Dread Naught but Time

Meagan Noel Hart-2

Then, I showed you who I truly was.

***

Here’s the thing with the truth. Often, it isn’t what we hear that determines our acceptance of a fact or belief, but how we hear it. Delivery is everything. Delivery can make the difference between all-out war and a shaky alliance. Usually, a person just needs the proper amount of caressing or explaining or demonstration, and even if they can’t accept an overall premise for themselves, they can accept it for another, and let it be.

If one way doesn’t work, another can be tried. Hit restart. Easy.

You, however, were different.

No matter how I tried to tell you, or explain to you, or show you, you tried to kill me.

How had I been so blind?

We weren’t meant to be. I hadn’t known you long enough.

After my first attempt, which I admit was bold—just shifting like that. I forget how scary I can look as a wolf. For me it’s just like, I don’t know, changing hats for you. And just as simple to do, well now anyway. You should have seen me try at twelve. So, yeah, like changing hats. Except better, way better. You can’t imagine how much I miss my fur when in human form!

Anyway, after the way you reacted the first time, I should have known. Should have accepted you had a violent streak. A resistance and immediate fear of anything truly different. I mean, you threw fire at me!

Instead I rationalized. Of course it was shocking to have the person you’d just made crazy, intense, outdoor, naked love to, shift into a long snouted creature of the night with glowing gold eyes and lush gray and aquamarine fur. Of course, to you I was just a mutated wolf.

“Wolf.” All your limited vocabulary could muster. A magic wolf as tall as your—date? We’d never explicitly said we were in a relationship. Perhaps that was the problem. This was moving too fast.

“Holy f**k!” You screamed and scrambled backwards into the grass.

I winced, imagining the blades cutting your delicate human skin. This is why I so seldom venture into nature in human form. Your bodies just aren’t made for it.

I knew the best thing to do at that moment was to sit as still as possible, but even so, you inched all the way back to the fire.

“It’s okay,” I said, lying down as careful as I could. At the sound of my voice, you relaxed for a moment. I relaxed for a moment.

Then you hurled a flaming log at my head.

I paused time, a soft jolt going through me as always, and moved out of the way. The log hit your SUV with a thud and rolled beneath it. I paused time again, and pulled it out to prevent a fire or explosion. I also cursed a bit. I hadn’t been expecting this to be so dangerous, and now regretted using my energy for another go on the sleeping bag.

Pausing time is exhausting. Rewinding it is even harder. And they’re both inexact. I can only ever go back a few minutes. Ten minutes if fully recharged, and clearly, I wasn’t anymore.

I’d been stupid to waste it on some outdoor s*x, no matter how amazing. I see that now, but I—thought you already loved me.

Thanks to that and saving your stupid truck, I could only muster about three minutes, so I couldn’t let the log throwing go on for long, you understand. I had to press on and live with the consequences, or rewind.

So I tried pressing on. I turned to speak to you, and you were standing over me naked, another flaming log in hand, ready to swing it down on me.

I had to rewind.

As the seconds sucked out of the Time Coil and crawled beneath my skin like ants, I reassured myself this would get under control before I lost control. I still thought that you could love me. So I gave it my all, knowing my family would feel every pause, every retraction of time, and I hoped they were already asleep, and if not, would understand.

***

The second time, I tried to open you up to the idea first. I asked if you had ever wished you could turn into something else. Be something else.

“Nah, what’s the point? It isn’t real, and we’re already the top of the food chain.”

I tensed at this response. “Really? Not even as a kid.”

You shrugged your shoulders. “I never really liked animals.”

“What?” How had we not had this discussion in the two weeks I had known you? Where was my mind? “You have a dog. You camp!”

“My roommate has a dog. It’s not mine. It just likes me a lot, and you were so in love with it, and I well, maybe I wanted to impress you a bit. So I let you believe it was mine . . . sorry.” You shrugged.

A little guilty grimace would have been nice at least, but no, you just shrugged.

“And what does camping have to do with animals, anyway?” you continued. “It’s not like I’m out hunting. They’re nice to snap a picture of maybe, but have one?” You scoffed. “Ick.”

“Ick?”

I should’ve given up right then and there. Ick.

But damn it, we’d come this far hadn’t we? We’d spent so much time together. And you were so cute. So witty. So good in bed. Clever. A nature lover. “How can you love nature and not animals?”

“I never said I loved nature. Camping is kind of cool, but that’s because it is fun. And animals, it’s not like I hate them. But they’re in nature for a reason, right?”

My body eased. Okay. That line of thinking I could work with. You just weren’t into the whole domestication thing. We could return to the whole nature “liker” thing later. “So wild animals should stay wild.”

“I guess that’s one way of putting it. You’re not like—” You paused. “I mean, I know you eat meat. But you’re not like one of those, like animal activist types are you?”

The fact that this is where your mind jumped the moment I’d gotten emotional on this topic should have been another sign, but I pressed forward, keeping my eye on your watch, the one article of clothing that hadn’t been tossed in the grass. If we progressed too far down this path, I’d be stuck rewinding to a point mid-conversation. And this conversation sucked.

