This week's prompt is 'dried leaves' from Framing Device, bringing us back to an autumn woodland wonderland. Enjoy!
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Gratitude:
Liana stood over the bubbling pot of rabbit stew, humming to herself. She was in a good mood. She’d been waiting for this day all month, and now it was here. She inhaled the rich, savoury aroma of vegetables and cooked meat and spared a glance out of the window. It was western-facing and growing steadily darker while the other side of the small cabin was still lit by the setting sun’s fading light. In just a few minutes the sun would set and the waxing moon would merge.
Gestin would be back soon. She hoped he’d hurry. He was usually back by now; he never spent the night in the woods. Allaying her concerns, she could hear him coming now, trudging up the path towards the cabin, his heavy boots crunching a carpet of leaves, the first to fall as autumn swallowed summer. Her back was to the door, so he couldn’t see the brief smile that appeared upon her lips as he opened the door and stepped inside. He was dragging a deer carcass, dumping it on the creaky, thin table that passed as a kitchen counter in the run-down shack. A single room, largely uncared for until she’d arrived. “Clean it,” he grunted as he shucked his boots off and eased into the chair in front of the fire.
“I see your hunt went well then,” Liana commented.
He grunted again. He barely spoke more than two or three words at a time. He was a miserable old loner, living out by himself far from anyone else in the deep of the woods. Liana didn’t know whether he’d left the towns to the north or south, but she knew him well enough already to guess that his exile wasn’t entirely by choice. What he’d done to earn exile, self-imposed or not, she couldn’t say and didn’t care.
She supposed she should be grateful to the old trapper; he’d saved her life, after all. He’d found her torn up and near-death in the woods last month and brought her back to his cabin, nursing her back to health. She was less grateful that when he’d deemed her healthy enough, he’d pulled the blankets off and climbed atop her, and continued to do so. He never asked. At best, his seductive arts involved pulling her towards him, leering from a mouth with two missing teeth, rough hands pawing at her body in eager lechery.
Gestin thunked his mug on the arm of his chair. Liana hurried to fill it. He did that, then he’d grunt ‘Woman,’ – never her name – and after that he’d get whatever he wanted himself, handing her a slap in the process. Liana learned very quickly how to tell what her “saviour” wanted and became quick on her feet waiting on the hermit as she counted the days until now. He was a big, strong man. Despite his age, he was a fearsome figure, clad in the fur of animals he’d killed himself. Two or three times her size, with thin white hair over his head and a long scraggly beard. His arms were as wide as her thighs and he could hoist hundreds of pounds of carcass easily. She’d never even tried to fight him.
Liana brought the trapper a bowl of stew. He took a sip and grunted a third time, the closest expression of appreciation he seemed capable of. “Good,” he admitted, nodding his head at the deer, still bleeding all over the stained table. “Get to work.” She wasn’t allowed to eat until he deemed all her chores done – and that included if he wanted sex.
“I thought we could do something different tonight,” Liana said. The sun was growing fainter, and as the coolness of dusk settled outside the cabin, she felt a heat rise within her. “It’s been nearly a month since you saved my life...” she tugged at the simple leather belt that held her makeshift dress together at the waist. It was little more than an old bedsheet Gestin had given her. She didn’t even have shoes. “...so I thought I could do something to show my... appreciation for all you’ve done.” She let the crude dress slip down to the floor, pooling around her feel, leaving her standing bare before him.
Gestin raised his head from the chipped bowl. Stew dribbled from his mouth. “Seen that,” he commented. Despite those words, his eyes roved over her like a rabbit eyeing a heap of fresh grass hay. He noisily slurped another mouthful of stew up, then beckoned her over with one hand like he was calling a dog.
“Ah,” Liana chided, running her hands up and down the sides of her body, from breasts to hips and back again. “Not like this. This is special. This, you haven’t seen before.” Her eyes darted to the eastern window. The last rays of sun were dipping below the mountain, and she could feel the moon’s arrival like a fire in her blood. It was coming.
She swayed like she was beginning a seductive dance, but her efforts were wasted on her audience. “Woman,” the old trapper growled, snapping his fingers and pointing at the floor in front of his chair. No matter. This wasn’t for him, but for her. A way to amuse herself in the last few moments before night fell, but now it was here. It was time, the moment she’d wanted a month for as she’d endured her recovery and every day in this stinking hovel since.
Darkness swallowed the small cabin, and as the last embers of dusk passed into shadow, Liana grinned. It wasn’t a smile that Gestin had ever seen before. It wasn’t even a woman’s smile. It was the grin of a she-wolf baring her teeth.
Crack.
Her jaw always broke first. The bones shattered in her mouth, extending and rebuilding. Naked, she fell to the floor as her right leg creaked and splintered as her femur doubled in size. Her skin stretched like cheesecloth. Muscles tore loose inside her, swelling and reconnecting. Her eyes turned a hideous red, bulging briefly from her sockets as her brow thickened, a long snout stretching out from where her mouth and nose had been. Her teeth sunk into her gums as a second row, longer and sharper, pushed their way out. Her skin, once smooth and soft, vanished beneath a fast-growing carpet of silver-white fur. Her body twisted, broke and knit itself together in a new and horrible form.
It was agony. It was ecstasy and every time the change came, she submitted to it like a lover – a worthy one, not a stinking, greasy pig who climbed atop her and thought her dominated. In a matter of sweet, excruciating moments, the change was complete. Liana towered over Gestin, her she-wolf’s grin widening obscenely as her lips curled back from her sharp white teeth. He scrambled for his bow and quiver, but the werewolf, lithe and sinewy, moved faster. It took but two strides before she was upon him. Her jaws closed around his throat and her claws sunk into his belly. She could have let him flee. She could have killed him with a single blow or twist of her jaws, but she didn’t. He was still alive when she began to feed.
Hearing the wet sounds of wet tearing, the pathetic, futile sobs and the snap of bones, even those who’d have called for Gestin’s imprisonment or death for his actions, past and present, would have been sick with horror as he was eaten alive. Red splashed across the cabin’s walls, the blank eyes of the dead deer staring into the glassy emptiness of the trapper’s as blood loss and shock finally, mercifully, took him.
Flinging Gestin’s head away from scant remains she’d left of the two hundred pound man, Liana’s red eyes turned towards the animal carcass. She licked her lips and fell upon it as well, gorging herself until she could barely move in order to regain the last bits of her lost strength. When the next moon came, she would go out into the forest to hunt, but not for deer or human prey. For something much more dangerous, and even more deserving of her attention.
She remembered the pain. The growls and roars, the feel of her own blood staining her fur, and she remembered who was responsible for it. She hadn’t known another werewolf had laid claim to these woods, had expected even less that one of their kind would protect a human, but no matter. These woods were her hunting grounds now. She might have been willing to share, but a challenge such as that couldn’t go unanswered.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, she’d hunt in earnest. Tomorrow, she’d track down the black-furred werewolf and settle their affairs, one way or the other.