Chapter One
It began with my first breath. The wretched thing that's known as life.
My struggling to get free from my mother's sack, the gasp of icy-hot air that burned down my throat like alcohol, and the feeble pup-squeaks that I yelped out once I had worked myself fully free from the clinging, clear substance were all part of Life's cruel joke.
And everything I knew and was taught for the next few years were the punchlines.
Growing up, I never really knew I was odd; didn't think of myself as any different than the other pups in the pack.
I did everything the others did: I played, learned how to stalk small prey like field mice (which would eventually amount to hunting), and learned how to behave around certain members of the pack.
While it was true that sometimes I felt as if I was singled out from the other pups my age, I didn't think anything of it. If anything, I felt special.
Special.
That was the word I'd been called for the majority of my life in the pack. It was always "Your son is so special!" or "Your boy is a great member of the pack! He's such a special addition!".
So, it was understandable when I grew to believe that my name was "special boy" or "special son". But, everyone in the pack had odd names like "One who lives off the earth" or the simpler "Star-gazer".
My mother, though, was different from the others, like me, but not in my unique way. She was very outspoken, nurturing, and incredibly beautiful in my pack's standards. She would always call me her "Little Wolf".
Her fur, a light tan, was as smooth and sleek as a deer's hide and her narrow eyes were a milky white color - almost as if they had somehow swallowed up the light of the moon. She had muscles that bunched and rippled as she walked, although they weren't as prominent as the males, and long legs that aided her in fast running. She'd even lead the pack for a while, until she was relieved of the position after mating with my father (whom, by the way, I've never met).
What I've never understood is why the pack didn't like my father. In my naivety, I couldn't think of anything that could possibly arouse such hatred in the pack that my father had been driven out and my mother exiled from leadership, and whenever I asked she simply told me not to worry about it in her soft, velvet voice.
My love for my mother ran strong throughout my puphood. My favorite thing had been those intimate feeding times in our den alone. I had loved the way my mouth curved to meet the shape of the tiny out-raisings of the nipples on my mother's soft belly skin; loved the trickle of the warm milk down my face until it gathered at my chin ad dripped down like water from a leaky faucet. And my mother would always sing a gentle lullaby to me afterwards that would lull me into a serene slumber as I curled into the indent below her chest and felt her body-heat radiate through me.
. . .
Do you hear the wind whisper lovingly?
Hear the night owl's song?
Hear the bugs chirp from the trees?
Until the night is gone
Until the night is gone
Hear the night owl's song?
Hear the bugs chirp from the trees?
Until the night is gone
Until the night is gone
. . .
What woke me up I couldn't be sure, but I was betting that the shrill cry of the bobwhite in the distance had something to do with it.
Then, a scuffling came from outside and a few voices began to murmur following the loud thud of thick flesh against the dew-covered ground.
I shot up, at first not recognizing the voices of my pack members from having just awoken into the drowsiness of the morning. Then, another voice that came in with the group yelled something that sounded like "Breakfast!".
I relaxed. It was only the hunting leader coming in from the dawn hunt with the body of some large animal to feed the relatively small pack.
Untangling my legs from the awkward sitting position, I pulled the pressing, black waterfall of my hair from my face. Then, I blinked a few times to allow my eyes to adjust to the dim lighting of the den.
"Breakfast!" the hunter wolf called again to arouse anyone whom hadn't awoken the first time.
I wriggled away from my mother's still-dormant body (as much as I hated to leave its heat) and crawled through the confined space of our den, contorting my body to the sloping, dirt cielings so I could escape out the entrance just barely with my limbs being jammed awkwardly to my sides.
I wasn't in a hurry, so I took my time freeing the last part of me, my right leg, out of the hole. After all, it wasn't as if getting to the meat first would give me the opportunity to be the first one to eat, since pups who were old enough to eat meat got first dibs.
I hadn't gone un-noticed as I emerged, with complications, from my den. The gathered wolves all turned their heads to face me, disinterest glazing over their eyes.
A snowy-white wolf with a scar dashed accrost his right eye surveyed me blearily from his left, a look of disapproval upon his face. This, as I had learned over the years, was the pack leader who'd taken the Alpha position after my mother.
His name, I recalled, was "Storm-Eye". Well, at least that was the nickname that all of the young wolves called him. In a meager pack like this one, both rumors and stories spread fast.
The dominant reasoning for his name being that was, if you could get close enough, you could see a storm in his eyes - chaotic swirlings of blues and purples with flecks of gold.
Often, pups would play games of courage and would dare each other to approach the pack leader and stare into his blind eye.
I had once taken this dare, but was foiled when my mother called me away for feeding. I could still remember that day like it had just happened yesterday, and could also remember being called "scaredy wolf" for the next week.
Oh well, it was better than being called "special".
*end of Chapter One*~ Tell me how you liked it!~
