(Context? What is this context of which you speak?)

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First time
by afrai

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Dorian came to himself with a start at a movement in his line of vision. It was a wolf, standing about twenty yards away from him.

It looked at him steadily. It was a beautiful creature, slim and deadly and as silver-black as a moonlit night. Dorian read high breeding in the proud arch of its skull and the delicate line of its snout. Its gaze was unwavering, wary but fearless.

"Hello," said Dorian. He expected it to bound off, but it kept still, staring at him.

"You won't stare me out of countenance," he said half-jokingly. "Very few things discompose me." The sudden thought of the Major, his face breathtakingly lovely with rage, gave the words a tinge of bitterness that he'd yet to admit to, even to himself.

The wolf did not move. Dorian fancied its eyes to contain respect, interest, a willingness to be coaxed into friendship -- all things that had been absent from the Major's eyes.

He got up, feeling absurd as he did so. But what was life without absurdity, without fancy, without romance? It would be like that poor, dreadful Major's life, all foul cigarettes and merciless duty. Had he ever touched anyone outside his work, for no reason but the joy of it? Had he ever kissed anyone? Ever been kissed? What a waste for Nature to have created such a face, a face made to be covered with a thousand worshipping kisses, only for it to end up on the hardest, most level head Dorian had ever met.

"Wait here," he told the wolf. "I'll be back in a minute."

He didn't really expect it still to be there when he came back, but it was. It hadn't even changed its stance -- it was still poised between fight and flight, body tense in readiness for action.

Dorian knelt to bring himself on a level with the wolf, carefully keeping the same distance between them as before, and held out the hunk of meat he'd gone to get. The wolf's eyes flicked from the meat to his face. Its eyes had a fierce, inhuman intelligence. Dorian kept his hand out and steady.

He looked at the wolf, and it at him, for what seemed like forever. Dorian felt caught in a stillness bigger than himself, a beauty wilder and more elemental than any in his paintings and statues, but no less alluring for that. It was the beauty of a brush with the vast unknown, the beauty of glimpsing an infinite reality compared with which his was insignificant. Dorian trembled with excitement.

The wolf came closer and closer by degrees, padding forward cautiously. Dorian held its eyes, too spellbound to wonder at the fragile thing fluttering in his chest.

Then the stillness was broken -- the wolf leapt forward, snatched the meat neatly from Dorian's hand, its teeth closing not an inch from Dorian's fingers, and bounded away, all in a dizzying second. It stopped when it was a safe distance away again, looking back. Dorian realised its eyes were green, green as spring leaves, green as emeralds.

The wolf turned, and it was gone. Dorian sank back, his heart thudding against his ribs, his eyes glowing.

"Oh, you beauty," he breathed, and he realised then that the tremor in his breast was fear, a fear that was translating itself now into a deep, sweet ache, a pain beyond any he had ever known, because he knew now that he was in love.

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