“No—I’m just saying, hypothetically of course, what if you could be a wild animal. What if you could shift back and forth and maintain your mind?”

“Like the Wonder Twins or something.”

I pinched my eyebrows together.

“They’re an old superhero set. My brother is a bit comic obsessed.”

“You have a brother?”

“Didn’t I say I had one?”

We were getting off track. “Look, couldn’t there be an advantage to shifting form?”

“Maybe, but I don’t see the point in this thought exercise.”

“But it is possible.” Time was running out. I shifted, my blood flowing hotter as my fur burst from my skin and my claws dug into our blankets. I was trying to prove my point more quickly.

But this too ended in flaming logs flying through the air.

Again and again we had this conversation. I tried explaining there were other benefits. See, this is where I think I told you about the time control a bit. I know I tried just showing you that aspect once, going from that angle. You weren’t interested, and when I demonstrated by pausing time and changing positions, you freaked out, almost had a nervous breakdown or something. So, I only tried that once.

In retrospect, a wolf at least gave you a problem to solve.

The time thing? Only made it more obvious you couldn’t make what I am go away.

I didn’t see it that way then, so I rewound and rewound. Reasoned from different angles. All these conversations are twisted in my mind. It was so exhausting, the switching, the arguing, the reeling the seconds back from eternity, constantly saving myself, protecting your fragility.

The weight of the moon hung in my heart.

With every retry, my window for convincing you shrunk. I could pull less and less time back to us. The sun was creeping closer to the horizon. The night slipping away, time managing to push forward just a bit, every time.

I tried everything. I tried making you make me prove I could shift. I tried telling you the legend of my people who were born of the stars and earth, stuck between the two just like the moon. We were accidents of the Time Coil who had found a way to fit in among society.

The admirable history did little to move you. How was I ever to ask you to become my soulmate, to become one of us, if you couldn’t even accept I existed?

Besides flaming logs, you tried to kill me with a pocket knife, the sleeping bag string, a nearby rock which wasn’t big enough to kill me but still hurt my feelings. You even tried to get in the SUV and run me over.

Then, you tried to drive away.

Any version of our conversation where I didn’t shift, you didn’t believe me. Call it fool-headed stubbornness, but how could we be soulmates if you didn’t believe me?

And you always turned violent.

And I was losing my will. And my control. Three-minute rewinds became two-minute rewinds became one-minute rewinds.

***

Time inched slowly further, weaving us into an impossible starting point where we were arguing on the sleeping sack. I should have stopped then. Should have accepted I’d messed up. But, by that point, my anger had taken over, and it was less about winning you so much as winning this argument, defeating this challenge, making you see. I’ll admit that.

My anger, exhaustion, utter surprise at not knowing you at all, and disappointment in how I’d fallen so fast and so foolishly, made me miss my mark.

We went too far.

That was my fault.

I couldn’t rewind to a time where you hadn’t seen the real me.

And now my nose was bleeding and my head hurt. I’d been warned about pausing and rewinding too much at once. I never thought there’d be a reason for it. My legs tingled and my joints buckled.

I barely dodged the log you threw.

This was a terrible error, worsened by the fact that it became clearer, and clearer, that no matter how I tried to explain who I was, what I was, you would never accept it. This wasn’t going to happen. You wouldn’t turn wolf and bond with me.

You’d never make it in my pack even if you did.

That’s why I called them. They were expecting it, having felt all my jolts. They weren’t happy.

That’s why you’re tied up now.

I’m sorry that Father knocked you out. Your screaming would have attracted other humans.

Do you feel the weight of me on your chest? My warmth? Even now, I still care some for you. To keep you warm. I know how much I miss my fur whenever I’m human. It’s such a cold form. Isn’t it love that keeps me here? Keeps me explaining? Still trying to make you understand?

Maybe it’s just guilt.

I know what they’re going to decide.

I’d give you one last chance, but now, I wouldn’t be able to trust it wasn’t a lie just to escape. Besides, I haven’t got it left in me.

And I told you, even if you can control time, you can’t really control it. There is no going back to before you knew. That was lost hours ago.

And there was never any going back to the day you left out the mocha. A botched drink, a white lie.

Even now I still long for the fantasy of what you could have been instead of confronting the reality of who you are.

I guess in the end neither of us was what the other was hoping for.

The elder wolves aren’t pleased, but they understand. They’ve been young before too.

Under the right circumstances, anybody could be somebody you could love.

Before I try to induct a lover, next time I’ll need approval from the pack. That was decided right away.

The sun is nearly here, I can hear their feet in the grass. I’m sorry. This, this is as close as you’ll ever get to love, and it wasn’t even real.

As dawn breaks, I load my cooler and suitcase into Sandra’s truck.

“I warned you,” she says. “Another missing person story.”

I slump into the passenger seat.

“No more unauthorized dating, huh?”

I turn away from her. “Just take me home.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll find your soulmate.” Her truck eased onto the dirt road and we are enveloped in the shade of the trees. “It just takes time.”

Jack of Hearts