"Ye alright, dear wolf?"
Twigs snapped as Vashati inched herself closer to the unmoving werewolf. Now crouching a mere meter from the heaving furred beast before her, she poked the werewolf's tail with a stick she happened to pick up.
With her chin atop her knees, Vashati's right arm trembled when she dared push the tail away from the convulsing strigoi's rear.
"Pst! Hey, can ye hear me?" Vashati yelled – though it was all in her head since her supposed yell was only a tone higher than her whisper by a hairbreadth.
Vashati cocked her head and mumbled to herself. "I am sure that I met his gaze earlier." Biting her lower lip, she inched her bare feet closer – enough for her to poke his back.
A cluster of clouds moved, paving the way for a single ray of light to kiss the meadow. Under the moonlit sheen showed Vashati a clearer view of an adult wolf. Though littered with bite marks and blood, the grassland's beast could not hide its silky black fur. Vashati leaned more. Her gaze fixated on the wolf's eyes. She could vividly remember its amethyst eyes, which reminded her of lilac roses during springtime.
Amid the faint whistle of the western wind and the diminishing hoots of the owl around them, Vashati's ears twitched. She could hear his heartbeat slowing down. Vashati's gaze wandered.
A soft escaped from her lips upon seeing the periwinkles dying around the black wolf's body. "So that is why ye are running from them, dear wolf," said Vashati. After being poisoned, the werewolf could not contain the multiple wounds from the five striga.
Gone was the distance she conjured between her and the dying werewolf. Vashati hovered over the heaving werewolf. The werewolf's tongue hung to the side of its mouth, a clear indication that if she would not move now, then it would be too late.
Without letting go of the stick she had used to poke the poor beast, Vashati reached out. Her trembling fingers reached for the black wolf's ear only to stop midway when her Grappy's grumpy face flashed at the back of her restless mind. Curling her fingers, she withdrew an inch away from her target. A pair of wavering amber eyes looked around.
What welcomed Vashati's unfocused gaze was mere silence.
Releasing a shaking breath, the Spring nymph reached out her trembling fingers again.
It was a magical moment of wonder and fear. As the cocoon of tears loomed at the apex of the meadow, the moonlit sheen paved a way to draw out hundreds – if not thousands – of fireflies around the two silhouettes at the very heart of the forest. None of the owls' hoots and the crickets buzzing noise faltered the ashen Spring nymph from her decision.
Vashati's pounding heart never seized. Instead, it resonated with every fiber of her being. Like a siren's call to a nomad, like a moth to a flame, Vashati was irrefutably drawn to the heaving furred beast before her. Though hundreds of answers filled her frantic mind, one was certain – destiny.
Vashati, a believer of destiny, knew that whatever the werewolf was doing before her, the higher forces willed it to be, just like what her Grappy would always say. She, the last of her kin, was the only healer that could bring him back from the throes of black and white. She placed both of her palms an inch above the black beast's head, her poking stick long forgotten before she muttered under her breath. "Faurereium."
Faurereium, an ancient word for ‘heal’. Since nymphs used the old language of Ruam to perform their magic spells, Vashati was taught by her Grappy. Though the healing spell she conjured was an art lost to the new world, Siobhan. Ever since the queen of olds cursed destiny and time, the ancient civilization of gold and glory was lost. What remained was a mere relic of the glorious old-world – Siobhan. It was now a world of eat or be eaten.
This was why Vashati would not dare to take a step away from the lone mountain. The evidence of brutality was heaving for life beneath her.
The warmth traveled like slithering vines from her heart to her palms, giving an equally comforting illumination to the werewolf who had stopped heaving and was now breathing normally. And slowly, as the embers of Vashati's healing magic dwindle, what was lying on the ground with his silky black fur turned into a man with raven hair in his splendid naked glory. His face was against Vashati.