One step from insanity {History}
Aug 6, 2018 4:52:39 GMT -5
Post by L on Aug 6, 2018 4:52:39 GMT -5
The wind was colder now than ever.
In the dead of winter, Ilana Valdís shivered. Her thin fur did nothing to shield her from its advances; more often than not, the hairs seemed to dance to its caresses and move under its ministrations. They didn’t get many winds, not in the valley, where they were shielded by mountains on either side - but when they came and when they were strong enough to whip the leaves off branches, that was when Ilana thought that she was truly living.
Even if it felt like she were moments away from frostbite.
“Ilana!”
Doe-eyed face emerged from behind one of the rocky outcroppings where the Valdís family made their den. The girl, still a child, crept from her hiding spot to face her caller. Of course she knew who it was. Of course she knew what they wanted. The voice rang with merriness, a warm kind of jingle that she couldn’t deny made a smile spread her tar lips.
“What d’ya want?” She’d called back, something like a mischievous glint in her eyes. The wolf who’d shouted her name was dark-faced like she was, but instead of orange in her belly, their fur was silver-grey. Dark stripes ran across their frame, tinting the fur around them somewhere in-between grey and black, too. Ilana couldn’t help but notice how the silver threads seemed to catch the light and reflect it off - especially in the sunlight, the fur seemed to become even more radiant than it already was. “Come on, I don’t have time for games!”
But that wasn’t true, of course.
“Ah… ‘Pa said he was gonna go hunt. He’s leavin’ stuff ta us now, haven’t ya heard?”
“Nah, ya funnin’ me! ‘Pa would never do somethin’ like that - ‘Ma musta be nearby. Ya watch it, or ya gon’ get it from her!” Ilana shook her head in mock disbelief, but there was a ring of truth around her words. Their ‘pa had never let an eye stray from his children, so he liked to say. But he’d been around less and less of late, and Ilana’d seen less and less of his plush hide with her ‘ma. He was a big man, tall and muscular, sheathed in monochrome black and grey. His eyes were blinding white, his nose, blacker than even the night sky. He was everything she thought a father should be.
“He did! I’ll betcha the next fish eye that he’ll be teachin’ us ta hunt within a week!” And at that, Ilana smiled, for even though he was more and more an absent creature, she was still privy to the way that he curled around her ‘ma when the nights grew frigid, and the children huddled near her belly. He was family, and family enough. “Yeah, say what ya want,” she snorted, raising a paw to lightly bat the side of her moonlight sibling’s face, “But if we ain’t catchin’ anythin’ by sundown seven days from now, I’m gonna have that eye, hear me?”
He never did teach them to hunt.
Ilana had been the first to find him, lying prone on the forest floor. His body had been slit down the middle, from the underside of his throat, past his groin and to his tail. Claws had shredded the fur in various regions; the pungent scent of urine marked his body with the smell of something she had never seen before, but knew how to fear. Three very large, very sharp nails had torn a still-bleeding gash into his side; his heart no longer beat but still the blood oozed out of his frame.
His body was still warm.
“Run!” He’d said - no, bellowed - as he faced off the lumbering mother bear. She hadn’t seen it, not when it was crashing closer and closer to the wolves’ location. But she could smell them, and she had blood on her mind, and the wolves knew that they were not leaving until blood had been shed. He’d never sounded so desperate before: his eyes were wide open, pupils blown in fear he tried not to show - but it was useless - she knew it, he knew it, and the bear could smell the fear radiating off him in waves. It was a painful, useless show; a precursor to the eventual bloodshed. His breathing quickened; his ears pressed flat against his spine.
In that moment, Ilana thought that he looked very small.
His tail lashed behind him, rearing up with whatever foolhardy bravery was left within him, whatever strength he could summon to face the bear. Even if he died… even if he didn’t make it out alive… it might save his children - his only children, and his mate. He’d been out hunting more and more, getting away from the stress of what was feeding and fending for his family. His hunts had been less and less successful; the pile smaller and smaller.
