I bend my head over Jacob’s back and bury my tear-streaked face into his warm fur. The reek of deer blood and his strong musk hits my heart like a logging truck. As each log rolls uncontrollably onto the highway I feel my heart smashed and rolled. I can see it in the moon-drenched streets, my heart sobbing as tree corpses bounce and collide around it. The driver of the truck swears at the coyote as he wrenches hard on the steering wheel to avoid the mangy creature.
The beast looks back, and through the jumble of logs, we make eye contact. I drift here for a thousand years, caught in this hormonal nimbus. I hold my position, straighten my posture like I’ve seen my mother do: stern brown, slightly protruding lower lip, and vacant eyes.
A warm sock envelops my vision and I hear a familiar voice, “Hey, Renesmee!” I swivel my head trying to locate the voice. The road beneath me juts and tosses. The log truck is swallowed by a sudden crevasse and the coyote is nowhere to be seen. “Renesmee!”
The voice is urgent, but I can’t find it. “Jacob!” I shout I scream, I bleed, I gnash. I release a desperate howl and claw the air as a log tumbles into my heart face.
Our fires are low and seldom burn for long. “You know, you don’t have to like, have one every night.”
“I don’t light them every night.” He coughs out the words as he tends the fire with a long stick. Dark shadows play across the surface of his corded and toned back. His shoulders or knotted and I can tell from his movements he is stiff from the day’s run. “I light them when we need them.”
“Won’t they give our position away? Our trail?” I twirl my hair and listen to the forest creatures fleeing from our small fire. My stomach growls.
Jacob finishes tending the fire and squats next to me. He’s been doing this a lot recently. I keep my eyes focused on the flame but the hairs on my arms and neck begin to tingle and rise. Something inside me is clawing to get at him, to consume him, to make him mine, to own, to tame, to claim, to fillet the wolf and rend the man. To skin his dreams and melt into his solid presence.
Arthur Challenger 