She remained quiet. It wasn't the first time that she met a wild animal and usually she just had to walk calmly and very slowly away. Especially during hot seasons, females are out for food and protecting their cubs, so she was really cautious with the surroundings. But even the wildlings were used to her scent in this wood now, years after years, she could walk with more confidence alone through their territories.
But this time she was a bit flustered by the sound, it seemed like a very big one from how it was still echoing in her bones, a cold chill giving her skin goosebumps , not knowing what she was facing here.
She looked carefully and she heard another growl, which seemed even closer to her than the previous one. Her heartbeat fastened and a big shiver ran down her spine when she saw the bushes trembling. She faced it holding her knife with so much strength that she whitened the knuckles of her fingers.
She could see an enormous shadow coming closer, with two golden shiny eyes staring straight at her.
The huge silver wolf appeared walking menacingly toward her, all fangs out, still growling with his lips slightly curled up, his furr standing erected on his back, his ears flattened down against his head, he looked ready to pounce.
Elantia never saw a wolf so big, she was terrorized, he was more than twice the usual size, his incisors longer than the ones she could usually observe.
If he was hunting and chose her as his prey, she definitely had no chance to survive, even if she ran as fast as she could, this monster could chop her in seconds.
She wasn't ready to die so soon, the only valid option who was crossing her mind in that split second was to find a way to scare or to appease the beast without being eaten. There was absolutely no chance for her to scare that mountain of muscular furr growling in her state, fear was sweating from her very own skin and she was sure he could smell it! So she took a deep breath, avoiding the wolf's gaze, she slowly put a knee down, followed by her knife. The wolf was still snarling and was dominantly approaching a few steps closer.
Elantia made a fast prayer to the gods to spare her life, she was only twenty five years old and she believed that she still had so much to do on this earth before dying... And what an horrible end it would be! being shredded to pieces deep in the woods … but she tried to chase those frightening thoughts from her mind and focus on the most peaceful breathing she could make in this situation.
With both knees on the ground, she cupped her hands on her lap and closed her eyes, trying to calm down her crazy heartbeat. She could hear that the wolf slowly moved on her side, still growling furiously and he began to make a circle around her, as to pick the best piece to bite first.
She doesn't know how that was possible but she slowly felt a wave of peace coming, it was like a warm sensation going through her whole body, completely clearing her mind and appeasing her flustering heart. Every sound around her seemed to be softened. She was conscious but it almost looked like she was dreaming.
She slowly felt another presence, as if someone she knew was standing by her side. Her eyes still closed, she almost felt like light hands resting on her shoulders, relaxing her and telling her that she was not alone. A light scent of lavender raised in the air, her mom's favorite perfume… The moon song came in her mind and Elantia began humming it softly and almost weakly, but then it came with more and more confidence, being reassured by the love she was surrounded with, the echo of her voice seemed amplified, as if each leaf, each blade of grass, each stone and the earth itself were singing with her making it feeling so unreal, from another world, a world filled with magic, connected to her.
The silver creature stopped his growls, intrigued. Still circling around her, she could feel him coming a little bit closer, smelling her scent and then he walked back a few steps away from her. He was looking at Elantia with new eyes, attentive, all ears.
She couldn't tell how much time she spent like that, but at some point she wasn't feeling her legs anymore. So she slowly opened her eyes and carefully looked up, and as she met the wolf's gaze, it was like creating a link between their spirits. She progressively stopped to sing, she knew that she wasn't in danger anymore. She was completely calm and confident and it was as if she could feel what the wolf was feeling too. It was so intense, mesmerizing, beautiful and wild. They were like echoing with each other, feeling their mutual interest and also respect and deep love of life.
A little shiver ran down her spine again but in awe this time. The wolf was looking peacefully at her, with what looked like a hint of curiosity. She noticed that his eyes were actually not both the same color, the right one was clear blue like the sky in summer while the left one was emerald green. She could have sworn to have seen them both gold sooner... This wolf looked like coming from an animal deity world.
She slowly began to move herself to stand up, coming back to her senses.
Despite his enormous size, he looked rather like a young wolf in his demeanor. The ferals being mostly emaciated, weak and desperate, this was clearly not the case with this one whose thick and shiny coat let appear a powerful and muscular body with a shiny and healthy furr.
