Feral heart

She is totally feral, a child of the forest. Abandoned at birth and brought up by wolves and wild creatures, nurtured by the trees themselves, nursed by raw nature. She knows nothing of civilisation, and her language is her own, her nouns are bird calls, her verbs are chatters and howls. She eats berries and roots and sometimes, raw flesh.

She sits on a high branch looking down at the boy, fascinated. He has no idea she is there. He is clearly lost, and frightened, with no knowledge of the forest or her lore. He sits beneath her sobbing and calling out in his strange tongue, scared and lonely.

She has had dealings with the humans before. Once, their men captured her and caged her and prodded and poked at her with strange, ugly tools. Escaping from them was a cinch and she remembers how she scampered up one of their silly, closed in, little dwellings and how she threw her shit at them before leaping back to her forest home where her walls breathed with life and her ceiling glittered with starlight. She sniffs deeply, there is a storm brewing and she makes a little chirping sound in her throat, calling the rain, it is her magic and she believes the rain calls back to her – and maybe it does.

The boy is not like those men, he seems fragile and sad. He starts, violently when she drops from the tree, gracefully, almost silently, in front of him, his eyes wide and terrified at the sight of her. She is naked and filthy, her hair matted and locked, her body caked in the earth she grew from. She stinks. The storm grows closer and she calls to it again and stares, enthralled, at him, tilting her head from side to side, curious and aroused. The first drops of rain bounce at their feet and thunder makes a distant rumble and she responds with a guttoral chatter, telling the thunder where she is, how to find her. The boy looks scared at this, to him she sounds like a crazed monkey, but there is a greed in his eyes that is stronger than the fear. He is young and never known a woman or even seen one naked.

The feel of his hungry gaze on her breasts and belly excites her. The wild orphan takes a step closer to him and reaches out. Clothes are a mystery to her and she tugs clumsily at his shirt and trousers wanting to free him, driven by instinct and passion. By the time she has him naked, the rain is beating, in hard, heavy, drops onto them and around them. Animals scream loudly in awe at the growing tempest and the forest quakes at its power. The girl knows nothing of social mores or decorum and she licks at the boy and sniffs him, takes him in her hand and makes him take her in his.

Furious raindrops burst around them and lightning flashes across the sky and through their eyes and hearts and loins. She beckons him to enter her and he does so, hurridly with the virgin impatience of youth. She claws at him, her nails digging carelessly into his flesh and she howls at the black sky as the rain turns dust to mud and they drench themselves in it and each other.

When they are done, it is not for long as giant raindrops now batter their shaking bodies, not allowing their desires to rest, awakening every little nerve, every sinew, the thunder shaking the ground beneath them. Their eyes meet and lock and, for the first time, she smiles at him. She wants more and mounts him and they begin afresh, this time the rain beats so heavily on them that it is hard for them to breath and they spit and fire, dripping with animal fury. She likes this thing she will call ‘men’ she will seek out more of them and the idea of several of them at once fills her imagination, she wants to be smothered with these hands, full of their lust, covered in their disgusting pleasure. Lightning strikes so close that the ground beneath them jumps and she throws her head back and howls so primally that for that moment the entire jungle is quiet for her, even the storm itself hushes as she yells.

Sudenlly she senses movement nearby, there are others and they smell human and not like her boy, there is something ugly and violent to their stench and she forces herself away from her desire and glances in their direction. She cannot know that it is the boy’s father and mother and the ranger.
“There he is!” shouts the boys father.
“Christ!” screams his mother, “He’s being attacked by something! Do something!” she pleads to the ranger, “Do something!”

The ranger’s bullet passes through her feral heart and lodges in a nearby tree. She collapses, lifeless, onto her lover’s chest.