Chapter Five

When she didn't immediately pick up the gauze pad and her eyes glazed over like she was going into shock, he nudged her hand again and pushed the gauze pad towards her. She shuddered and looked down at her hand, picked up the gauze and then met his gaze.

"What ARE you? You're not real, this is some sort of fucked up dream I'm having."

After this last statement, the wolf just looked at her and chuffed, blowing little flecks of blood all over her hand and arm. He carefully opened his mouth just enough to grab the edge of the gauze packet and tore the corner open. Looking down at the packet, she shuddered again and removed the gauze from the wrapper.

"Alright, alright! I get it. I'll cover the wound with the gauze. Now stop blowing blood all over my clothes."

She unrolled the gauze, folded it into a square patch large enough to cover the entire wound, and taped it into place.

"I don't know if this tape will hold with all that fur, but it'll stay there as long as you don't try to get up."

She gave him a stern look that a mother would give a child, and the wolf rolled his one good eye in response. At seeing the expression on the wolf's face, she laughed for the first time since meeting this strange beast. Taking a closer look at his face, she grimaced and hissed.

"There's a splinter of wood in that eyeball. God! I bet that hurts!"

He just gave her one of those 'Duh!' looks and lowered his head to the ground. She twisted around and reached into the first aid kit to retrieve the additional items necessary for this next bit of treatment. Sliding over to his head she sat down and crossed her legs. Patted her thigh to indicate where he should place his head.

"Come on, let's get this over with. That splinter needs to come out or it will get infected and then you really will be in a bad way."

He rose up and she scooted forward so his massive head would lie on top of her thigh.

"Shit! I must be crazy to let you be this close to me."

Funny, I was thinking the very same thing, the wolf thought to himself as he laid his head in her lap. She twisted the cap off the bottle and just before pouring it onto the wounded eye; she met his gaze.

"This might sting a little, so don't freak out and bite me or anything, okay?"

He grunted and closed his eye. Gently, she poured the saline solution into the wounded eye, washing out the blood and mucus.

"This is the part that's really going to hurt, but I have to do it."

He grunted again and kept his other eye shut. He felt the tug and then the sensation of the long sliver being pulled free of the eyeball. Finally it was over and the relief was immense. He released the breath that he had been holding and gave a giant sigh of relief. She poured more saline into the eye and then began to put a gauze patch over the wound.

"Now you look like a pirate."

After she said it, she laughed. He opened his good eye and looked up at her. Then she really started laughing as she realized how totally bizarre the whole situation was.

He started to get mad over the fact that she was laughing at his pain. Then he stopped, and soaked up the sound of her laugh. It was so nice to hear a female laugh, especially one that looked this nice. He finally let go of his tension and slowly closed his eye, slipping down into unconsciousness.

She was sitting on a campstool looking at the giant wolf as it slept. What the hell was this thing? This wasn't just an oversized example of the breed; this thing had intelligence, a frightening amount of it as a matter of fact. She was trying to come up with an explanation for what had happened over the past three hours, but nothing made any sense. She finally discarded the notion that this was some sort of elaborate hallucination from some plant she might have accidentally eaten. No, this was real. There really was a giant wolf sleeping in front of her.

Then she remembered some twisted science fiction/horror novel by that Koontz guy about a genetically altered dog and a twisted mutant gorilla. Was this thing an escaped government experiment? Was that why it had been shot? Maybe they tried to get rid of it but it had escaped before they could put it down and get rid of the evidence? No way! That crap only happened in books and movies.

This was REAL! R-E-A-L REAL!! It was lying right in front of her. Then what? Reincarnation? That dopey professor in college said that many religious groups throughout the world accepted reincarnation, in one form or another. But weren't one of the things about reincarnation, the fact that the previous life was forgotten and the wheel of life turned again? Or was she mixing religions? She wished she had paid more attention in class, but that professor was creepy and she had never really wanted to know that much about religion. The only reason she had taken the class was because someone had told her it would be an easy A.

She finally decided she would have to find out more about this amazing animal before deciding what it was or might be. Well, at least it wasn't going to eat her. It was a good thing she had just emptied her bladder before stepping out of that bush, otherwise she would have pissed herself right then and there.