Trina had come home and taken a much-needed shower. She still stank of wet dog and no amount of disinfectant could take it out even if she tried. So, she tried on the expensive shampoo that bruised her wallet and heart and lathered it in her hair.
She felt a pang of sadness that she had to shower several animals apart from herself in the span of four days, but pushed it down.
Once done, she wrapped her hair in a towel and made herself a steaming cup of lemon tea. There was a lot wrong with the apartment she had rented. Firstly, it was on the ground floor of a building which was about twenty or more years old. There was a forest right outside the back window and a lake if she walked a distance into the forest. There was no clear trail but if she squinted, she could see the lights from the other side of the town.
The properties overlooking the lake on the other side were where rich people lived and had picnics in their backyard. And here she was, overlooking a sort of forest that had snakes and bugs that inched their way towards her apartment at any given moment.
Still, she could look at some trees and didn't have to glare at skyscrapers. She was happy about that.
She took her steaming cup of tea and sat on the window sill, She put the book she had been trying to finish for the better part of a few months on her lap and put in her headphones. The cool breeze blew outside and she finally eased into the contents of the page.
The cup beside her cooled slowly and she picked it up to take a tentative sip. She was lucky to find this apartment, she had to say that. The words on the paper seemed to blur as she felt the exhaustion from the day take over her body. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a scorching gulp of the tea, allowing it to burn her esophagus and jolt her awake.
It had the intended effect.
She opened her eyes and sighed as she looked out the window. The forest outside was as dark as ever. With no road lights to illuminate it and the light from her room filtering out and illuminating five feet on the free space, she knew better to look at the sky instead.
There was not a speck of cloud in it. It was unfathomably dark blue and the stars glared at her with fiery intensity. She looked at the moon, lighting up the rest of the land as little as it could, showing off its beauty, and had a small smile on her lips.
As much as she wanted to take a beautiful picture of the scenery, her camera wouldn't allow anything high resolution as this would require. So, she opted to quietly stare until she felt something odd.
The music in her ears was soft and with one side of the headphone never working due to a wiring issue, she heard the crunching of leaves in the distance.
She stiffened immediately, wondering if it was smart to look in the direction of the noise or to ignore it and slowly move into her room and close the window.
'When you hear noises from the bushes, lock all the windows and hide under the covers,' was her mantra. The vegetation in the city and the forest did not attract large predators or herbivores. Instead, the trees only had birds and bugs and snakes. So, for something to make the crunching sound of leaves in the manner meant it was large and definitely not something indigenous to the forest.
Therefore, the change of it being a human doing something illegal—like getting rid of a body was a much better option. Protect oneself before being a good citizen and being bludgeoned to death by a psychopath was the best option in her eyes.
She was a coward through and through.
But as she retreated her eyes, it fell on a non-human shadow. Her curiosity got the better of her and she focused on the area. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and the dim light from the moon.
What she saw stunned her.
There was no doubt that it was a wolf… light in color, probably gray, and one of the largest ones she had seen in her estimate. She had seen them in photographs but never from such proximity.
The horrifying part? These wolves were not indigenous to these lands. No such wolves have been noticed within 500 kilometers of Summerhaven. Then how was this animal there?
She freaked.
The creature was looking right at her and she felt a cold shiver run up her spine. Its eyes glowed with what seemed like hatred and the distance between them was less than fifty meters. She, not wanting to risk it, slowly closed the book on her lap and slid down from the window sill. There were no protective grills to keep the animal or humans away and her glass window was a poor excuse for keeping the humongous animal out.
But wolves rarely attacked humans when not scared. So, she quietly closed the window and the curtain in front of it, praying it didn't lunge at her.
She picked up her phone to call animal control and call in a wolf-sighting but then she remembered how the upper-class often kept wolves as pets. Did she really want to involve herself in the drama and entertainment of rich people?
She shook her head and kept her phone aside. She hid at the corner of the window and opened the curtain an inch to look outside. The wolf remained stock still in its position. Not a light could be seen which was looking for it. She watched for fifteen minutes as the wolf stared and then it ducked its head and started to scratch at the ground.
And then it dawned on her.
The wolf had been taking a dump and she had heard it and stared at it. She didn't know how conscious wolves were of this, but she could imagine someone staring at her when she was cleaning up would be disconcerting.
Suddenly, she let out a loud laugh. The wolf looked up, its ears perked up at the sound of her laugh and she froze immediately, her voice dying out in her throat. She gulped and stood still for a long moment until the wolf went back to work.
She saw it retreating further into the forest, its tail tucked between its leg and she sucked in a huge breath of relief.
She sank down to the floor and burst into laughter finally. No fear of the wolf remained.
Her giggles died down and she suddenly felt the burden from a day of work disappear. Who would have known that wild animals were so good for her body? She drank the remnants of her tea and then put her cup into the sink.
She would just remember this episode whenever she felt tired at work. That was a good plan.