He’d grown older and older.
He hadn’t been young when he’d first seen the puppies born. He’d been a man past his prime, with a young girl who wanted to run away from her family. He’d seen an opportunity to pass his family name on and leave his legacy, and who was he to complain if that pretty female wanted it too? Who was he to argue when on a rainy night, sheltered by the shadow of a large rock, he’d taken her to his bed and made her scream his name to the heavens? Who indeed, when she’d sired his children, and each one of them had inherited his white eyes and dark markings?
He couldn’t lie and say that that hadn’t been the proudest moment of his life.
His life, which was speedily drawing to a close second by second now. What is a legacy? The bear lumbered nearer, now falling into a fast, heavy gallop. It dropped to its fours, charging towards the father who shielded his child with his aging body, still strong, still sharp, still weighty.
“Run, Ilana!” He didn’t dare to take his eyes off the bear, crouching over the child until he knew that she’d done as he said. “Run! RUN!”
Ilana didn’t look back. She ran and she ran, and digging into the bark of a young tree, she watched her father meet the bear with teeth flashing and nails drawn. She watched as he fell, an ugly gouge in his chest. She watched as he bled, the bear swiping its long, sharp claws down, down, down his frame, from his throat to his tail. Is this how you remember me?
She watched as he died, the bear pulling out his still-beating heart and crushing it within its jaws. She didn’t want dare to look at it swallow.
Her father gave one last sputter, blood bubbling from his lips.
His bright eyes turned grey.
“‘Pa?” No answer. Ilana tried again. “‘Pa?” He remained there, his already-gone life seeping from the numerous wounds that littered his frame. On the watered earth, he looked smaller than he ever had before. In death it seemed as though he had shrunken by several centimetres; suddenly he didn’t look so imposing, nor as grand as she had remembered him…
Ilana turned her white gaze away. She didn’t want this to be the last memory of her father, tall and proud, and yet she couldn’t erase the image of him from her mind.
“Comeon’, ‘pa. Ya gotta get home, gotta teach me an’ everyone else how ‘ta hunt.”
“‘Ma’s waitin’ on ya, ‘pa. We were gonna have fish tonight. She always liked it so.”
“‘Well, I’m gonna go now. I gotta get back, laters ‘ma be wonderin’ where I been. See ya back home?”
“... ‘Right then, I’ll… meet’cha there. Yeah. Don’t be late now, ‘pa.”
Ilana left.
A heartbreaking, shrill scream rent the noon sky asunder. Not even the wind was there to listen.
A week later, the promised eye didn’t taste as good as she had imagined it to be. Ilana shrugged off most things, most hurts and falls and scrapes, continued running with her siblings, tending the den, tending her mother, who had drawn into herself and now never left the rocks. She’d never seen her mother cry before, but when Ilana came back panting and shivering, smelling of bear, and… without her sire, she seemed to know instinctively what had happened.
When the night chill set into the air and the pups were asleep, silent sobs had wracked her mother’s body. Ilana hadn’t meant to see it but she had.
She walks funny now, Ilana thought bitterly. She walks like she’s in a neverending dream. But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what all of this is - a neverending nightmare. I’ll wake up tonight, in cold sweat, and if not, I’ll wake up tomorrow, and overmorrow, and an infinite number of days later, even if I have to die before I wake. And then we’ll be together again…
Ilana pushed herself further into her mother’s stomach, and she felt a gently paw covering her, rocking the child to sleep in time to her shaking.
Ilana had begun counting the days since her father died. It had been a year, maybe more, maybe less. She didn’t know. Life seemed to go on as normally as it could, although now whenever she looked into her striped siblings’ eyes, she saw a little bit of emptiness, a little bit of cold there. In spring, when the new grasses began to push up from beneath the snow, the yearlings had tried their paws at catching the fat grouse that wandered near their homes.
