Page 19 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part One

I was pretty sure I didn’t. My memory had more holes than Swiss cheese, but I didn’t remember any sort of artistic talent like that.

Weird, I remembered Swiss cheese. That was random.

“I’m Leo,” I said belatedly, once my words came back to me.

“Yes, you mentioned that before,” she said. Her smile was like the sun emerging from a cloud. “What’s that short for?”

“Leo.”

“Ah.” She chuckled a bit, although I didn’t understand the joke. “Well, for the record, I prefer to be called Ven.”

“Ven?” I parroted. She nodded. “Then, I shall call you Ven.”

“Thank you.”

Something about her smile and the depth of her eyes called to me like a siren at sea. I found myself wanting to lean toward her, drawn by the sheer gravitational pull of her.

Ha, it looked like I remembered some basic science now. That seemed like a good thing.

“I owe you my life.”

She made a vague gesture as if to wave away my ardent claim, still smiling softly. “I was just doing what was right.”

“You did far more than that.” I’d been trapped in the mind of an animal, locked inside a half-existence that denied me peace. But when she sang to me… It was a fleeting moment of tranquility in the storm of whatever cursed me.

And I would never forget that.

“Do you have anywhere to go? Is there anyone who would be missing you?”

“I… I don’t know.”

She nodded and took my empty plate away to place it in the sink. My eyelids began to flutter, and a strange slowness started to take me over.

“Are you tired?”

I nodded; a bit surprised that I was. I supposed that shifting for the first time in… how long? Too long. It had really wiped me out.

She smelled a bit like fear again, but her concern outweighed it. “Would you like some tea?”

Tea? I thought I might remember that, so I nodded again. “I would like that.”

Nodding, too, she put a kettle on to boil. With each passing second, more and more things were coming back to me. Little flashes and bits of information, all of them needing to be mentally decoded.

As the water boiled, my brain had time to cool off without any more new queries being loaded into it. I could simplyfeelfor a moment. And I sure had a whole lot to feel.

But then Vaness—no,Ven,—brought me a steaming cup of hot liquid and set it in front of me.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she murmured before disappearing.

Part of me wanted to grab her hand and beg her to stay, but she’d already done so much for me. It would be incredibly selfish of me to demand a thing more.

I picked up the heated mug and slowly sipped at it. Warmth flowed through me, soothing like an intangible blanket, and more flashes of memories returned.

I did have a family. At least I’d had a family at one point. I caught glimpses of being around a table, laughing with the blurry faces of the people I loved. Although I couldn’t identify any of them or pull up any more information, I knew without a doubt that every person at that table was incredibly important to me.

I couldn’t say how long Ven was gone, but when she returned, she waited for me to finish the somewhat bitter but wonderful drink before guiding me to her couch, which she had made up into a bed.

When was the last time I’d slept on anything that even resembled a mattress? I had no idea, but suddenly, I was incredibly eager to do so. I found myself getting emotional again. Silly, I know, but when last had anyone been so incredibly kind to me?

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