Work Text:
Were there raccoons in Siberia? Actually, were there raccoons in New Mexico? Miss Pauling had a raccoon skull on her mantel. But she didn’t remember where it was from. She had just thought it was cute. She called him Helton. After her grandfather.
Had Heavy even ever seen a raccoon? This was maybe something she should have established before offering to take care of the raccoon he claimed to have in his ceiling.
Heavy told a story about the time a grey wolf had stalked him for three miles across the tundra, beneath a visual symphony of an aurora, before they had faced each other. Of course, Heavy had won. It was one of the saddest and most beautiful stories Miss Pauling had ever heard. She still misted up a little when she thought about it.
But the reason it had crept back into her brain was that maybe, in Heavy’s charming blended Russianglish, a raccoon was anything smaller than a wolf.
Because this thing in his attic was definitely not a raccoon. Probably not a raccoon. If it was a raccoon, it was a raccoon that had seen some shit.
Miss Pauling had brought a .22 calibre pistol. She looked at it, hefting it in her palm. Then she looked at the glinting pair of eyes, manic and possibly rabid, peering out from behind a box of old bullet casings. She sighed.
"Heavy," she called, resigned, but determined, "there’s an axe in the back of my truck. And a whetstone. Could you grab them for me and hand them up? I have eye contact with this thing and I think it would be a good idea not to lose it."
"Remember the wolf, Matroyshka."
Her eyes prickled slightly. Her wolf was a probably-rabid, maybe-raccoon in an attic in New Mexico. “I know, Heavy. I remember the wolf.”