He heard the scrunch of pine needles under her boots long before she came into sight. He could also tell she was carrying a heavy load. He trotted out of the cabin and raced down the trail towards her. She had her head down, just watching one foot fall in front of the other, lost in her own mind. When he was just a few yards in front of her, she looked up to see this giant gray shape leaping through the air that was aimed right at her chest.
She squealed, dropped the pack, and hit the ground, expecting the massive hit that didn't come. She looked up from behind the backpack to see him imitating a sphinx, except this one didn't have a pharaoh's head, just a grin. Just like earlier in the morning, his tongue whipped out faster than she could dodge, and he got her right on the nose, this time leaving a little more slobber than the last.
"EWWW! Why do you feel the need to do that to me? Never mind, I know."
She smiled at him, but before she could pick up the pack again, he had it in his jaws and was carrying it like it didn't weigh anything at all. He started prancing back towards the cabin with her just behind him, wiping off the slobber from the end of her nose on her sleeve. He really was a magnificent example of what a wolf should look like: sleek, yet packed with muscles on top of muscles, soft fur that shimmered in the sunlight, and a long muzzle with an even longer tongue.
She started blushing again, even though he couldn't see her looking at him. Those long legs that seemed to make him float above the ground, not across it, and then there was the package—rather large, with shiny black skin and that very long sheath, hiding the bright red shaft that seemed to grow in size every time she looked at it or thought about it. Now the blush was really creeping up her neckline. He could smell her fresh scent.
She had cleaned up before changing clothes and returning to him. He didn't mind, not really, but the less adulterated her real scent, the happier he was. Just before reaching the door to the cabin, the breeze shifted, and the smell of an excited female wafted to his nostrils. They flared, and he dropped the pack to take in as much of that smell as he could.
Then he slowly turned around and gave her that "I'm hungry for you, too" look. She stopped dead in her tracks. How had he known she was thinking that?
"Are you reading my mind?"
He stopped and stared at her for a moment. Then he deliberately pointed his muzzle at her crotch and took in another deep breath through his nose. Then he looked up at her and grinned, then snapped his jaw a couple of times and let his tongue loll out of the side of his mouth. Then he quickly straightened, picked up the pack, and continued on into the cabin as if nothing had happened, leaving her frustrated that she hadn't been able to chastise him for his "lewd" behavior. He pranced inside.
She knew it was her morals that were causing her unease with the fact that the new love of her life walked on all fours. Somehow, the fact that he didn't seem to be having trouble thinking about doing anything with her just because she walked on only two legs was really disconcerting. He appeared to have no trouble thinking about anything. Then she got a mental image of what they might look like together and thought, oh, it really doesn't matter how I walk around; I would still have to get down on all fours just to get things "lined up."
She heard him sniffing again and realized that she had gotten rather excited while running all that imagery through her mind as she stood in the doorway.
"Stop it."
She didn't even put any real heat behind her words. It was just a simple request. He stopped. While she slowly stepped into the cabin and sat at the table, he began rummaging in the backpack and pulling things out of it. He could smell the food in there, but he hadn't reached it yet. When he did get to it, he spun around and tried to hug her, but the lupine form prevented it.
Instead, he jumped over to where she was sitting and nuzzled her neck. This sent her into shivering fits as his warm breath caressed her neck.
"My name is Casey."
He stopped nuzzling her neck and pulled his head back so that they were eye to eye. "My name is Casey Brandt."
He leaned down to where her hand was resting on top of the chair arm and, using just the tip of his tongue, kissed her hand. She smiled at him slowly, but he could tell there was something else bothering her.
"Do you have a name, my handsome brute?"
He stared at her for a few seconds, then nodded his head. She smiled again. Those smiles warmed him inside, made him feel whole. "How are you ever going to be able to tell me your name?"
He looked at her and almost shrugged, but decided not to; he could tell this was really important to her. He began to look around and suddenly had a flash of an idea. He opened his mouth and grabbed the tips of her fingers, pulling back. She understood what he wanted and got to her feet. He led her to a corner of the room, where years of dust had accumulated. He stared at it for a moment, then closed his eyes and concentrated.
He had to get this right. There wasn't enough dust in the corner to start over if he screwed it up. The big challenge was the fact that his given name was Roman Latin, not modern English. So he had to remember what each Latin symbol was and then convert it to the English equivalent. He opened his eyes and lowered his nose to the floor. D-a-g-o-m-a-r-u-s. Dagomarus, yes, that was right. He spelled it like it sounded in his head. Now for his family name, which wasn't Roman Latin, but it had originated in Germania. He closed his eyes again and concentrated. D-o-e-r-r. Doerr. Then he remembered something else; he put two little dots above the O. Yes, that was it.
Again, he wrote the name like it sounded in the thick guttural accent he could still hear in his head. He stepped back so she could see what he had put there in the dust. She slowly came forward and read it out loud. He stopped her a couple of times and tried getting her to change the pronunciation until she was so close it didn't matter. After all, unless you spoke both Roman Latin and the dialect of the ancient German barbarians, there was no way you were going to get it right.
She broke out in a huge smile, lighting up the room for him. She thought about it for a second and then understood what these two words in the dust meant. There really was a person inside that huge wolf's body.
"Dagomarus!! I am so glad to meet you!" Then she gave him that bone-crushing hug she liked to give out so much. "But how did... this... happen?"
He stared at her, trying to decide. This was going to be the moment of truth. Did he let her in, or would he have forced it into her? If he let her in, there was no hiding; she would be able to see and feel everything he had felt. This could be very dangerous; he had done it once, and the poor girl had gone mad.
If he pushed it into her mind, he could limit what she saw and felt, but he could damage her in the process. If he pushed too hard, forcing the sights and emotions into her too fast, it would overload her system, sending her into shock and possibly a coma. He had done this to several people in his past; some he had never wanted to harm, others he had tried to kill without leaving a mark.
He had already accidentally let her into his mind once, just the jumbled surface, and she had seen a glimpse of HIM, not the wolf, but of his pure self. She had seen a little of what he truly was, and it had nearly wrenched her from this world and sent her to the afterlife. It had been unintentional on his part; that meant she must have some minor ability at communicating on a level most humans think of as parlor magic tricks. With her sensitivity to emotions and surface thoughts, forcing anything into her psyche could do serious harm. He had to be very careful if he was going to do this.
She watched him go completely still, his eyes glazing over, staring into a distance that was far beyond the walls of the cabin. She had seen that look before, in her grandfather's eyes when she had asked him what it had been like during the war. And just like in that afternoon with her grandfather, she could feel a chill in the air. He had gone to a place in his mind that must have been very lonely and extremely disturbing. Her grandfather had come back to himself rather quickly and told her that no one should ever have to see or hear about those awful events.