'But wait!' David thought, 'That fox is just a regular fox and see how he acts with her. Maybe that is my out! If I act as friendly and non-threatening as that fox does with her, she will let me stay around and everything will be fine.'
David was broken out of his thoughts by Sinead calling to him. He thought that her voice sounded so lovely. Then he remembered to actually pay attention to what she was saying.
"...it's ok. Come on out. I have something here for you if you want it. I honestly don't know what you will think of it; it's not like wolves hard boil eggs for themselves in the wild."
As David moved out from behind the tree and began his slow, quiet trek towards her, he heard her giggle and wondered if she was picturing cartoon wolves in her head hard boiling eggs.
Her giggling was cut off abruptly with a small, barely audible intake of breath. He could see her countenance seemed very serious and her stare very intense.
As she caught his eyes, she angled her head suddenly, so her gaze was upon the forest floor.
'Wow.' David thought. 'With this distance, she must have better eyesight than I gave her credit for.'
David noticed that her breathing seemed faster than it had been previously. Her arm was no longer outstretched.
Instead, it was lowered, gently out front of her, with the back of her forearm resting along the top of her thigh, palm up, egg held in a gentle grip as if it was so breakable blinking an eye would shatter it. He took in how she sat back on her heels, with her legs tucked under her.
'What was all this about?' David wondered. 'What was she thinking? Was she afraid?'
That is when he realized that he had covered a little more than half the distance between them and had not given her any indication of his intentions. He had not growled at her, had not shown any defensive body language, he had not displayed any of the typical submissive or aggressive normal wolf behaviour.
She was probably afraid of him, because he was acting very strangely, and she probably wondered if he was in the early stages of rabies or something.
Cursing himself inwardly for his idiocy, David stopped walking towards her. He lay down on the ground, and rested his muzzle on a paw, purposely not facing her, but with his eyes still on her.
Wishing her not to be afraid of him, he let out a sad sounding whine, a begging plea for her attention.
She had watched him the whole time, but it was the whine that seemed to cut through everything with her. She looked directly at him and met his gaze for a second time.
This time, she peered at him with a sort of curiosity, like he was a puzzle she was trying to understand. Again, her gaze was very intense, he felt like she was trying to see into his very soul.
Her eyes broke away from his, and they roamed over him, before she looked down again. She had such a faraway look on her face, not just in her eyes. The way she sat, her grip on the egg barely enough to keep it from dropping from her grip, her expression and those wistful, faraway, eyes, made David so sorrowful. He couldn't help it, he let out a sad, disheartened whine.
Sinead seemed to be snapped out of whatever otherworldly state she was in. She looked at David; really looked at him.
Her eyes seemed shinier and brighter than normal. Just before the tears started to fall, she let out a small whimper, then two, which turned into a whine.
David recognized what she was doing. It was the way puppies alerted adult dogs to their need for attention. But this communication was far older than that. It was very similar to the cry wolf pups used to get attention and care from adult wolves.
Without even thinking about it, instinct had him on his feet and rushing towards her, with his tail wagging and another whine on his lips.
The tears had started by the time he stood in front of her. He sat and whined as he put his face near hers, trying in vain to look at her face as she hid it from him in the crook of her left elbow.
She was breaking his heart in two. It made David feel like a piece of garbage seeing her cry and not knowing how to stop the tears, not knowing how to help. He already knew she was a weakness for him.
David made a pledge to himself at that moment, that no matter what she thought or felt now, or would think or feel in the future, he would always love her, even if it ended up unrequited. For now, to him, stopping those tears was the most important thing.
He nudged her knee gently, but insistently, with his muzzle. That did not improve the situation. Not wanting to give up, he repeated the action a second time.
David was not sure if she was ignoring him in hopes he would go away, or if she was really in such a place of emotional anguish that she honestly took no notice of him. Unsure, and with a mind full of thoughts, he let out a big sigh, flopped himself to the ground with a thud and rested his large jaw on her knee.
