Musings

M.

He has this effect. One look and BAM!, you're lost. Well, one look and I was lost. No, really, to be honest, HE was lost. I was exiled, which isn't quite the same as being lost. It's lonelier, for one thing. The deliberate, calculated intent behind banishment makes it worse. Particularly when being booted out of home and family isn't your choice. It isn't any kind of choice.

But enough about me.

There I was, minding my own business, relatively content with myself and the way of the world, except for the exile thing which was more vaguely unpleasant than actively painful, when I met this strange creature from the far North. Odd animal. Kept getting into trouble, falling into holes.

Now, I'm not a mushy, softy-sentimental type. What's in it for me? is my motto and my creed. But there was something so appealing, so intriguing, so... so... so anyway, before I know where I'm at, there's the two of us in this hole. Don't ask me how, it just happened.

We get out of the hole. Again, don't look at me, I was just glad he could climb and felt obligated to haul me out with him. The pemmican was a pleasant surprise. Like a nicely aged carcass, just hovering in that olfactory limbo between "eat me" and "wear me". Ymmmmm. I quickly decided I could get used to this.

Okay, so I'm an opportunist. I come by it honestly, my whole family for generations have been opportunists. That's who we are and that's how we live.

I followed him and played shamelessly on his sentiments. Emotionalism is a waste of energy, unless it can be turned to one's advantage. I watched, I listened, and I learned. Before too long, he was feeding me regularly. Once in awhile, he expected me to lend a paw and I obliged. Nothing too strenuous. Every now and again I'd snitch a rabbit or something out of a trap and bring it to him to be made into something edible. Stew. Or jerky. Or celestial pemmican. With him as a sort of substitute pack, life was pretty fair.

Then he fell again, the clumsy human. Only this time, instead of dropping harmlessly into a nice dark, dry hole, he plunges into the middle of an ocean. Well, the middle of the biggest puddle I've ever seen, anyway. Unwilling by this time to lose a perfectly well-broken-in human, and still under that disturbing mind control effect, I leapt in after him and pulled him to safety. Damned near froze my ears off. My hearing's never been the same, although I'm not really deaf.

Don't tell him. It wouldn't make a difference, anyway.

Following a perverse twist of fate, instead of leading the short and difficult life mapped out by genetics and pack law, I find myself with about every comfort a wolf could want. Then again, I've been shlepped from snow to sauna and back again without so much as a by your leave, and the human has some very strange ideas about appropriate behavior.

"You're getting soft," he'll say. I just grunt. He has no real grasp of survival. You eat what you catch. Or what you can steal. It's energy efficient to eat what humans discard, not "soft". I'm a pragmatist. Have to be, really. He's got these marvelously romantic impressions of life in the tundra that don't match anything resembling reality. It amazes me sometimes that he's managed to exist as long as he has without serious damage.

Like I said, he has this effect on a person. It's some kind of chemical thing, an enzyme-bonding type completion. That's the only explanation that makes sense. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to follow him.

The funniest part is that he has this effect on a lot of folks, two- and four-legged. He's got a human partner now who reacts the same way I did to his antics.

He falls into a hole, and we jump in after him. It's the weirdest thing.