Camargue, France - ANIMALE The salt marshes of Camargue sting Nejma’s lungs as she sprints through the dawn haze. Sand crunches under her boots, the rhythm matching the pulse of the taureau—the bulls—she trains daily to outmaneuver. This year’s course camarguaise isn’t just another bullfighting festival; for Nejma, it’s a chance to prove herself in a sport where women are still cursed behind closed doors. She’s learned every twitch of the bulls’ muscles, how their dark eyes flash when provoked. But animals, she knows, are never predictable. After months of bruised ribs and sleepless nights, her victory at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer feels like fate. The crowd chants her name, fireworks blistering the sky. Yet in the chaos of celebration, a young bull—driven wild by the noise—shatters its enclosure. It pins her against the arena wall, horns tearing through her shoulder before handlers drag it away. The wound festers, but it’s not the pain that terrifies her. It’s the fever dreams: blood-soaked fields, the taste of iron on her tongue, and an anger that doesn’t feel human. Weeks later, rumors spread like wildfire. A rogue bull stalks the marshes, its attacks too precise, too cruel. Boys from neighboring farms are found mangled at dawn, their bodies twisted in ways no animal should understand. The locals call it l’Animale—a cursed beast, neither fully bull nor wolf. But Nejma notices patterns: the killings always follow nights when her nightmares bleed into wakefulness, when she wakes with dirt under her nails and the scent of wet fur clinging to her skin. The men blame wolves. The women whisper older truths. And Nejma? She stares at her reflection in the Rhône’s murky waters, wondering if the thing she’s becoming is what Camargue deserves.