Lost in the Forest- Part 2

After hiking through endless tall thin trees, that scratched and clawed at Daniel’s loose clothes, the girl halted. Daniel peered around, searching for what had prevented her from continuing, when he noticed a large ditch that opened out into blackness. The girl checked behind and scrutinized Daniel and the twitching meat he cradled. Then she entered her lair halfway and stopped to bark at him, calling him in.

“I-I won’t fit-” he started, but she had already disappeared.

Daniel started to turn and jog the other way when a howl from the entrance of the cave compelled him to return to where she waited impatiently. She crawled out and snarled behind him, herding him into the darkness.

Unwillingly, he knelt down and edged his way ungracefully into the perilous shadows. Immediately, he noticed an audience of yellow eyes, illuminating the darkness, accompanied by an eerie silence.

He felt the girl behind him, shifting him forwards; he gripped onto Tanya’s dying figure and continued on. Tears dripped steadily down his flushed face, echoing as they hit the stone floor. He kept inching his way through the countless bodies of coarse fur, built together with stones and trees, killers.

That’s all he could think about as he wept over Tanya’s corpse, killers; he was trapped in a cave surrounded by killers.

When suddenly the darkness was swallowed away and they crawled into a clearing. Bending down to lay what remained of Tanya’s body onto the mess of pine leaves and branches. The girl slunk round to study him.

“Who are you?” he sobbed. “Where is this?!”

She just remained emotionless and stationery, silently examining his weeping figure.

“Shimone,” she growled.

Frowning, Daniel asked, “What did you say?”

“Shi-mone,” she snarled, carefully lifting a clawed paw-like hand to push into her tough chest.

“Your name!” Daniel realised. “You’re Shimone?!”

The girl frowned and repeated, “Shimone.”

Daniel cleared his throat and explained in a slow, calculated pronunciation, “Daniel.”

He pointed to himself.

“Dan-yell,"she tried.

"Dan- yull," he corrected.
"Dan- yall," she tried again.

Grinning at being able to teach the untamed girl simple language, Daniel clapped.

But Shimone misunderstood the baring of his gleaming white teeth, and growled loudly, showing her own.

Daniel was caught off guard and tried to soothe her.

As he did, he got a chance to really look at her. Long, wild hair slithered its way around her head and down her shoulders, tints of fiery red shone through the deep black as the sun bore down on them.

Despite her accomplices’ identical eyes, hers were rich brown, as if thousands of tiny velvet trees grew behind them. Her lips, a deep scarlet, were chapped and menacing however they were kind and welcoming in comparison to what waited hungrily behind them. When she snarled, she revealed her sharp, tough, blood-stained teeth. Daniel tried desperately to resist from thinking of whose blood it was and whether its source could be Tanya.

Wearing nothing but a mixture of fresh green and dying brown leaves entwined in long thin sticks covering her chest and torso, Daniel could see multiple bites and winding scars. He also noticed a relatively recent cut where a piece of rope must have been tied around her ankle; he wondered who would try to capture her, why the wolves accepted her and why she carried such a lupine personality and look about her. But as they watched each other with such interest and wonder- two identical worlds, with countless differences, colliding- Daniel couldn’t help discovering something so enchantingly fascinating, it gripped him with such force, compelling him to register the fierce, untamed beauty that seemed to radiate from Shimone.