One brother had grown into the image of their father. He became the main provider; he had their father’s easy charm and wise eyes, despite his age. Everyone followed him without a second thought - Ilana would be lying to herself if she said that it had nothing to do with their father’s remembrance. And he seemed to know that, too.
Another brother was small and lean and slender, long-legged and lanky in adolescence. He was the scout, sniffing out new locations for their nomadic family. He looked more like their mother, fur bright red and striped in hues of wine. He was quick and fast on his feet, and Ilana felt that despite him being the youngest of the litter, she related most to him.
The other girl, fur a pretty hazel. Her stripes were less noticeable, but her claws were sharp and her teeth, sharper. She was the defender of their homes; whenever something needed guarding, she was on the job. She was average-sized, and her fur was littered with tiny scars: testament to her faithfulness - and her skills.
Ilana was the last of them all, firstborn and runt. She was the smallest, smaller even than their mother, and she was svelte and smooth and angular at the same time. She was lithe everywhere and while her muscles were not as defined as her brother’s, she was still deceptively strong, even for her size. But her strength did not lie in battle - her strength lay in her way with words, and in her fleet-footedness, less so.
“We should go hunt,” she said. Everything seemed to revolve around hunting now. It was as if there was nothing else to do - in reality, she knew they hunted mainly to escape the thought of their father’s death from encroaching upon their minds. None of them had seen the way his blood wet the soil like she had, but they all shared the brunt of the blow. “Yes, we should.” Agreed the oldest brother. “Hunt what?” Asked the other sister. “A deer, maybe.” Younger brother, now
“But we got a deer last week!”
“Who’s to say that that deer’s going to last us one more? You know ‘Ma always wants us on the move. We can’t bring barebones along with us!”
“You’ve a point,” conceded the sibling who’d argued against the choice. Ilana said nothing, noticing how they’d all dropped the mannerisms - and colloquialisms - of childhood.
On the way to their hunting grounds, Ilana saw a bear whelp.
It took one look at the hunting party, and scampered away, no doubt to its mother. “Let’s hurry,” urged the yearling Ilana. Where one bear was there were usually more - they were solitary creatures, but children were always accompanied by their mothers.
She shot one last glimpse at it before its stump of a tail disappeared behind the treeline. Good riddance.
“‘Ma?” One of the siblings nudged their mother, whose orange-yellow fur was now slicked with age, and limp upon her unmoving frame. Her eyes were closed, breathing very faint. She didn’t wake. “We need to go now, ‘ma.” Even in adulthood they still called her by their childhood nickname. The matriarch’s body was weathered, her eyes faintly moving behind her lids. “Come on, you’ve slept enough.” She was still breathing, but her chest was barely moving in the familiar up-down up-down way all creatures breathed.
“I guess we can wait a little longer, just so you’re properly rested. Ok, ‘ma?”
The four wolves sat with her until her breast moved no more.
Later, when the sun was not so high in the sky, they dug her grave and buried the old wolf while the sun set.
“Hey, ‘ma.” Ilana said quietly, when the day ceased and only the night creatures blinked in the dark. She was alone, sitting by the unmarked tomb. Her siblings had returned to their previous cave, the cave their mother had died in. “‘Member when I was this small, just knee high?” A soft, forlorn smile crossed her face and faded as fast as it had come. “‘Member you used to tell us to keep our heads up and keep walking? ‘Member ‘pa would sit on us and we’d struggle to get up from under his weight?”
The upturned grass didn’t respond.
“Yeah, well… I figured it’s gonna be pretty hard from here on out. You know? Keepin’ our heads up and all.” Ilana felt a stirring in her breast, but she had not the tears to cry. It was as if something within her had built a dam and forbidden the tears to flow. The urge to sob ebbed away, waves on the seashore. “I guess I’m not really feeling it now. Doesn’t feel real yet. Still feels like you’ll wake up any moment and crawl out of the pit we dug for you.”
She paused, as if that might be the case. Ilana watched the patch of sod intently, looking for any signs of movement.
