Clara had always slept alone, and like most young people, she slept with absolutely no sense of decorum — sprawling, rolling, and generally occupying every inch of the bed in whatever configuration suited the moment. In the depths of sleep, she forgot entirely that a wolf pup was nestled in the warmth beside her, and rolled over in her usual fashion, settling face-down with her full weight pressed into the mattress.
"Yelp—" A faint, strangled cry rose from somewhere beneath the duvet. A brief scrabble of movement. Then silence.
Clara slept until the alarm dragged her back to the surface. She sat up, stretched luxuriously, and glanced toward the kennel at the side of her bed with the easy habit of someone checking on a familiar presence.
The kennel was empty.
She stared at it. The door was still locked from the inside. She cast her mind back through the fog of sleep, and then — oh.
Oh no.
The realization hit her like a bucket of ice water. She had a habit of rolling face-down in her sleep. She always had.
She threw back the duvet.
Naber lay completely flat against the mattress, limbs splayed, ears pressed sideways, even its mouth slightly askew — compressed into a shape that no living creature was meant to assume.
Clara's own mouth fell open and stayed there.
Dead. It was dead. She had killed it.
"Baby—" She snatched Naber up, and the small body was stiff in her arms, unnaturally rigid. With trembling fingers she held her hand beneath its nose.
Warm. But not breathing.
Clara sank back onto the bed. She sat there for a long moment, holding the still little body, feeling as though she deserved to walk directly into a wall.
She had pulled it back from the edge of death on the grasslands. She had smuggled it past every checkpoint and inspection on the journey home. She had moved out of her dormitory for it. And now, through a single careless, unconscious, entirely preventable moment — she had killed it herself.
The guilt was crushing. She pressed Naber against her chest and wept.
Tears fell onto the soft fur, soaking into the downy coat. And then — the rigid little paw twitched.
Clara didn't notice. She went on crying, clutching Naber tightly, until Thomas began knocking urgently at the door. Finding it locked, he went for the spare key.
"What's wrong?" he said, taking in the scene. "What are you crying about at this hour?"
The question broke whatever last restraint Clara had been holding onto, and she let out a wail. "I squashed Naber. It's dead. I rolled over on it in my sleep."
Thomas stared at her for a long moment. "You slept with the dog in your bed." It wasn't a question so much as a resigned statement of the universe's continued injustice. Three years. He had been patient, persistent, and thoroughly unsuccessful for three years — and he had been outranked, in the end, by an animal. "You're unbelievable."
"Don't cry." He crossed the room and put a hand on her shaking shoulder. "It's just a dog. I'll buy you another one if you want."
"It's not a dog." Clara, too submerged in grief to think clearly, said it without thinking. "It's a wolf."
Thomas went very still. Then: "Are you out of your mind?" He passed a hand over his face. "I knew something was off about it. I knew it. A wolf. You went to the grasslands and came back with an actual wolf." He shook his head slowly. "Well. At least that's sorted itself out. Honestly, it's probably for the best."
The words landed like a slap.
Clara looked up at him, eyes red, something cold settling in her chest. "Do you hear yourself? You never liked it — fine. But does it have to be for the best that it's dead? That I killed it?" Her voice cracked. "Are you happy about this?"
Thomas opened his mouth, thought better of it, and closed it again. There were moments when a grieving woman in search of something to be angry at was an entirely unstoppable force, and this was clearly one of them. The Clara he had fallen for had always been sensible and even-tempered. Somewhere along the way, one small wolf had turned her into a person he barely recognised — one who had come to regard the animal as more important than him in every conceivable way.
"Alright," he said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. What's done is done — try not to be too hard on yourself."
Clara buried her face in Naber's fur and went on crying, shoulders shaking.
They had known each other such a short time, and yet she had come to think of Naber as something like her own — something to protect, to fuss over, to be responsible for. And she had failed at the most basic level imaginable.
"Heh — choo!"
The sneeze was enormous relative to the body it came from. Naber shuddered from nose to tail, all four legs jerking in sequence. Then, slowly, with monumental effort, it pried open two very flat, very aggrieved-looking eyes and peered up at Clara's tear-streaked face. Its mouth opened. It drew a long, wheezing breath.
Both humans in the room went completely still.
Naber had been pressed flat as a leaf — and it was alive.
Clara reached out a disbelieving hand and touched its nose. Naber's warm tongue emerged and licked her fingers.
She pressed her lips together, unable to speak.
Behind her, Thomas looked at the ceiling with an expression of profound personal grievance. Of course. Of course it had survived. The creature was clearly here specifically to torment him, and apparently not even being sat on could stop it.