Except, she did not die.

On her stomach, she remained still, pressed on the ground by a heavy paw on her back. She could feel the wolf in a way that was so acute she thought she would die of a heart attack before being mauled. She hoped all the gods would band together and decide to gift her that one final reprieve just for the sake that she had lived a relatively good life. She fancied herself a good person with alright morals who had lived a fairly average life. Surely, she reasoned, that could be leveraged.

When the wolf's muzzle found its way to her neck, she screamed again. She was still alive. The gods had abandoned her and she was going to be alive during a mauling.

Clearly annoyed, the wolf added more weight to its paw, pinning her harder than before to the cursed ground that chose not to swallow her instead. Its muzzle continued on sniffing. It was wet and cold, despite the hot air that emanated from it. It moved through her neck, into her hair and then back to her neck. Malaika kept on wiggling and even though her screams kept on getting muffled by the sheer force of the paw, she tried her damnest to release the little that remained.

"Found you," she heard and she was relieved that she had been found. She was going to survive, gods, she was going to survive!

"HERE!" She pushed with the last of her air.

She expected to hear the footsteps of her saviour, possibly hear them shooing away the wolf. Neither of these things came. Only another affirmation of, "I finally have found you."

She wanted to know where the owner of that voice was. Then after a second, she realized maybe they were not there to save her and instead, they were the ones who had sent the creature her way. Maybe she made good sport for them - with all the writhing and screaming. Maybe she was intentionally being hunted.

With all the adrenaline coursing through her, she could not think of anyone so cruel as to send such a creature her way. The only enemy she had was the Kiosk mama who hated the fact that she could not chop her own cabbage or sukuma wiki despite being as old as she was. Even so, she could not have hated her enough to send a wolf to maul her.

"Please," she said again, "I am sorry."

The paw, she thought, felt like it almost stumbled before it came off her back completely, allowing her to take in all the air she had been deprived of in one go. She didn't need to look back, she didn't need to see her captor's face. What she needed was to run away as fast as she could and so, she resumed her initial plan and began crawling before getting quickly to her feet and running.

The wolf, it appeared, did not care for this as it jumped right in front of her, earning a loud and startled yell from her, as she fell back, holding herself up by her hands, and moving backwards. It was clear she was not allowed the safety of her home and so she had to do with the river. Only she was not a good swimmer and if the initial first impression of the beast was anything to go by, she was not really going to go far either way.

"What do you want from me?" She asked, not willing to break eye contact with the wolf. Her tormentor might have been in charge of the wolf but she was far more scared of the creature than she was them.

"To meet you," the voice said.

It was peculiar, she noted, that the voice did not come from behind her as she had estimated and instead seemed to have come from where the wolf stood. She would have tried to stretch her neck to see who stood behind it but she was scared of making herself even more vulnerable. Besides, even with all the chaos, she had not been sure she had seen anyone on the wolf's back. 

Even in the throws of certain doom, she felt a tad silly asking, "Then have your wolf eat me?" Malaika had wanted to sound braver but she knew it was a lost cause. Instead, she sounded shaken with a touch of docile which, she thought, made her an even more perfect prey.

"Why would my wolf eat you?"

It was a person! All she had to do was appeal to them and they would stop with whatever they were playing at. A breathy short laugh escaped Malaika. She was going to fake confidence even though all she had shown up until that point had been anything but. "Are you serious?"

"Very much so." The voice was almost amused. She was starting to think she should form a pact with the first demon she met after death, to torment them for as long as they lived.

"At least show yourself when you threaten someone," she said.

"Alright."

Too many things happened in a span of a second. Too many would have her thinking she would be sent straight to a psych ward. It would make sense that in all her solitary years of living, she would get schizophrenia-adjacent symptoms.

What had her completely and utterly convinced that she might have had schizophrenia after all was that where the wolf had stood a second ago, a naked woman stood instead.