When it didn’t, she sighed. “Got a secret for you, ‘ma, if you can keep it.” She leaned towards the grass and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’ve no water to shed. I’ll mourn you later, when we’re done sorting out what mess we’ve gotten ourselves into now.”
Still the grave said nothing, so Ilana shrugged. She stood, and patted the earth a final time, where there was a small hump disturbing the levelness of the grass. Then she left.
They lingered there for days after. Each night, a sibling kept a stoic vigil, when the others were asleep. It hadn’t been planned, but each still went to spend some time with their cold mother.
Sometimes Ilana thought she heard crying in the distance, when all the stars winked out. It was probably just the wind. Just the wind, she justified. Just the wind.
One night, awake in the den she shared with her siblings, Ilana closed her eyes and breathed in the crisp air. Dew was settling onto the young grass; the world was spinning madly on. She’d heard of gods, of mystical white wolves that could heal even death, or grant powers at their whims and fancies.
Ilana didn’t really believe in gods, but for the first time since her childhood, she prayed.
She was three, now, bite sharper than her bark. Her body was just entering its prime, the facial fur darkening with the onset of adulthood. Her stripes had come in fuller; her coats now regularly shedding as Summer entered Autumn and Winter entered Spring. The valley was still home, but it felt emptier.
She was a dark, jaded being. She was almost certain she’d been a good-natured woman once, but time had plucked away at her core and now… Ilana’s teeth, the colour of pitch, flashed impossibly in the light. They seemed to absorb all light instead of reflecting it back; yet struck by the rays of the sun, if she tilted them just right, they still glinted with morbid promise.
A cruel, eldritch smile split her jaws.
They’d dispersed by now, like proper wolves following Nature’s destiny. They were all around the Valley - or even out of it - what did she know? They’d not had proper contact since the few months after their mother had left the mortal realm.
For her, there was no companionship to be found amongst the woodland creatures.
The wind blew again, tossing her fur around.
How fitting, thought Ilana, that the wind should be my only friend.
In the dead of winter, Ilana Valdís shivered. Her thin fur did nothing to shield her from its advances; more often than not, the hairs seemed to dance to its caresses and move under its ministrations. They didn’t get many winds, not in the valley, where they were shielded by mountains on either side - but when they came and when they were strong enough to whip the leaves off branches, that was when Ilana thought that she was truly living.
Even if it felt like she were moments away from frostbite.
-3 years ago-
“Ilana!”
Doe-eyed face emerged from behind one of the rocky outcroppings where the Valdís family made their den. The girl, still a child, crept from her hiding spot to face her caller. Of course she knew who it was. Of course she knew what they wanted. The voice rang with merriness, a warm kind of jingle that she couldn’t deny made a smile spread her tar lips.
“What d’ya want?” She’d called back, something like a mischievous glint in her eyes. The wolf who’d shouted her name was dark-faced like she was, but instead of orange in her belly, their fur was silver-grey. Dark stripes ran across their frame, tinting the fur around them somewhere in-between grey and black, too. Ilana couldn’t help but notice how the silver threads seemed to catch the light and reflect it off - especially in the sunlight, the fur seemed to become even more radiant than it already was. “Come on, I don’t have time for games!”
But that wasn’t true, of course.
“Ah… ‘Pa said he was gonna go hunt. He’s leavin’ stuff ta us now, haven’t ya heard?”
“Nah, ya funnin’ me! ‘Pa would never do somethin’ like that - ‘Ma musta be nearby. Ya watch it, or ya gon’ get it from her!” Ilana shook her head in mock disbelief, but there was a ring of truth around her words. Their ‘pa had never let an eye stray from his children, so he liked to say. But he’d been around less and less of late, and Ilana’d seen less and less of his plush hide with her ‘ma. He was a big man, tall and muscular, sheathed in monochrome black and grey. His eyes were blinding white, his nose, blacker than even the night sky. He was everything she thought a father should be.
