The Wild

-5- Wolves and Gunshots

Copyright © 2014. All Rights Reserved.

My profundity of cooking consisted of heath-conscious smoothies and an array of puddings and other desserts that made summer heaven. As for anything relating to dinner, well, that was what Vince was for. Knowing how to cook a meal was trumpery on its finest level, especially for a girl like me who could manage life knowing how to work a microwave. Amaya, however, was not that kind of girl.

She excelled in her cooking as I did in the art of making tea. In exchange for the thermos of the sweet-smelling ginger and cinnamon tea, she offered to make dinner. Not that we'd have it any other way, but it made making the tea worth while. It wasn't that she was as great a cook as Vince was--tossing ingredients together without a recipe and still making it perfect--but she tended to hover over her recipe books as if they were the bible and followed them directly, unless she personally wrote notes that changed a few parts in the book.

Amaya's home was perhaps smaller than my own, but had more privacy than mine was capable of having. The living room practically overlaps the kitchen, and the kitchen is just merely a wall designated for a row of counter space consisting of an oven and refrigerator. The couch is pushed back far enough in the living room to make for a narrow walkway between it and the counter, but that never seemed to bother Amaya since she was always able to seat herself on the back of the couch while cooking.

Beyond the kitchen and living room was a sunroom that, for the moment, was closed off due to the bitter cold rain pelting the windows. Amaya hated the rain, and even before I entered the house I knew she closed the sunroom off since she probably hated just simply seeing it. Sure enough, as I walked down the length of her driveway, the front window shades were drawn, and cooking was being done according to the pipe exporting a plume of delicious food.

I knocked on the front door, ducking underneath the overhang so I could shake out my umbrella without getting too horribly wet. Among the patter of the rain over my head, I was able to pick out the echo of a wolf howling in the approaching night. It signaled a chorus of others erupting around, mingling with the sound of rain dripping from the rooftop and into puddles milling on the dirt.

The door opened and just as Amaya was about to say something, a howl sounded a little too close for comfort deep within the woods, no doubt in the neighbor's yard. We exchanged panicked looks before she hurried me inside and took my umbrella to hang up over a newspaper already set up for her rain boots.

"Damn wolves been howling up a storm since this afternoon. I got home from work when it started," she complained in the process of returning back to seasoning the golden surface of a chicken. I moseyed over to the couch and avoiding the assortment of newspapers leaning precariously into the isle between the couch and coffee table. The television was on, and every now and then Amaya would look over her shoulder to watch.

"I heard gunshots."

"Freaky. Here, help me set up the plates." She pushed the two pristine white dishes into my hands and pointed towards her air-tight bag of fresh lettuce and apple slices. We'd eaten this same meal no more than two weeks prior with Bennet as a feast celebrating. And, just as I expected when I opened up the refrigerator, was her homemade salad dressing to put over the lettuce underneath the chicken she was preparing.

"Have you seen Mary lately? I went to check the store after work but it was closed," Amaya commented. A shiver of cold coursed up my arms, spreading goosebumps all over my pale skin at the thought of what happened just mere hours ago. Being in Amaya's house made me feel safer, though, as if the danger was days behind me instead.