Like the Snow

the word prematurely.

The wolfs head tilted and his yellow eyes studied me closely.

”Get out. ” I said again, this time speaking slowly and clearly.

His ears folded back and his lips shifted into a snarl. He clearly didn agree with my assessment of the situation. I rolled my eyes and reached for the clothes. I showed them to him pointedly before pointing to the door.

The wolf let out a grow.

Hair standing up on its ends, and bones clacking together, I managed to glare him down. I pointed towards the door again.

I waited as he sized me up. Eyed the clothes, the blanket, and if I wasn mistaken my arm.

A thought occurred to me then, and I found myself more uncomfortable. I quickly tucked my arm out of sight from the beast. His gaze rose to meet mine and we stayed like that for a moment.

Finally he let out a loud huff and shifted to his feet.

Though he didn head for the mouth of the cave like I thought he would. Instead he padded over to where I sat and pushed his nose against the fur. He took in several long deep breaths before moving his snout from my arm to my ear.

His nose was cold and wet. Quickly turning away I raised my arm up as some feeble shield against the cold. The wolf growled at the movement nipping at the fur covering. I yelped at the sudden attack and scrambled back. Needless to say I didn get far, and the wolf took advantage of the opening I had just made. His cold nose pressed firmly to my ear as he huffed in two long breaths.

He hesitated for a moment, as if he was thinking.

Slowly he stepped away, moving to the cave opening, but he didn go out. Instead he sat down on his haunches and stared out at the winter wonderland.

Apparently that was as much privacy as he was willing to give me. There wasn much more I could ask for, I supposed. Figuring there must be a time limit to our arrangement I quickly got to work trying to figure out the best way to get dressed.

It should have been a simple task, but it was made almost impossible by the mummification of one of my hands.

It became a war of will as I tried to single handedly pull on my pants. Never had I hated anyone more in my entire life, than I did in that moment. Whoever thought that skinny jeans was a good idea had clearly never broken their arm before. As it was, I had to carefully inch them on one leg at a time. All while the heavy presents of the wolf ate at my nerves.

I had thought that my troubles would be over once I managed to get my pants back on. Unfortunately I was too narrow minded. The next problem came when I tried to push my wrapped up arm through the sleeve of my shirt. The material hadn been made to stretch and so I couldn force my arm through.

My attempts to unwrap the leather bounds failed dismally, my cold fingers were unable to move efficiently.

Sure now, I kept the wolf in my view as I tugged the shirt on over one arm and struggled into the coat. Once covered I cleared my throat and got to work on rolling up the fur blanket.

As I did so the wolf covered the fire in snow until the ashes didn even smother.

Not a wolf.

That fact was becoming painfully clear the longer I was around it.

What it was, I wasn completely sure, though I had heard rumors and ghost stories about beasts that appeared to be like humans. But this creature looked nothing like a man. You couldn even compare it to a dog. The closest comparison to make was that of a wolf.

But it had to have opposable thumbs to tie such a sturdy knot.

The sudden bark had me startled, and the blanket I had rolled up dropped to the ground and unrolled.

”What? ” I demanded of the creature meeting his yellow glare. He shifted his head to gaze out the cave for a moment before looking back at me and barking once more.

”Coming. ” I responded to him bending down to scoop up the blanket again.

He was out of the cave by the time I stood back up. I followed after him, trying to remember that he wouldn have cared for me if he had planned to simply leave me behind. Still I feared that if I didn move quickly enough he would leave me behind to die. A somewhat foolish thought.

At least thats what I told myself.