Strangely, Elantia had the feeling that the wolf didn't want her to leave just like that. He let her pick up her bag and her knife which was still on the ground, his ears pricking up with her every move. As he was waiting for her to be ready.
The wolf suddenly turned and disappeared for a sec in the bushes and then came back to her, stopping a few yards away. He did his round trip twice again before she decided to follow her intuition and go after him.
Even if Elantia could now feel a connection between them, and despite the magic of the moment, her rational self was telling her that it was completely crazy, this beautiful beast was ready to tear her apart earlier ... But, she still decided to follow him and went deeper in the forest, her hands clutching her bag.
The big silver wolf led her up higher to the river, the same that was supplying the village of Elantia with clean fresh water and fishes. This river was big enough to carry frail skiffs and to be used to reach the country coast to trade with the Romans. It was faster this way and less expensive than a long trip walking or riding to it and more convenient to transport the goods, usually spices, fabrics, stones and woods, all the things that could be heavy.
Her legs were still numb from the last moment sitting on the ground, her knees were hurting her at each step but she kept following the intense rhythm of the wolf's pace. She didn't expect to go so deep in the forest and so far from the village, it was far from the swamp that she was expecting to go before her mystic encounter as well. She left a few strands of fabric that she usually used to mark her plants for harvesting all along their way to be sure that she will not lose her way back home when it will be time to return. Even if following the water flow may have been enough of a lead, she began to doubt it because of the so many small rivers that start from the same source but go in very different directions and join another bigger river several days walk from the house.
At some point she was almost ready to give up and to take her way back to the village, before getting too far to come back the same day. Magical or not, she was vividly conscious to be quite a foolish woman following a strange, huge, sometimes not so nice, wolf. It's been several hours since she was walking, led by the silver giant. Her feet were really in pain by not following the smooth human path, going through the woods but half climbing or running the uneven ground of wood, stones and leaves. It was acting like he was following a scent, sometimes coming back on his steps being a bit more frenetic then going back on his track.
But while she was thinking about returning home, the wolf jumped on rocks at the river border and stopped, suddenly behaving differently whimpering around a giant dark mass lying half in the water and half between big rocks where he couldn't reach it. Desperately scratching the rocks around.
Elantia held her breath a little and cautiously made a few steps closer to the big black furry form. It was like a long animal dying there, stuck by the strength of the current in a fault. It wasn't moving by itself, she would have doubted that the thing was still alive and breathing if the wolf didn't seem as anxious as it was around it.
As she could see it entirely, it was in fact a human form, the body of a very massive man covered with a cloak in animal fur that was hugging his whole body by the weight of the water in it, completely drenched and unconscious.
All the magic left at this moment, this man was definitely in need of her help, if he was still alive, and even if he looked like dead, she believed that the wolf wouldn't be so agitated if it was the case.
She hadn't the silver beast agility and confidence to jump easily as it did on the slippery rocks to reach the body lying there. She had to find a way to climb and reach him without hurting herself.
She remembered two brothers who died in this river two years ago. The youngest fell in the river while fishing and the oldest tried to save him but carried by current after his brother, he struck the rocks and drowned with him. She had to be careful to not repeat the same fate.
She hurriedly knocked her rope on the nearest tree and used it to secure herself while climbing on the rocks. She grabbed one of the man's arms and pulled as hard as she could to get the body entirely of the water, but damn, this one was so heavy! All her muscles tensed in the effort, she hardly managed to lift a part of him with the other side of the rope and pulled him by the collar on the gravels, the wolf helping as soon as he could reach him too by pulling on the drenched clothes. All sweating and breathing heavily, she rolled him on his back. The man wasn't reacting at all.
He was as giant as his wolf, because no doubt of this, the wolf was his. The silver animal got agitated again when she came closer to the man's body as she began to check his vital signs. The man was barely alive. She noticed that his lips were hideously colored in green and purple. Her doubts were confirmed when she opened his mouth to see the black color on his tongue. Surely, this man got poisoned and will not survive without proper care and remedies. If not dying because of the poison, he would die from hypothermia soon, his skin was ice cold, very pale and bluish at the extremities. He was also bleeding from a clean cut on the left side of the face, certainly inflicted by a blade, running from his bearded chin to his forehead, as if the blow had been struck from below, the blade slashing the skin of the chin before ricocheting off the cheekbone, sparing the eye and continuing its way over the brow bone. She will take care of it later to prevent any infection but she had to save him from the poison effects and from hypothermia first.
