She was discovering this new sense, but somehow it only seemed to apply to him. The food still tasted the same. The dust tasted the same. She tested once, and couldn't find a difference between the wood floor and the metal cage, only the texture differed. Once she tried to lick the man who fed her, but tasted only more dust on his boot when he kicked her in the mouth. She never saw that one again, the next day it was a woman feeding her, but she didn't try licking again. Three days, she couldn't sing, and during those days her Wolf played little games with her, and fed her tiny bites of food, and tried to comfort her.

He seemed surprised at how frightened she was, the time he raised his fingers to her lips, traced the bruises, brushing them. She pulled away and ran to the far side of the room, huddling, finally, just outside her cage, unwilling to go in, knowing from long experience that once locked in, she might not get out for a while. Her keepers were often unwilling to release such a foolish little songbird, such a stupid Prize.

The days passed and she healed. Her body recovered from the blows - since he had been thrust in with her, they had not beaten her once, other than that kick. Her mind, slowly, started to recover. No, she didn't understand this healing, you've heard her music, and you can tell which stuff was from this period. It's... it's happy, yes. Cheerful. And face facts, you don't like it as well, do you? Oh, you wouldn't switch it off on the radio, wouldn't dare skip over it on an album, none of us would, but... there are others you prefer.

She didn't know how to deal with happiness, she'd never really had it, only a few simple gifts sometimes, trinkets, perhaps a little glimpse of something new. She earned her picturebooks that way, one page at a time, and she always knew which page went to which book. Careful piles of paper, here, there, she slept surrounded by images of beauty and death and everything violent and perfect. And she had her Wolf.

She had him in the purest sense, one day. One day when she took up a pretty little chain necklace she'd hung in the window - she rarely wore jewelry, what's the point in wearing it, you can't SEE it then. But she took the chain and she put it around his throat, and sang to him about her own collar, and the collar she gave him, and her voice slipped out of his hearing only once, when her words were about the scent of his hair as she fastened the metal, and the thoughts that scent pushed into her mind... but you've heard those too. Nothing new here.

They never let her hear another human's voice, singing. Wolf never tried. He spoke, and that was enough for her. Sometimes, though, he would hum... quiet, so quiet, his lips pressed against her ear, a tiny music that he spilled out just for her, and she would sing words for it later. Let the music build first. Grow. And then the words would come to her and she'd climb onto the cage, curling up there and watching him, singing his own music back with words so pure that he cried every time, turning away and hiding his face, ashamed.

She never understood that, not at first, anyway. The words she used, she'd heard them before, and now she was beginning to read them, he taught her that. His fingers guiding hers as he wrote in the dirt, teaching her symbols, patterns, and when she learned them she wrote them crooked, some up, some down, music turned into sketches in the dust that still covered the floor. Her little hand disappearing in his almost, he was small, true, but he was strong, and their hands slowly seemed to change, hers hiding within his, her body kept wrapped up in his.

His fur grew, beard and hair and body, and she rejoiced in it, petting, teasing, her mouth drawn gently over this new coat he grew, fascinated by the feel of it on her lips, the way it tasted, the newness of it. She showed him a picture, a carefully-hoarded page from a National Geographic, with a wolf... she pointed to him, to the picture, and sang about mirrors and the way the sun looks on water, and promised him a universe of forests in her music, a galaxy composed of clear streams and a thousand scents, she could read now and knew that wolves understood scent.

He did, at that... over and over his mouth, his nose, running over her, etching her into his memory. She didn't understand that either, believed that there was no need for such hurry, but enjoyed it nonetheless. Touch, contact, perfection and feeling and she loved the way his breath tickled the tiny hairs that were the only fur she was ever able to grow.

And then her innocence... ah, but everyone knows when that first left. When she first tasted blood that way. I know you've... yes, THAT song, I told you that everyone knows it. The one where at the end she is screaming, voice rising higher and higher... and then she falls, her voice is a whisper, untouched by any emotion it seems, so cold that you could use it to cool the sun itself. "Blood On My Lips". I'll tell you what the song doesn't... or what it doesn't explain, at least.

Months of his company. Companionship, friendship, he taught her so much. He taught her something that they didn't expect, or didn't intend, perhaps. One day she sung only to him. Only in his ear. Only with her eyes, her touch, whispers that no one else heard. She asked him about the world outside, again, and she told him of her desire to see the place that wolves like him came from.

Angry? Yes, they were... and when another day passed without song, without sound, without even her sleepy good-morning lilt that rose up to the microphones hidden within every wall, she was ordered to sing.

Her hand was on his collar. Power, again... every little bit counts, every little bit hurts, sometimes. And they took it away. Pulled him away from her, her hands clinging feverishly to his body as they tugged, her own body pressed, forced, there were hands all over her, places only her Wolf had touched, and then she was in the cage, and he was bound against it, over it... she tried to kiss him through the bars and he only whimpered, looking at her, and he asked.

"Why did you want this?"

They beat him. No clothing for him now, no protection, only the leather tracing fire across his skin and his wordless howls, head thrown back, then pressed against the cage in a futile gesture, and when they ripped away the tiny, cheap bit of metal around his throat she screamed too.

Her screams... ah, you've heard the song. Higher, higher... shattering glass, if they'd let it go on that long, but then the first drop of blood trickled down, landing in her open mouth. A tear, crimson, perfectly formed. You can't begin to imagine the look in her eyes.

Silence. Pefect silence for a moment, her sudden cessation of sound was so unexpected that the beating stopped, his screams stopped, no one so much as breathed... then she sang. Sang, keeping time to the leather against his skin. Sang, rhythm matching his tears, tone melding seamlessly with his breathing, his gasps. She reached into her heart and ripped out every shred of power she'd thought she had, offered it up without any emotion, unable to feel beyond the blinding, helpless guilt, and she thought she understood it now.

"His blood, blood in my mouth, on my shoulders, I have the weight of his life on my skin. His essence, his scent is clogging my thoughts, his eyes are closed now, deadly, can I die from this sin?"

They left him unconscious, her still caged, the both of them silent. She had again stopped singing, only because her voice had gone. That night, recovering, she sang harshly. You'll never hear that song on an album, never, the wounds dripping, feeding her, and her gratitude for the liquid and for his pain, they wouldn't dare show that side of her.

They wouldn't let you see her, when the cage opened.

When the whip was in her hands.

When he screamed again, for her.

--- to be continued... ---