“He did! I’ll betcha the next fish eye that he’ll be teachin’ us ta hunt within a week!” And at that, Ilana smiled, for even though he was more and more an absent creature, she was still privy to the way that he curled around her ‘ma when the nights grew frigid, and the children huddled near her belly. He was family, and family enough. “Yeah, say what ya want,” she snorted, raising a paw to lightly bat the side of her moonlight sibling’s face, “But if we ain’t catchin’ anythin’ by sundown seven days from now, I’m gonna have that eye, hear me?”
**
He never did teach them to hunt.
Ilana had been the first to find him, lying prone on the forest floor. His body had been slit down the middle, from the underside of his throat, past his groin and to his tail. Claws had shredded the fur in various regions; the pungent scent of urine marked his body with the smell of something she had never seen before, but knew how to fear. Three very large, very sharp nails had torn a still-bleeding gash into his side; his heart no longer beat but still the blood oozed out of his frame.
His body was still warm.
“Run!” He’d said - no, bellowed - as he faced off the lumbering mother bear. She hadn’t seen it, not when it was crashing closer and closer to the wolves’ location. But she could smell them, and she had blood on her mind, and the wolves knew that they were not leaving until blood had been shed. He’d never sounded so desperate before: his eyes were wide open, pupils blown in fear he tried not to show - but it was useless - she knew it, he knew it, and the bear could smell the fear radiating off him in waves. It was a painful, useless show; a precursor to the eventual bloodshed. His breathing quickened; his ears pressed flat against his spine.
In that moment, Ilana thought that he looked very small.
His tail lashed behind him, rearing up with whatever foolhardy bravery was left within him, whatever strength he could summon to face the bear. Even if he died… even if he didn’t make it out alive… it might save his children - his only children, and his mate. He’d been out hunting more and more, getting away from the stress of what was feeding and fending for his family. His hunts had been less and less successful; the pile smaller and smaller.
He’d grown older and older.
He hadn’t been young when he’d first seen the puppies born. He’d been a man past his prime, with a young girl who wanted to run away from her family. He’d seen an opportunity to pass his family name on and leave his legacy, and who was he to complain if that pretty female wanted it too? Who was he to argue when on a rainy night, sheltered by the shadow of a large rock, he’d taken her to his bed and made her scream his name to the heavens? Who indeed, when she’d sired his children, and each one of them had inherited his white eyes and dark markings?
He couldn’t lie and say that that hadn’t been the proudest moment of his life.
His life, which was speedily drawing to a close second by second now. What is a legacy? The bear lumbered nearer, now falling into a fast, heavy gallop. It dropped to its fours, charging towards the father who shielded his child with his aging body, still strong, still sharp, still weighty.
“Run, Ilana!” He didn’t dare to take his eyes off the bear, crouching over the child until he knew that she’d done as he said. “Run! RUN!”
Ilana didn’t look back. She ran and she ran, and digging into the bark of a young tree, she watched her father meet the bear with teeth flashing and nails drawn. She watched as he fell, an ugly gouge in his chest. She watched as he bled, the bear swiping its long, sharp claws down, down, down his frame, from his throat to his tail. Is this how you remember me?
She watched as he died, the bear pulling out his still-beating heart and crushing it within its jaws. She didn’t want dare to look at it swallow.
Her father gave one last sputter, blood bubbling from his lips.
His bright eyes turned grey.
**
“‘Pa?” No answer. Ilana tried again. “‘Pa?” He remained there, his already-gone life seeping from the numerous wounds that littered his frame. On the watered earth, he looked smaller than he ever had before. In death it seemed as though he had shrunken by several centimetres; suddenly he didn’t look so imposing, nor as grand as she had remembered him…
Ilana turned her white gaze away. She didn’t want this to be the last memory of her father, tall and proud, and yet she couldn’t erase the image of him from her mind.
“Comeon’, ‘pa. Ya gotta get home, gotta teach me an’ everyone else how ‘ta hunt.”