To begin, she poured the only poison control in his mouth that she had on her bag in case she poisoned herself with plants or got bitten by a venomous snake.
After that and without hesitation, she removed all his wet clothes. It was not an easy task, this man was hell heavy! She couldn't lift him completely by herself, so she cut his tunic in pieces with her knife, trying to follow the pattern to redo it later. A tunic like this one was expensive and it must have been really long to make it with all the embroidery on the sleeves and the collar. It would be a waste to just shred it. The pants were easier to remove like his black leather high shoes.
Even if she was in a hurry to save him, she couldn't avoid admiring his muscular bare torso, she could tell that he must be particularly trained to war. Beside the fact that his body was all bruised, a lot of white and purple lines were covering his arms and chest, some scars bigger than others. He also had a strange tattoo running down from his neck right side to his spine in an intricate style that she was not able to recognize.
She rolled up his naked body into her own woolen cloak, wrapping him tightly in it.
The sun was already high in the sky but she struggled to set a fire because of all the humidity from the morning. Fortunately, the river bank on their side was well sheltered from the wind.
The big wolf was still watching her, whimpering from time to time when she approaching the man's body. She was not sure that he would survive, she didn't know how long he got the poison running in his blood and how much it affected his organs. The ice cold river must have saved him some time in a way by slowing down the rate of his heartbeat, but she couldn't be certain that she arrived soon enough.
She used all the charcoal powder that she had on him as poison control, and it wasn't any common charcoal, it was specifically prepared by her grandma to be more efficient with a specific technique, heating charcoal in a closed metal bowl under pressure then adding a small amount of water in the process. It was too complicated to redo it in the middle of the forest without equipment. So she had to look for herbs that can be used for the same purpose but also which would give him some strength back, warm him up and help his body to eliminate the toxin faster.
She was busy all afternoon till late evening to reunite the good plants. She hadn't any caldron or even a little pot to boil water on the fire pit and it would be hard to make him drink a potion unconscious as he was .
So she just smashed them into a paste between two rocks, and she rubbed his bare feet with it. She found out a few months ago that the human body was healing faster by draining all the naturals or stranger toxins from the blood by the feet's smooth and vascularised skin than by any other way.
She continued to keep the fire going on to keep him warm as possible and dried the animal fur and clothes which he was initially covered with and which, she had to admit, were of excellent quality. Once brushed they were really fluffy, and the leather smooth and still flexible, even if it spent time in the river, it didn't look affected by the water as it should be.
She was her wits end at dawn but she was satisfied by all the work done and more confident about his survival. He seemed to be in a stable condition, still unconscious but there was nothing more to do about it.
Completely exhausted and sitting facing the fire, she was thinking about the possible origin of the man lying silently beside her. Elantia has seen many travelers and traders pass through her village. But none looked like this man, his blond hair was long and braided with fine rings chiseled through, As well as his slightly redder beard. He was so tall, he was even taller than her fiancé Brenos, who was known as the strongest in her tribe.
Thinking about Brenos made her hope for him to find her before the night would become too cold. He knew her the best and joined her many days, hunting while she was picking herbs that she needed, he was a good tracker so she knew he could easily find her and was even more glad that she did hang on branches the pieces of fabric behind her.
She knows that her father will only get worried by her not coming back at this late hour, she didn't tell anyone that she would go for so long, he must send the men into the woods, looking for her soon.
The sunset tinted the place with flamboyant red and gold colors in a thousand sparkles through the branches and on the river dancing water.
The scenery was stunning, she would really appreciate it in other conditions. She was getting cold now, without wearing anything more than her dress and from the fact that she was not moving so much anymore and that the sun was disappearing with its warm beams. She also was heavily worried that the night would shut down the man's temperature, or give him a fever, which would be the worst in his current situation.
She was so focused on her healing duty that she completely forgot the wolf and didn't even notice that he disappeared a while ago.
#Author note :
I'm sure you guessed a lot of things so far, let me know what you're thinking about this chapter in the comments!