from his open, ravaged bowels and seep out into the snow beneath.
They continue to eat each other until fierce winds blow enough snow to cover them entirely. For a while, their patch stays pink, but soon enough, all the colour fades. In the space of a few days, it is completely white again, and there is no sign left at all of the two wolves.
January 2018. GDH
