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A lone crash permeated through the calm snowy winter night. This sudden noise brought Anatoli up from his slumber. The wizened man who had taken refuge from the world in the far northern woods to avoid such a problem was not happy with these events. Rising from his bed, he slipped on his old army boots and reached over for his lantern, proceeding to strike a match, bringing light to his humble cottage. With that, he walked over to his window. The small shed he had just off on the other side of the clearing was what caught his eye. It was the only place where any commotion could come from in this isolated place. Sure enough, the locked door he had left the day before in pristine condition was ajar, if not completely removed from its frame, thrown inward to the shed. "Damn teenagers," he muttered to himself, grabbing his coat and shotgun. "This oughta scare them off." He wasn't about to let anyone ruin his retirement years. Upon exiting his small cottage, a faint snowfall hit his face. Far off in the forest, howls wafted through the cold night air. That is why he moved up here. The allure of nature was strong with him. After a youth filled with war and hardship, it just seemed right to move away from all the strife and turmoil that people had given him and live amongst the purity of nature. The shack he had lived in for the last 20 years was built by his own hand. The food he ate was all self caught. Very rarely did Anatoli have to hike into town, a day's journey for him, to gather supplies. Even at his age, he was still the great mountain man & survivalist that others praised. His days of living in the woods had calmed his anger towards humanity, but even in his hermitage, he wasn't going to allow the acts of idiots & troublemakers to go unpunished. With shotgun in his right hand & lantern in his left, Anatoli stood at the front of his tool shed, examining the remains of its door. The lock that had kept it from opening to anyone without its key had been split in two, the pieces strewn about the snowy ground. The door itself was a different matter. The door had been broken into splinters, pushed inward against the objections of its hinges, letting in the moonlight into the dark shed.

"Get out of the shadows, ya punks," Anatoli broke the silence with his harsh demand. "I'm armed, so no funny business."

There was no movement.

Anatoli walked over the remnants of his door, the wood crunching under his boots.

"I'm gonna give you til the count of three to come out before I start shooting." He raised his lantern to try and flood the small shed with light, light enough to view any intruder that might be in his way. Still, he saw nothing. Figuring that anyone would have shown themselves by now, he stood still & proceeded to his threat.

"One." He announced.

The only sound he heard was his own echoes reverberating against the wooden walls.

"Two." he proclaimed louder, cocking his gun, preparing for what might happen. If any intruder had heard that clicking, it should flush them out, he thought.

All he heard was silence.

His threat was the only thing he had left, and although he didn't want to, he was going to proceed with it. Slowly, he began circling the shack, pointing the shotgun around, hoping that the unwelcome visitor would see it and finally show himself, ready to surrender, unwilling to be blown away for his idiocy, but with no action seen, Anatoli's patience was wearing thin. With no other recourse, he rested his finger on the trigger, ready to follow through with his threat.

"Three!"

He whipped around, pointed the gun at his former door and shot. The bang rang out through the small shed. The bullets intended to harm any intruder had instead fired up and away into the slowly clearing night.

The entire situation had gone by so fast that it not occurred to him that perhaps there was no intruder at all. "Perhaps I've overreacted," he muttered to himself, placing his shotgun down, reclining on it. "Those no good punks must have battered down my door and ran off before I got here. No sense in standing in the cold. I'll just have to fix the door in the morning." With those words, he moved toward the door. Stepping over the slivers that were the shed's former door, the old man slipped, tripping back towards the rear of the shed. He desperately tried to regain his balance, trying to use his shotgun as a crutch once more, but that was in vain. Instead he found himself falling to the shed's floor flat on his back, releasing the grip he had on his lantern, causing it to shatter, taking away the light from this dark place. His lost lantern was of little importance to him now, as pain shot through his body, leaving him writhing on the cold concrete floor. Anatoli feared the worst. He tried to roll over hoping to use his arms to lift him up and limp back to his home, but upon moving from his current state, a yowl of excruciating pain emerged from his mouth. A million thoughts swirled through his head, but only one was important. In his current state, he was surely to die in this cold night. As his breath became labored, he did his best to relax and await the end. It looks like this is my time, he thought to himself. With a final exhale into the cold winter air, he viewed his last breath leave him and closed his eyes...

A faint whimper came from beside Anatoli, making him quickly open his eyes. That sound was close. With a turn of his head, he viewed the source of that sound. Underneath the shelves, he saw a shadow, the bare outline of some animal. Oh no. This must have been what broke down my door. If my fall didn't kill me, this beast surely will! Staring at the creature, its whimpering continued. After what seemed an eternity, the creature inched closer to the injured man. With renewed vigor, Anatoli tried reaching for his gun. Suppressing the pain, he inched his hand closer to his weapon as the intruder moved closer to him. The gun was almost in his grasp when he saw his foe face to face. Before his eyes, a grey wolf stood, looking straight at him with its yellow eyes. Strangely, he felt no pressure to continue his escape attempt. An eerie calm had filled him once more. Was it because of the wolf? He glared back at the beast. It continued its glare at the man but suddenly it closed its eyes & collapsed. The whimpering began anew. Anatoli was confused. It obviously had the strength to knock down my door, he thought, why doesn't it kill me, unless...unless it was hurt. After a few moments, the beast's eyes partly opened, trying to look at the man. Those yellow eyes, there's a sadness to them. It dawned on him, it's dying as well. As if on cue, the wolf raised its head slightly before lowering it down once again, whimpering louder. A nod? There's so much to nature the world shuns. It understands things we never can. Looking back into its eyes, Anatoli felt that he could stare into its very soul, sharing the knowledge that death would soon befall them both.

