I had this dream last night which inspired me to the following (short) story.
Petronella and the Wolf
Petronella was cycling home after a long and gruelling workout at the local gym. The hilly terrain of Montana provided an adequate challenge for the twenty-one year old ‘fitness freak,’ as she was known in her hometown. ‘Fitness freak’ didn’t begin to cover it, though, as Petronella was absolutely obsessed with becoming not only the fittest but also the strongest young woman in Montana and she dreamed of one day competing in the Olympia contest. For as long as the could remember, she’d been stronger than even the boys her age and she excelled in every sport in which she partook, from soccer and tennis, to swimming and cross fit. She loved to train her body to exhaustion and wasn’t averse to showing off. This meant she was usually dressed in tight-fitting clothes which left little to the imagination and she loved it when boys lusted after her body. But though all the boys fancied her, she’d never had a boyfriend. For one thing, they were too intimated by her strength to give it a try, but for another, the man of her dreams had to be stronger than her and she had as yet not met any man who fitted that criterium. She would go swimming with the boys in the summer and she pretended not to notice the bulges in their pants when she took off her shorts and shirt to reveal her flawless bikini body, and every year, she offered the boys a contest. The first one to beat her to a rock some hundred yards off the shore would get a kiss, she always promised. And maybe more, she always hinted. But even Joey, who was two years older than her and heavily into working out, had never managed to come even close. In fact, it never cost her any effort to beat the boys, but she didn’t tell them, because she was afraid she might hurt their feelings and she wasn’t a mean girl. Still, every year she hoped one of them could give her a little more of a contest. At one point, she had joined the Montana swimming championships, but after she had won them way too easily, she had simply pretended to have gotten an injury, for she’d found the races quite boring.
The howl of a wolf rent the night air and gave her a sense of freedom. She was out here, in the wild, with no geeky men checking her out or making awkward attempts at flirting. The feeling gave her an energy boost, which
allowed her to cycle a bit faster.
Then there was the howl from that wolf again, but this time it was a little closer. Petronella wasn’t afraid. Having a body and strength as impressive as hers, she’d never felt afraid of anything since she was three years old and she’d found the bullies would stop when she punched them. A huge moon was shining through the bare branches and then she saw movement among the trees. Could it be a wolf that was running along with her? It was surely too fast to be a human or a bear and it was too big to be a mountain cat. Yes, now she saw the yellow eyes of the wolf, watching her as she was cycling at over twenty-five mph. The fact that the wolf was keeping up with her was quite impressive. It meant it was a fit specimen of its kind, just like she was. Was it trying to race her? she wondered, knowing that the behaviour of wolves sometimes resembled that of humans and dogs closely. Maybe the wolf was trying to impress or challenge her. The thought produced a grin on her face.
After a while, she thought that it might be dangerous to challenge a wolf to a contest and she decided to stop and see how it would react. As she reduced her speed, the wolf, too, slowed down, showing her that it had indeed been focused on her. As a Montana resident, she’d been taught never to show fear when confronting a wolf, but that lesson was redundant, as she wasn’t frightened in the least. The wolf now came out of the woods and had its teeth bared. Petronella got off her bike and at first she held it between the wolf and her, but then the beast started to circle her. She noticed it was really big, as wolves go, but she didn’t care. She simply started flexing her legs and took a deep breath, to expand her chest as far as she could. She rolled up the sleeves of her shirt, showing the wolf her very impressive biceps and shoulders.
The spandex shorts were stretched taut by her massive quads, still pumped from her gym workout and the cycling. The creature seemed unsure of what was happening. All its senses told it that it was confronting a female of the human species, but she was bigger than any human it had ever seen. She then lifted the bike above her head and the wolf instinctively backed away two steps. Adrenaline was by now pumping through her body, making her feel even stronger and then she realised that she was bending the frame of her bike. It was a pity, because the bike had been expensive, but when the wolf heard and saw how the metal frame was bent, it wisely chose to run away. This human was simply too big and strong to be considered a prey.