Moonlight Through The Pines

I’ve wandered a long time, longer than any reasonable man should, searching for the woman whose presence silences the echo in my ribcage. I sometimes tell myself I’m only scouting new opportunities, exploring the world, and weighing my options like any meticulous bachelor might. But the truth is less flattering: I am searching for her. The fierce one. The pure one. The monogamous spirit whose loyalty could melt frost off stone.

I met her once, briefly, in the kind of encounter that lasts three seconds but somehow imprints itself on bone. She didn’t speak. She just crossed my path like winter incarnate with long, slender legs stepping with a kind of quiet command that made every other woman I’d ever known look as delicate and uncertain as courtyard ladies adjusting gloves. She was the type who didn’t walk across a snow-blown field; she pranced as if cold existed only for other beings.

I’ve never met anyone else like her. No one so stunningly self-possessed that even the frozen wind seemed to pause and reconsider its priorities. Her white coat, or coat like a coat, I should say, because it shimmered like polished fur and gleamed with the shine of someone who takes care of herself with near ceremonial devotion. I remember watching her brush a strand of that snowy hair back with the casual grace of someone running a tongue over gleaming teeth. It wasn’t vanity. It was simply maintenance of glory.

She had an elegance that blended into her surroundings. Sometimes immaculate white, sometimes mixed with shades of latte and stone depending on the light. But it was her face that held me hostage-the upward curve of her nose, like her very profile questioned the legitimacy of the world around her. Her breath condensed in the air, rising like a soft winter steam that rhythmically appeared and vanished as though her lungs conducted the weather.

That night I followed her tracks-yes, literally. I don’t usually do things like that, but the snow captured her footprints so perfectly I felt guided by fate. Her steps were so confident they made the barren tundra seem alive, transforming lifeless rocks into mere backdrops for her vitality. The prints split once: one path leading outward toward where I later found evidence of a hunting ground, the other curling back toward home.

Home, a word I don’t use lightly. But she embodied the concept.

She wasn’t just breathtaking, she was capable, protective, ferocious in her selflessness. I once heard her call out into the night, a cry so resonant it felt like a great bell summoning younger souls home for dinner. I couldn’t understand the words, but the meaning hit me in the chest: You’re safe. Come back.

That’s when I knew.

I wanted to find her again. Not as a wandering stranger this time, but as a worthy partner. The kind of man she’d choose after a long, discerning look.

So I left my home and left the familiar and set off to find her. It wasn’t logical. It wasn’t economical. But some instinct older than my bones insisted I had to answer her presence with my own.

Naturally, nothing is simple when you are on a quest that feels partly spiritual, partly ridiculous, and wholly necessary. I encountered another traveler on the way, a hulking guy from a northern township whose posture declared, I am the alpha around here.

We’ll call him Braun. Mostly because that was his name, but also because it sounds like a man who shaves with a hunting knife.

We met at a frozen river crossing. I had just found a promising set of tracks-hers, I hoped-and was preparing to follow them when Braun stomped onto my path and eyed the same trail. His nostrils actually flared. Not metaphorically. Actually.

“Back off,” he grunted. “I tracked her first.”

I folded my arms. “Pretty sure I’ve been on this trail since before the sun came up.”

“That so?” He leaned in close enough for me to smell pine and pride on his breath. “Because I smelled her from the ridge.”

I blinked. “You… smelled her?”

He nodded as though this was a perfectly normal statement. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Oh, but I did. More than he knew.

Competition flared between us instantly like two stags sizing each other up, except we were human men in heavy winter coats trying not to slip on ice while asserting dominance.

Braun took one deliberate step forward. I took one deliberate step forward. Braun slipped on a patch of frost, windmilled his arms, and crashed backward into a snowdrift with all the dignity of a beached seal.

I would have helped him up, truly, but when I reached for him he growled, “Don’t touch me.”

So I nodded solemnly and respected his wishes.

He stood, brushing snow from his beard with unnecessary aggression. “Fine. May the better man find her.”

“Oh, I intend to,” I said.

He marched in the opposite direction of the tracks. I didn’t correct him.

That was the last I saw of Braun. I hope he found a nice moose to yell at.

Days passed. Storms came and went. Hunger gnawed at me constantly, and once I slipped on a frozen ridge and scraped my knee so badly it bled into my boot. I sat on a rock, panting heavily, nursing the wound. I thought of her then-the way she would have tended to a similar injury, licking and cleansing it with determination. Not giving in to weakness. Not giving up on the hunt.

She understood the balance between feast and famine, strength and gentleness. I’d seen evidence of her handiwork-small kills neatly dispatched, larger hunts taken down with precision. She was the type who could conquer something as large as a caribou one day and then cradle her young the next with a jaw gentle enough to carry glass.

She wasn’t reckless; she was wise. She didn’t just chase the biggest challenge; she evaluated. Should I take the fat one today, or the slower weakened one? Her decisions made the future stronger. She pruned the world with her choices.

This kind of woman? A man builds a life around her.

But she was also playful-something I respected as much as her power. I had once glimpsed her flipping a small creature into the air with mischievous delight, like someone tossing a cub, a toy, anything to amuse both herself and those watching. She had a spirit capable of joy even in the harshest conditions.

That was what stayed with me on the coldest nights: her blend of instinct, intelligence, and laughter.

One evening a storm rolled in-one of those violent northern tempests that turns sky into a swirling white void. I could barely see my own hands in front of me. The wind clawed at my face, and snow whipped so fiercely that each flake felt like a shard of ice.

I nearly turned back. Instinct screamed at me to find shelter. But just as I hesitated, a sound cut through the storm. A cry-not human, not fully animal either-something ancient and commanding. A call of loyalty that echoed across the frozen world.

Her call.

I followed it, stumbling, half-blind, until I reached a ridge where the storm broke just enough for me to see movement below-her white figure against the storm’s fury. She stood her ground, defiant, howling into the blizzard with a tail of confidence raised behind her.

That was when I slipped. A patch of ice gave way beneath my boot, and I fell-tumbling down the ridge in a chaotic mixture of limbs, snow, and questionable life decisions.

I came to a stop against a frozen bush, groaning. When I opened my eyes, she was there. Standing before me. Watching with an expression that felt like both amusement and appraisal.

Her eyes were sharp, discerning, soulful and they studied me as though weighing whether I was worth the trouble.

I tried to speak. My voice cracked. “Hi.”

She tilted her head. A silent question: Are you the one?

I rose slowly, respectfully. She didn’t back away. Instead, she circled me once, moving with that fluid grace that first captured me. I felt her judgment, her intellect, her instincts all working in harmony.

She had chosen before, not lightly, and she would choose again only with absolute certainty.

Finally, she stopped in front of me. Her breath steamed into the cold air. Her gaze softened.

And she let out a soft, low call.

The kind that binds. The kind that says, I choose you if you choose me.

In that moment I understood everything she represented: loyalty across storms, passion tempered by wisdom, ferocity balanced with tenderness. A lineage of resilience and love stretching across harsh seasons.

She wasn’t just a woman I admired.

She was the mate of a lifetime.

My equal. My partner. My fierce, cunning, radiant counterpart.

And she had inspired me and driven me to become worthy of her.

I stepped closer.

“I choose you,” I whispered.

Her eyes gleamed.

And in the vast frozen north, beneath a sky of swirling white, our two lives aligned-instinctively, eternally.