“‘Ma’s waitin’ on ya, ‘pa. We were gonna have fish tonight. She always liked it so.”
“‘Well, I’m gonna go now. I gotta get back, laters ‘ma be wonderin’ where I been. See ya back home?”
“... ‘Right then, I’ll… meet’cha there. Yeah. Don’t be late now, ‘pa.”
Ilana left.
**
A heartbreaking, shrill scream rent the noon sky asunder. Not even the wind was there to listen.
**
A week later, the promised eye didn’t taste as good as she had imagined it to be. Ilana shrugged off most things, most hurts and falls and scrapes, continued running with her siblings, tending the den, tending her mother, who had drawn into herself and now never left the rocks. She’d never seen her mother cry before, but when Ilana came back panting and shivering, smelling of bear, and… without her sire, she seemed to know instinctively what had happened.
When the night chill set into the air and the pups were asleep, silent sobs had wracked her mother’s body. Ilana hadn’t meant to see it but she had.
She walks funny now, Ilana thought bitterly. She walks like she’s in a neverending dream. But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what all of this is - a neverending nightmare. I’ll wake up tonight, in cold sweat, and if not, I’ll wake up tomorrow, and overmorrow, and an infinite number of days later, even if I have to die before I wake. And then we’ll be together again…
Ilana pushed herself further into her mother’s stomach, and she felt a gently paw covering her, rocking the child to sleep in time to her shaking.
-2 years ago-
Ilana had begun counting the days since her father died. It had been a year, maybe more, maybe less. She didn’t know. Life seemed to go on as normally as it could, although now whenever she looked into her striped siblings’ eyes, she saw a little bit of emptiness, a little bit of cold there. In spring, when the new grasses began to push up from beneath the snow, the yearlings had tried their paws at catching the fat grouse that wandered near their homes.
One brother had grown into the image of their father. He became the main provider; he had their father’s easy charm and wise eyes, despite his age. Everyone followed him without a second thought - Ilana would be lying to herself if she said that it had nothing to do with their father’s remembrance. And he seemed to know that, too.
Another brother was small and lean and slender, long-legged and lanky in adolescence. He was the scout, sniffing out new locations for their nomadic family. He looked more like their mother, fur bright red and striped in hues of wine. He was quick and fast on his feet, and Ilana felt that despite him being the youngest of the litter, she related most to him.
The other girl, fur a pretty hazel. Her stripes were less noticeable, but her claws were sharp and her teeth, sharper. She was the defender of their homes; whenever something needed guarding, she was on the job. She was average-sized, and her fur was littered with tiny scars: testament to her faithfulness - and her skills.
Ilana was the last of them all, firstborn and runt. She was the smallest, smaller even than their mother, and she was svelte and smooth and angular at the same time. She was lithe everywhere and while her muscles were not as defined as her brother’s, she was still deceptively strong, even for her size. But her strength did not lie in battle - her strength lay in her way with words, and in her fleet-footedness, less so.
“We should go hunt,” she said. Everything seemed to revolve around hunting now. It was as if there was nothing else to do - in reality, she knew they hunted mainly to escape the thought of their father’s death from encroaching upon their minds. None of them had seen the way his blood wet the soil like she had, but they all shared the brunt of the blow. “Yes, we should.” Agreed the oldest brother. “Hunt what?” Asked the other sister. “A deer, maybe.” Younger brother, now
“But we got a deer last week!”
“Who’s to say that that deer’s going to last us one more? You know ‘Ma always wants us on the move. We can’t bring barebones along with us!”
“You’ve a point,” conceded the sibling who’d argued against the choice. Ilana said nothing, noticing how they’d all dropped the mannerisms - and colloquialisms - of childhood.
On the way to their hunting grounds, Ilana saw a bear whelp.
It took one look at the hunting party, and scampered away, no doubt to its mother. “Let’s hurry,” urged the yearling Ilana. Where one bear was there were usually more - they were solitary creatures, but children were always accompanied by their mothers.
