You give him a panicky, wide-eyed stare, hackles standing. "Erskin, you gotta help me. I know nothing."
You can't help another fit of giggles, but you try to soften the impact by rolling back over and butting your head against his jaw. "It's alright, you handsome stud, a simple 'No, thank you,' probably can't go amiss, can it?"
"Okay, but why would I need to -- practice that --? You're just messing with me," you realize. "You're lucky you're so lovable, jerk." You fondly push his face with your muddy paw. A sharp tug on your tail makes you look around in startlement. If you were expecting anything, it was one of the young wolves, but it's a big-ass raven, and you can somehow tell it's laughing. "Dude," you say. "Dude," the raven echoes smugly.
"We don't have anything for you," you tell the raven. "You have tails," it points out, and gives a little hop and flutter.
You carefully tuck your tail under your body and look at the raven expectantly. "Now what, smart guy?" "Fuck you is what," the raven explains, and goes to try to steal some meat off the deer. You quirk a brow at Erskin. "Are all ravens like that?"
You snort. "A lot of them are worse. Smartasses, the whole lot of them." "Oh, says the werewolf!" the raven calls, and lands on top of a very startled young wolf's head. The wolf jerks back, snapping confusedly, and the raven flaps off with a long strip of gristle to eat on a tree branch. "Any other compliments, lover boys?" it wants to know. You shrug expressively at Bel: you see?
"Your face looks like you ran into a plate glass freight train," you point out, not quite succeeding at hiding your smile. You think you kind of like this little feathery asshole.
"And you've got a disgusting pile of meat and hair at both ends, so excuse me if I can't figure out which one to insult first," the raven snaps back. It finishes the one strip of gristle and divebombs the wolf lady's hindquarters for another: when she backs out of the deer's chest cavity to see who's bothering her, dripping gore, the raven makes off with a chunk of meat nearly half as big as itself. When Bel looks at you, you turn your head away with an exaggerated shudder. "Ohhhh no, I'm staying out of this one! You two deadly wits can duke it out all on your own."
"Oh, were we fighting? I thought ravens liked disgusting piles of meat and hair. That was clearly a compliment. I'm delicious." You roll over on your side with a yawn, feeling fairly contented. "Speaking of delicious, do you suppose we'll have to drown Bambi every time we want to eat, or is it not too late in the season for crunchy mouse snacks?"
The raven gets a really good scold going, but you tune it out. "Mmm. Only doormice hibernate, the regular sort dig little tunnels through deep snow. You can hear them scuffling along and pow! dive bomb. I don't know how much luck we'll have in this sort of weather and with this depth of leaf litter. Might want to go after campsite rats, or squirrels." You lick your whiskers. "Same difference, really. This seems like a really lovely park, I'm sure there's all sorts of things to chase around."
"Oh, I'm sure, but mice are like potato chips. So I'm hoping we get some snow that sticks, I want to try that snow-pouncing thing, it sounds hilarious." You freed your tail a few minutes back, and now that the raven's done eating it notices and comes to mess with you again. You wait for it to try to peck, then whisk your tail aside. Bitching constantly, the raven keeps trying for a while, and you succeed in bapping it in the face with your tailtip at least as often as it manages to pull out one of your hairs. "So do you wanna do the long trail loop?" You say idly while you play with (or contend with?) the raven. "I mean, once I can do hands again long enough to pack up the tent."
"I don't see why not," you agree. "It'll be nice to run with some purpose again, even if it's in a circle."
"Well, I mean, it's a hella big circle. Not the longest hiking trail in the region, but it's up there. And if the hunting's good in wolf form, I won't need to pack in as much food, which means I can go faster." You're smiling just at the thought of it. "And then Calgary, and points north. I'm happy. I love you. Best smelly wilderness boyfriend." You steal his bone. The raven takes advantage of your distraction to peck your butt, and is annoyed when you don't react. The little girl wolf tries to nip the raven's tail. You crack up.
"Best smelling wilderness boyfriend," you correct him lazily. You've been eating well the last couple weeks but the effect of tucking down ten or fifteen pounds of good red meat is starting to hit, and you're starting to feel dreamy and unstrung. Your plans for the rest of the day involve lying crosseyed in the sun and watching your handsome friend be handsome. And happy. It's a good look on him. You heave up to your feet and shake the gathering lethargy off a ways. "I'm going to grab one of the legs-ends, we'll enjoy having something around camp to worry at. Then let's find a nice clearing or meadow or something, watch the sun go by. These fellows are nice enough, but big backyards make for better neighbors, eh? I don't want to sleep here."
"That sounds fantastic. I'll run interference, you grab the chew toy." You roll upright and trot over to the carcass. Wolf mama backs out of it again and glares at you warily, though less than she was before. "Scuse me, ma'am, you've got something on your face," you say pleasantly, and lick her bloody cheek. She twitches surprise, then cautiously leans back and lets you continue. Once Erskin's got his bit gnawed off, you tell the lady, "It was nice meeting you, thanks for sharing." And you trot off after Erskin, happy as a very happy thing. Just the crunch of the leaves underfoot, the texture of the now-melting frost, the smell of the forest as the sun warms it... it's all just so good.
