Dance, my little puppets,

Sum/1.1/02  

     A shutter came from the white wolf beside her, as if it were a breath of something long dead waking. She passively glanced to him, a tingling sensation traveling up her spine. She was unsure whether it was attraction or feeling unnerved… maybe it was both. His limp, loose movements as he stood attracted her full attention. What an intriguing way to move. Instantaneously, she knew that would never understand him. She had just found her true opposite. She lived to feel addictive, active moments of adrenaline in life. He appeared to lack life almost entirely, but she found his likeness to the dead to be settling.

     He was the manifestation of the wolves she saw drifting in her brain and on the edges of her vision. Perhaps they had haunted her, and now facing them, she no longer felt the terror of her nightmares. More likely, the silence that seemed to emanate from him was so tangible that a wolf such as she, morphed to it. She fed off the energy of her pack mates, because she viewed him yet as a member of Iromar, she immediately felt pack instinct drive her to mirror him. Never could she completely reflect Wraith’s skeletal looseness entirely, but her lazy side became more pronounce. She relaxed as he did, with her muscles so lose that they may have slipped from her bones if not for her skin. Her eyes dropped slightly and dulled. All these changes were barely noticeable to outsiders, except for those most observant. Even she, though she felt her mind feel less fretful, didn’t entirely comprehend the change.

     She moved her eyes away from him after he stood and focused on the two large males that were staring at them. The words that were breathed from Wriath’s lips seemed almost strained. Nakki didn’t return her gaze to the white wolf, though. She felt the bristling of his fur, and she mirrored by allowing her fur to raise slightly. It was then that the two large male males, possibly disappointed that Wraith was alive, turned away.

     As she watched them leave, her fur relaxed and she turned her head to gaze back to Wraith. He was a weak creature with a strange power. Nakki stepped towards him and lowered her head so that their noses were side by side. She wouldn’t dominate him, for she didn’t have to. Never had she met a wolf where dominance would feel too effortful to enforce, and as such, she accepted him as an equal. Instead, she offered him a form of companionship, if only for the night, should he show her that he accepted it. She gazed into his face, unwilling to speak. His power was in his silence and Nakki didn’t want to sabotage such strange beauty. However, he should know her name, for he did not… know her.

     “I am Nakki.” She told him quietly – not whispering, but so as not to disturb the dark world around them.

Näkki