She shot one last glimpse at it before its stump of a tail disappeared behind the treeline. Good riddance.
-1 year ago-
“‘Ma?” One of the siblings nudged their mother, whose orange-yellow fur was now slicked with age, and limp upon her unmoving frame. Her eyes were closed, breathing very faint. She didn’t wake. “We need to go now, ‘ma.” Even in adulthood they still called her by their childhood nickname. The matriarch’s body was weathered, her eyes faintly moving behind her lids. “Come on, you’ve slept enough.” She was still breathing, but her chest was barely moving in the familiar up-down up-down way all creatures breathed.
“I guess we can wait a little longer, just so you’re properly rested. Ok, ‘ma?”
The four wolves sat with her until her breast moved no more.
Later, when the sun was not so high in the sky, they dug her grave and buried the old wolf while the sun set.
**
“Hey, ‘ma.” Ilana said quietly, when the day ceased and only the night creatures blinked in the dark. She was alone, sitting by the unmarked tomb. Her siblings had returned to their previous cave, the cave their mother had died in. “‘Member when I was this small, just knee high?” A soft, forlorn smile crossed her face and faded as fast as it had come. “‘Member you used to tell us to keep our heads up and keep walking? ‘Member ‘pa would sit on us and we’d struggle to get up from under his weight?”
The upturned grass didn’t respond.
“Yeah, well… I figured it’s gonna be pretty hard from here on out. You know? Keepin’ our heads up and all.” Ilana felt a stirring in her breast, but she had not the tears to cry. It was as if something within her had built a dam and forbidden the tears to flow. The urge to sob ebbed away, waves on the seashore. “I guess I’m not really feeling it now. Doesn’t feel real yet. Still feels like you’ll wake up any moment and crawl out of the pit we dug for you.”
She paused, as if that might be the case. Ilana watched the patch of sod intently, looking for any signs of movement.
When it didn’t, she sighed. “Got a secret for you, ‘ma, if you can keep it.” She leaned towards the grass and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’ve no water to shed. I’ll mourn you later, when we’re done sorting out what mess we’ve gotten ourselves into now.”
Still the grave said nothing, so Ilana shrugged. She stood, and patted the earth a final time, where there was a small hump disturbing the levelness of the grass. Then she left.
**
They lingered there for days after. Each night, a sibling kept a stoic vigil, when the others were asleep. It hadn’t been planned, but each still went to spend some time with their cold mother.
Sometimes Ilana thought she heard crying in the distance, when all the stars winked out. It was probably just the wind. Just the wind, she justified. Just the wind.
**
One night, awake in the den she shared with her siblings, Ilana closed her eyes and breathed in the crisp air. Dew was settling onto the young grass; the world was spinning madly on. She’d heard of gods, of mystical white wolves that could heal even death, or grant powers at their whims and fancies.
Ilana didn’t really believe in gods, but for the first time since her childhood, she prayed.
-Present Time-
She was three, now, bite sharper than her bark. Her body was just entering its prime, the facial fur darkening with the onset of adulthood. Her stripes had come in fuller; her coats now regularly shedding as Summer entered Autumn and Winter entered Spring. The valley was still home, but it felt emptier.
She was a dark, jaded being. She was almost certain she’d been a good-natured woman once, but time had plucked away at her core and now… Ilana’s teeth, the colour of pitch, flashed impossibly in the light. They seemed to absorb all light instead of reflecting it back; yet struck by the rays of the sun, if she tilted them just right, they still glinted with morbid promise.
A cruel, eldritch smile split her jaws.
They’d dispersed by now, like proper wolves following Nature’s destiny. They were all around the Valley - or even out of it - what did she know? They’d not had proper contact since the few months after their mother had left the mortal realm.
For her, there was no companionship to be found amongst the woodland creatures.
The wind blew again, tossing her fur around.
How fitting, thought Ilana, that the wind should be my only friend.
