The Wolf's Song

Staying Alive

Diana

As soon as I crossed the border between the forest and the city, darkness greeted me, as if the perpetual blanket of trees climbing up to the sky made it impossible for the light of the sun’s rays to cross here. Still, I had enough clarity to move forward, so I began to walk into the forest, feeling the scents as well as the sounds that came from nature with each of my steps.

The memories of that night mingled with the present, and a certain sense of deja vu haunted me as I moved forward. If I closed my eyes, I could see the boys I had gone into the forest with; I could hear their giggles, their jokes, and their footsteps following my path, but they were no longer here. Many of them had not even lived to think of returning here, the place they knew so well and which had been the scene of their last minutes on earth.

It took me a while, but, after nearly twenty minutes of walking, I finally reached the clearing in the forest where we had camped. The yellow police tape still surrounded the site as a sign that these trees had indeed witnessed something terrible, but no one was present, so I gathered my courage, ignoring the wind whistling in my ears, and stepped through the enclosure, noticing that it was broken at one end, probably because of an animal.

Finding myself in this place somehow brought it all back. I crouched down, remembering the place where we had placed the bonfire, the jokes, and the whispered stories amidst the darkness. And then, the howl that pierced the silence.

“What was that?” someone asked, and we all turned to watch the beast tear Lorenzo’s neck apart.

I took a hand to my neck myself, feeling difficulty swallowing. I had been a coward, I kept telling myself. Instead of helping them, I had run away, but then again, that was why I was still alive. The beast had attacked without any difficulty all the boys who had thrown themselves against it as if they were just paper dolls.

“What are you doing here?” says a thick, deep, angry voice as someone grabbed me by the shoulder, spinning me on the spot. My breath caught and I looked up, coming face to face with Michael’s ice-blue eyes.

“I... what are you doing here?”I asked, but he didn’t seem to hear me. His face was twitching with anger, and the hand he held on my shoulder was gripping me tightly, almost hurting me.

“Diana, are you out of your mind? Of all the places you could have gone inside Bamberg, and you decide to go back to the one place you shouldn’t go.”

“How did you find me?” I asked, ignoring his scolding and at the same time pulling myself away from his arm. “How did you get here?”

“I followed you,” he said, annoyed. “Your phone has an active tracker.”

For a moment I listened incredulously to that statement, but then I couldn’t help it, anger rose to my face like hot air, clouding my senses and making me lose my head.

“Did you follow me?” I said indignantly. “How dare you track me like that? Who do you think you are to do that?”

“I followed you, yes, and there’s a tracker on your phone. And I don’t regret doing it. Did you see where you ended up?” he almost yelled at me. “In the middle of a crime scene. They tell you there’s a beast loose in these woods and you go running after it.”

“I came to answer my own questions about that night. I had to come! And you are no one to forbid me to do so!” I responded choleric, unable to believe that he had actually followed me, just like a stalker in a movie would do.

“And your answers are worth your life?” he asked. “If you run into that creature again, who’s going to protect you? How are you going to get out of this? You don’t think before you act, Diana, that’s the problem.”

“Right, because we’re not all as rational as you are, are we? So restrained. Excuse me if I don’t think twice before I breathe,” I answered him, almost shouting as well.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked, his brow furrowed.

“I mean that you think about everything. You analyze everything and you always let yourself be guided by common sense without accepting that perhaps your emotions could not be wrong,” I blurted out, suddenly feeling my cheeks very red.

He easily caught the in-between lines of my message, the reference that each of our meetings, of our connections had been lost the moment he distanced himself by apparently overthinking things.

“Only you could come up with something like that right now,” he said with sarcasm and annoyance, laughing.

“And only you could put a tracker on me and think you have the right to do so,” I said and I walked away from him, turning my back on him and retracing my path back to the city.

“We are not finished,” he claimed as he followed me. His steps were much faster than mine.

“Of course we are. I have nothing more to talk to you about,” I told him, annoyed, ready to put as much ground as possible between us.

“Don’t you understand?” Michael complained, catching up as he stopped in front of me. He stared at me, his gaze sparking.

“What, what is it that I don’t understand that you do?” I shouted. “What is so important that you say escapes my comprehension?”

But Michael didn’t answer me. He just looked at me for an eternal second before he came closer, his body breaking the distance between us, and his hands came up, cradling my face in his warm, huge palms.

His gaze lingered on mine as if he could tell me a thousand things that way, and then, in a time that seemed to stretch into eternity, he descended toward me. His lips met mine. His warm breath paused for a moment, caressing my mouth before he settled his face against mine...

The electricity ran through my skin as I finally understood what he meant, and as my mouth opened for him, inhaling his delicious scent as I clung to his forearms with my hands, which were clenched into fists against the fabric of his jacket.

I stood on tiptoe, settling my face against his, and just lost myself in the moment... Michael kissed me with infinite sweetness, but also with a certain kind of desire. His tongue moved slowly against mine, getting my lower lip and stopping for an eternity to caress it as if he had been wanting to run it for too long.

He heard me sigh, and with a small smile, he continued on his way, sighing in time to let me sink into him.

The kiss had lasted an eternity, or else only seconds, but by the time his mouth parted from mine, I felt dizzy, slightly disoriented, and lost. His face remained a short distance away, our noses brushing, so it was easy for me to hear him when he said, “Only you could fail to understand that I’m terrified that something might happen to you.” But there was no anger in his voice, simply gentleness. “I couldn’t bear it... If something were to happen to you...”

“Nothing will happen to me,” I wanted to say, but instead, my lips just let out a sigh. It was funny how he had apparently taken my anger so easily.

“It’s lucky you’re such a stalker,” I said jokingly, feeling the delicious tingle my lips created when I spoke, as the movement made my mouth brush against his. “That way you can always keep me out of harm’s way.”

He let out a soft, delicious laugh and I smiled in return, seeking to tell him with my eyes what I didn’t want to say out loud--that I needed him, that kissing him had shown me that until now I had moved in the world as blind, not knowing the light. I needed to kiss him again because the oxygen in my body was lost in his mouth.

He smiled and seemed to get the message. As I saw him descending once more, shortening the non-existent distance, I sighed, and his scent completely overwhelmed me, only this time it was also impregnated with his taste, his warmth, and the humidity of his mouth caressing mine...

In the middle of the prelude to that kiss, I lost myself, and for as long as our contact lasted, I felt that, for the first time in my life, I was truly alive.