It takes longer than expected to find your camp again, with both of you increasingly dopey and the delicious gorey leg-end obscuring the fainter scents of your previous passage. When you finally reach the tent you go to cache your future chew-toy inside, where the zip will keep anyone from stealing it, but Bel protests. Apparently the smell won't be so nice when you're (he's) human again. "Alright, alright, keep your hair on," you grumble, and circle the camp until you find a tree with a fork two or three meters off the ground. You're not a bloody leopard so it takes a few run-ups and rebounds before you successfully wedge the leg in so it stays. There: some raccoons might have a nibble, but it's better than just leaving it in the dirt for anyone to haul off. Tree caching in Northern America tends to work out nicely, since no one ever expects it. No one around here's a bloody leopard. Eurrgh, you've got a cramp now. You lick your side. It does not help. "I want a sun puddle," you say plaintively. Your cozy campsite is lovely, but the trees are thickly leaved, and the sunlight comes down through them thinly, if at all. You shuffle until your head rests against Bel's side. "Sun puddle. For puddling."
"You are tremendously cute," you approve, bracing so he can lean better. "Unfortunately, we're gonna have to move, because the sun puddle is over thattaway." He's all dozy and compliant, so you chivvy him along; you're full and contented enough to know how nice it would be to have someone else in charge of finding you a sunbeam, so you do your best to stay on target as a sort of gift to him. That way he can just bump along after you while you pick out the best spot. And you do. You find the absolute best spot in the entire park. There's a place along the shore of the stream your first deer escaped across, with a big chunk of ancient shieldrock cliff as a windbreak, long grass bowed over sand and pebbles, drifts of leaves nearly dry now that the sun's gotten to the frost properly -- comfy, sunny, good sightlines, and probably ten degrees warmer than under the trees. "Your sun puddle, my dear," you say with a sort of mockery of a bow that you're not sure comes across at all right in wolf form, but what the hell. As for you, you don't really want to lie down just yet, you want to derp around aimlessly in the shallow water, investigating minnows and digging up the odd hibernating toad.
You snuffle around to find the exact right spot, then curl up in a clump of long grass and commit yourself to some serious dozing. It's tremendously nice to be out here properly, with none of the awkward pressure to change your head around for human things, communication and cars and fidgety little puzzles. Kadros doesn't even want to prod you into any sort of conversational intricacies, either, he's playing with a frog. The next few days are set, so you don't have to make any more plans. You roll onto your side and let the sunlight melt you into a cozy pile of jelly and warm fur.
The next few days are among the most relaxing of your life. The two of you don't talk much, just the occasional bit of banter or "move over, you're on my tail" or "do you want to gnaw the other end of this bone?" as you laze through the last warm afternoons of November. The sunlight is like honey dripping over everything, slowing down time. The nights are fun, more fun than dancing at clubs, as the moon ripens and you run around like an idiot, hollering at the sky, pouncing on crunchy mouse snacks, occasionally singing a long-distance chorus with Woofmom and her family. The locals are keeping their distance, but not too much distance, in case you happen to kill something else big you need help eating. On the actual night of the full, you and Erskin are so full of energy that you run and tussle and laugh almost until dawn, and don't kill anything at all. The afternoon of the next day is perfect, so warm there are butterflies, and a few last flowers nod with the attentions of a final few bees. You can feel in your bones that this is autumn's swan song. Winter is coming now. And it does, with a vengeance. A surprising thunderstorm proves your tent's mettle, keeping you dry despite the downpour, and you snuggle up and doze through it; by morning you can see your breath inside the tent, and the pines tinkle like glass chimes with the ice coating their needles. The stream you camped near is swollen and running hard. You go out only to piss and get a drink of water; all the animals will be hunkered down, there's no point hunting. You hunker down as well. By the third day after the full moon, the trail is pretty much dry again, though dusted with dry snow in places, and you're both itching to move. You can now stay human long enough to not only break camp, but go back to your truck, charge your devices, send your dad a reassuring text, and pack a proper backpacking load for hiking the long loop of trail that arcs well into canada before coming back around. You sure hope Erskin's right about how easy the hunting will be, because you've only packed enough food for five days, and your most optimistic estimate says the hike will take eight. "Let's push hard while the trail's dry," you propose as you finish retying your boots nice and tight. "I want to get back into fighting trim."
You lick his little mouse-shaped human ear in agreement. His skin's far too tight over his muscle for this time of year, sweaters are no excuse to forego a proper amount of padding. You yourself are puffing up magnificently from all the good eating you've been doing and your winter coat's finally filling in, you're at least a third bigger all around now. Your tail looks like a fur sausage, it's excellent, and when Bel goes back to his car you take the opportunity to admire your thickening neck ruff in the side mirrors. You're not exactly in shape for sled-dogging through Alaska yet, but you could bully the hell out of any amount of your cousins down in Florida. Hiking with Bel in his bipedal shape isn't as staggeringly boring as you thought it'd be. He's slow as hell on foot, like all humans are, but communication's easier now and you can tell stories to each other, even play speaking games. When you get a headache from too much thinking you race off the path into the woods and splash around in the leaves and snow, then come back when you feel better. He doesn't seem to take it personally, and he's not really such a chatterbox, he likes his own stretches of quiet time. You have a vague notion that you're a lot more clever a lot sooner after the full moon than might be usual, but it's not as if you've done much of anything too clever in the last year, besides a spot of theft or begging. Two nights into hiking— the fifth day after the full moon, now distinctly gibbous— Bel asks you directly if you can change back yet. You hadn't really thought about it, must have missed his earlier prodding. You can't hike for shit on two legs and Bel was managing the tent, so there hadn't seemed to be any reason— and then Bel looks at you a particular way, smells a certain way, and you remember, right, sex, sex is a reason. A bit less compelling a motivation from this side of a fur coat, but why not, should be fun, and it'd make him happy.... you give it a try. It's a lot easier than you thought it would be. Still a strain, a hard scramble up a shifting, difficult slope, but familiar. You stretch your four new limbs and your frankly absurd new spine out, then shiver abruptly and bundle yourself into Bel's lap. "Wowwwww, cold," you opine.