He didn't realize the entire weight of his wolf head was pushing his bony jaw into her leg in a way she wouldn't be able to not take notice of.
David heard Sinead let out a small breath. He didn't hear her sobbing anymore, and when he opened his eyes and rolled them up to look at her, he saw only a few tears falling now. Her breathing was normalizing, and she was moving her hands to quickly brush away her tears.
She rubbed the backs of her arms across her cheeks and chin, trying to remove evidence of the tear stains. Now, she had her hands in fists and her arms pulled into her chest, as she peered down at him with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty on her face. Sinead took a deep breath in and David yawned.
"Um, hi." Sinead said very quietly to David.
He responded by lifting his head from her knee and very obviously sniffing the air, before touching his nose to her closed right fist.
She very gently bit her lip as she turned her hand palm up and opened her clenched fist. Had the egg been raw, the mess would have been awful. But as it was the egg had been squeezed into an unnatural shape, the shell fractured in an uneven pattern of crazing.
As she moved to bring her hand a teeny bit closer to him, David noticed tiny bits of egg shell dust fall earth- bound from between the cracks of her fingers.
There were a few things David would not admit to.
Firstly, if asked, he would not admit that he had ever eaten a hard-boiled egg with shells still on. He also wouldn't tell anyone that he never wanted to eat said egg in the first place.
The only reason he had gone through any of that was for Sinead's sake. She had seemed eager to offer it to him, and since she was crying only a few minutes before, he figured it would be a good gesture of peace and goodwill.
Plus, she seemed happy afterward that he had taken the egg.
David was watchful of the fox, as Sinead made her way back towards him. The fox was happy to have Sinead close. David could tell the fox was disapproving, or at the very least distrustful of him.
David stayed where he was as he observed Sinead double- checking she had all her belongings and calling the fox to continue walking with her down the path. After they had gone a few steps, she looked over her shoulder and met David's gaze.
"Are you coming, Wolf?" She inquired of him.
"Yes!" David cheered silently, as he stood and began to pad his way along behind the two of them. He made sure to keep a fair enough distance from them, as he wasn't intending to get on the foxs' bad side.
Sinead chatted away to the fox beside her as David thought about today's turn of events. Maybe he was just being blind, but for all her powers and abilities, David didn't think that Sinead was really a threat to anyone.
It was not that she couldn't be dangerous if she really wanted to, and he knew she was capable of defending herself. It was that from all he had seen of her character, she didn't seem the type to be violent or power- hungry.
At the Red Goblet, she had only engaged once the bouncers had made the first move.
And again today, she could have viewed him as a threat, she could have attacked him, attempted to strike the first blow. She could have justified it as protecting herself or protecting her fox friend. But she didn't do any of that. She was definitely the kind of girl who didn't jump the gun.
A throaty growl made David stop walking and shook him from his thoughts. The fox was giving him a warning. He had gotten too close as both Sinead and the fox had stopped walking.
He noticed they were at the edge of an opening. David recalled that this was the place where a paved road crossed the trail they were on.
"I think it is all clear." Sinead informed them.
She took another step forward, she looked to her left and right and then as she broke into a run for the cover of the other side of the trail, the fox high- tailed it to keep up with her.
David gave them a few minutes head start, then cleared the distance at an unbelievable speed.
It was not long after that, they found themselves in the clearing. The fox took up his customary post on his favourite tree limb, and Sinead put her things down at the clearings' edge.
Sinead spoke to David as she began to walk towards the center of the clearing. "You can come sit with me if you'd like. Or make yourself comfortable anywhere. There is lots of shade."
In the middle of the clearing, Sinead dropped in one fluid motion into a cross- legged sitting position on the soft, emerald green grass.
David, heart racing, forced himself to take deliberate slow steps towards her, and then lay down in the grass, facing her. He was as close as he could get without invading her personal space.
'Patience.' David thought to himself. 'Patience'.
He felt such a sense of contentment, just by being this close to her. The whole moment was very peaceful. David hardly noticed as that moment stretched out to two and a half hours.