"Touch me," a voice inside him faintly spoke.

Anatoli didn't know where it came from, but he guessed it came from the wolf beside him.

"Touch me," the clear voice said again.

Feeling that not answering to the voice was below him, he relinquished his last remaining inhibitions and mustered his last remaining energy to crawl over to the wolf and hug him, the last action he would ever take in one way or another. Inching his body ever closer to the beast, he wrapped his left arm over to the wolf's head, gently touching the soft fur upon its top. A quick pet of the wolf didn't seem to bring his end, at least not yet. Instead, the wolf closed its eyes and let out a final breath. An odd calmness filled Anatoli with its passing as he knew he would soon join it. Leaving his hand on the cooling wolf's head, he lowered his head & closed his eyes...

"Death does not become you yet," that voice called again.

Anatoli reopened his eyes, now full of energy. A burning sensation filled his entire being, causing him to shake violently on the ground. Unusually, even in his current state, this wasn't painful in the least. Looking at his left hand, he saw something strange. Where his hand would be, now a canine paw took its place. The same fate soon befell his right hand. The sound of stitches coming undone filled his ears, carefully picking up each tear with new found precision. His boots had been ripped apart by a quick growth of his feet, now paws similar to his others. He quickly turned over and stood up on those new appendages. Tingling spread on his skin, pushing out silvery fur on his body and shredding his remaining clothes, leaving them in tatters beneath him. More tingling erupted from his lower back from which a tail grew out. His face began turning red, a force stretching it out. While the rest of this transformation wasn't relatively painful, this was. He closed his eyes and groaned as his new muzzle grew into place. As the final twinge of pain exited his new body, he reopened his eyes and let out a howl, reverberating through the shed to the outside world, the telling sign he was now truly a part of nature. How he had become a wolf he didn't know, but it didn't matter. Anatoli was now full of life, sensing the world anew. Scanning his surroundings with his new, more keen sense, the new wolf noted the sights and smells in the shed felt off, dark, unnatural, not meant for him anymore. Looking down at the shreds of his former clothes, he knew that the man he was before had gone. A faint howl reached the wolf Anatoli's ears. The pack he had heard earlier, when he was human, when he didn't understand its meaning, had responded to his first joyous howl. His new intuitions now guiding him, he darted out of his former shed, howling once more, trying to reach them. "I'm coming. Don't forget me." In the distance, a response. A long howl, its meaning clear. "We're waiting." The wolf Anatoli dashed into the forest surrounding him, the beckoning call of his brethren leading him to nature, to home.

**

Two hikers walked up to the hermit's house. They had heard the sound of a shotgun firing the night before. Thinking it was something serious, they took to checking up on him at dawn's first light. Opening the door, they saw a picture perfect house, but no sign of the missing hermit. Looking past the house, they spotted the damaged shed across the way.

"Looks bad," one of the hikers said as they started walking over to the shed, their boots crunching the freshly fallen snow beneath them.

On reaching the shed, his assumption proved true. On the floor lay the frozen body of Anatoli, face down, reaching over to the shelves close to him.

"Looks like he had a bad fall," the hiker said.

"But what about the door?" his companion said.

Looking down upon the remains of the door, he spotted the dead man's shotgun.

"That answer you question?" pointing to the weapon. "He must of gone crazy and shot down the door. He slipped on the splinters and hurt himself. He tried to reach the shelves to prop himself up but couldn't and, well, you can see what happened."

"Let's go get someone to get the body. He deserves a proper burial, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I guess, but before we do that, why don't we look around the house. Maybe we'll find something valuable."

"No man. C'mon that's just bad. Don't disrespect the dead."

"Fine," the hiker started moving toward the hermit's house. "I'll just be a minute."

"No," the other said, grabbing his friends arm before he could move away.

"Let me go. That guy's not gonna need anything anymore. Just let me grab..."

A howl pierced the air, interrupting their conversation, making them both turn their attention to the woods around them.

"That wolf sounded close," the would-be robber remarked with a hint of fear. "Let's get out of here."

Before leaving, his companion reached down for the shotgun. "Better take this in case that thing gets close."

"Wait? Why are you taking that when I can't take anything?"

"We're not in the business of stealing. We need this for protection."

"Stop trying to..." he tried to speak, but the wolf's howl stopped him mid-sentence. He let out a small shriek. "Okay, let's just get out of here."

Running away from the shed, the gun-toting hiker spotted two sets of tracks in the snow. One was what remained of a man's boot walking towards the shed, the other, a fresher set, was of a wolf leaving it. He didn't have much time to contemplate on his observation before another howl came from the forest, this one now much closer.

"Run!" He blurted out to his unarmed comrade.

With that, the duo dashed away from the scene of death, trying to avoid their own from the looming beast. The cracking of sticks around them confirmed their fears. The trees finally yielded their foe. A wolf ran into the clearing, the beast staring at the fleeing humans across the way with its striking yellow eyes. Instead of chasing after them, the beast ran off to the other side of the clearing and back into the forest. It had no interest in them. The wilds had called for the wolf and that's where it was needed.