I think I died.
Whether it was from the residues of arsenic in my system, or the acute internal bleeding, or the asphyxiation dealt upon me by the mother of Maude Caulkin, I could not yet be sure. All I certainly could know and remember, was Ara fading away, resigning into a bubble of immense hurt which I physically felt as heartbreak. It may even be the exact moment my heart stopped.
I saw Ara now, in a vast whiteness where it was just the two of us. Ara imitated my humanistic features to an extent, having a blonde fur the colour of my hair, and my eyes. She was beautiful. I went up to her and patted her. I felt the vibration of her pleasure beneath my fingers. We lent comfort to each other.
"This is all my fault Ara. I should have listened to you. I should never have tried to meet Freur. He has his own life. It's too late for me to interfere in it. It doesn't matter what the moon goddess planned."
Ara's eyes bore into mine. "Do you remember how he looks like?" she asked me. Even now, I could hear her voice in my mind. I could feel and relate to her distinct emotions. I could tell she was asking about Freur. Of course I remembered Freur! I've remembered him since he was nineteen and I was ten. I remembered him most of all in the woods. His big tracks. His breezy scent. The powerful lines of his back. The way the water rolled off his dewy skin. His smile. His voice. I remembered Ara talking about the sort of wild orgasms we could have had together.
"Those moments when you can remember him are worth everything," Ara said now. "He could have been good for us."
I sniffed as my eyes watered up for how calm and resigned Ara was being. "Don't you blame me? We could have still been alive, eating and drinking and cheering Freur Ferdinand on, while he officially introduces his bride-to-be to all of us. She's exactly what the pack needs. Someone who would kill to protect the pack's interests."
"Maude has her own interests," Ara opined.
"Let's hope that they always align with the pack's. Who am I kidding? I'm a bloody nobody whom no one would miss. I'd have been a leech if Freur accepted me. I'd be the pack's parody."
"Do you think your father and Flourescent knew this would happen?" asked Ara, out of the blue. "Like when they told you to reject Freur and said it was a matter of your life."
I shook my head. "No. They'd never be that cryptic if they ever had to get rid of me. They'd just send me to a college in Switzerland. But perhaps, they might have known Maude and her mother Riza were capable of killing me. I didn't really give them a chance to explain, running out on them like that."
"You can't let Maude have Freur, Audie," Ara solemnly said.
"But how?" complained I. "Ara, I think we are dead. I think we are both dead!"
"No we aren't." Ara pulled away from my embrace, as if offended by my assertion. She shook her fur and started stalking off.
"Where are you going?" I demanded, raising my hands in exasperation. "We are in this together."
"Not anymore," Ara said sadly. What the hell did she mean? She continued to move, rapidly increasing the distance between us.
"Ara wait! Wait!" I desperately called as I only began to reach the cruel epiphany that I'd feel better about being dead only if I had Ara to be with me. I could not possibly handle the heart break alone. "I know I've said many times in the past, that I wish we were separate from each other, but I didn't really mean it. I can't do anything without you. I can't handle losing Freur alone!"
"You are not alone. You are never alone Audie," Ara said cryptically.
This inner wolf was really beginning to piss me off for real. Why was she being so grave and wise? She used to be more playful and reckless than me— as every inner wolf ought to be. The pack out there was my harsh reality while Ara was my soothing one.
"Wait! Wait!"
I tried to chase her when I realized she would not obey me, but I came up short. It was as if she had disappeared through the whiteness into which I could not disappear with her.
"NOOO!" I cried. Much like the softie I would forever be, I cried. I could not remember for how long. And there was no Freur here to beg me to stop. Suddenly, I heard a rustling in my mind. I perked up. "Ara?" I called out hopefully.
There was no answer. I stood up, turning. Surely, my inner wolf had to be around somewhere. But she wasn't. There was a strange and entirely new presence in my mind.
"Ara?" I called again.
"Hi Audie."
"Ara?" I laughed with joy.
"I'm not Ara."
"What, you're kidding right?"
"You need to go, Audie"
Before I could ask any further questions, I fell through the whiteness. I closed my eyes and tried to erase the last five seconds. I comforted myself that Ara was there with me.
Somewhere.
When I opened my eyes again a brief interval later, it was to a bright blue sky made partly golden by the sun. For a moment, I could not believe it. I was alive.
"I'm alive!" I croaked out with amazement. With that confirmation out of the way, I concentrated on my surroundings. I was in the water. I was not just in any water.
I was in the moon river.
"What the fuck?!" I bellowed. I wasn't swimming. I could not seem to find my coordinates so soon after nearly embracing death. The river's harsh currents were carrying me swiftly forwards. To my horror, I recalled for the first time what was forward, a place where no Sanctuarian ever reached. The water fall.
A body bumped past me, and another. They were being carried away so fast that I barely had the time to register the face of one of them. The gateman who had turned me away from seeing Freur, Alfred. Logically, the other body had to be Nick's. Both bodies surrendered to the river's wicked currents, plummeting into the unknown below.
In a matter of seconds, I would be joining the free fall.
"No, no, no, no." But my mortified chants alone could not prevent what was coming. I had to find something to grab on to. Something sturdy that could break my free fall. Nobody ever survives the fall as far as I knew. I was heading towards death again and I wasn't eager about that morbid fact. I challenged myself to be resourceful. There was no time even to beg Ara for suggestions.
I had walked the length of the moon river once. Crossing over the waterfall to the other side was a rope bridge— as old as the mayor mansion itself, and unsurprisingly out of commission.
I figured out now what I had to do to survive. It was a slim chance knowing how old the rope was (I was not certain that it could bear my weight); but it was the only chance I had. Right then, I wasn't sure where I was; if I was still in my timeline and not miraculously transported to a parallel universe. The rope might not even be there anymore.
Still, it was the only chance I had.
I tried to swim. The water fall was in impending sight and fortunately, so was the rope bridge. I braced myself as the moon river pulled me closer.
Three.
Two.
The foam blinded me. My extremities tingled. My heart leaped into my throat. I had to survive. I thought about Freur, my mate, and the caustic woman he was coming so close to marrying.
One!
I reached out my hand and grabbed with all my might befure shutting my eyes.
DADUM DADUM DADUM
My heart would not stop pounding. I was still alive, albeit suspended in midair; the water fall making a tumultuous roar in my ears and bathing me with splashes of deathly cold water.
"I made it!" I cried out with joy. Now, to climb unto the bridge and hope that it held, I prayed. I could do it, I told myself.
But that is when it all went haywire. Again.
A FUCKING SPIDER!
I began to loudly appeal to the arachnid to turn away from me, or at least, let itself be blown away by the fierce water fall. But this creature was one resilient creep. I wouldn't say that I hated spiders or that I was scared of them. They simply repulsed me and made my body tingle in a not so pleasant way. And the fact that they had eight eyes?
Who the fuck needs eight eyes?!
This particular spider must have been sent by the moon goddess to test my will to live— but in that case, the moon goddess had really overestimated me. I may have been thoroughly dedicated to scaling an old uncertain rope while dangling in the air and being consistently doused by ice cold water—yet, I would not condone a spider as a companion.
My grip loosened on the rope as the spider climbed untop my pinky finger.
"Noooo," I gave my cry of repulsion as its spindly legs leisurely crossed to my ring finger as if it was enjoying slowly torturing me.
The irony that a life Maude and Riza could not end would now be put out by a mere black, hairy, eight legged, eight eyed, creepy, goddess forsaken spider.
"Forgive me life," I mouthed, before letting go of the rope, and letting gravity run its wretched course on me.