From the silence, Ghosteater watched the male and female humans kiss. He could smell their arousal. It brought back ancient memories from the time before his difference truly emerged, the time when he still ran with his pack, hunting the great lost beasts of that age, the time when he still hungered to breed and make young. But no she-wolf would have him, even then. They feared him.

He didn’t realize, at first, that he was different from the others — bigger and stronger, perhaps, but not truly different.

At some point, though, the hunts began to bore him. Leaping from the tall grass upon a bison or sloth — such creatures presented no challenge. They smelled of rank terror and tasted of it too. When his kin would not follow him against other, more equal creatures, he left them and wandered alone, hunting the great cats and bears. When he returned at last, his kin ran from him, as terrified of him as any other animal would be.

He grieved, then, afraid he would always be alone, a terrible thing for a wolf. And so he had been, mostly. But he had been wrong to fear it. Solitude had its rewards. And he wasn’t a wolf — not really. Not anymore.

Still a beast, though. Always that.

He scented the air again.

The male was unfamiliar, but he recognized the female as blood kin to the other humans the wind had shown him. That made sense — it was this young female the wind had brought him there to see.

The wind spoke incessantly, and it liked to be heard. Few things could understand it, so it often sought him out. Usually it simply told him about what it had touched, of late — a months-dead doe just emerging from melting snow, cold drops of water falling toward the forest floor, the line of harder rock protruding from an exposed peak.

But now, for the third time in just a few days, the wind spoke not of what it had touched, but of what it might touch in days to come. When he gave it his attention, it fractured into a thousand competing voices, each running down a different path. Rapid and fleeting, the whispered stories avalanched over him like mist, there and gone before they could be grasped. In the end, he understood only their common thread.

She-pup, she-pup, she.

Intrigued, he crept closer, watching as the female disappeared into the house.

He turned his attention to the golden-haired male, who was walking down the path to the car. The man smelled of anxiety. He got into the car and sat for several minutes, drumming his fingers on some part of the interior. Ghosteater could tell his anxiety had to do with the female — it was blended with lingering notes of desire. Perhaps he feared for her. But why? She whom the wind had named.

Finally, the male came to some decision. He smelled of risk and purpose.

He brought the car to its strange, lifeless form of life and pulled out.

Ghosteater followed him. He loped through the silence behind the car, but only so far as the eastern edge of town. He could not run fast enough to keep up on the highway. Curious, he settled down to see if the male would return.