Happiness and Disaster
I'm going to tell you a story. A story of joy and sadness, of the beginning and end of life. To begin, our story takes place a few miles to the west of Anchorage, Alaska. A wolf paces outside of a small cave, waiting in barely suppressed anticipation....
"What's taking so long?" Roan, a dark-red wolf with deep brown eyes, asked himself for what must have been the 10th time in the last hour. He felt utterly useless standing out here in the snow-covered forest while his mate, Rain, a gray wolf with white markings, lay inside, giving the occasional yelp of pain. He was constantly reminding himself that this was a good thing, that he would soon be a father, and that Hiata, Rain's sister, was there to help. Although this did little to calm his racing thoughts.
Roan continued to pace outside of the cave, and half an hour later, Hiata, a grey wolf with pale blue eyes came out and told him that he could go in. As soon as he did, a wonderful sight met his eyes. In the back of the cave lay his mate, with four sleeping, little pups snuggled aggainst her side.
Roan aproached them slowly and thought, "Wow. I'm a father!"
"Aren't they beautiful?" , Rain asked him.
"Yes they are.", he replied. "What are we going to name them?"
"I actualy named two of them already. You can name the other pair."
She turned to the first born pup, a white female, and the second born pup, a black male. "The female is Winter and I have named the male Twilight."
He smiled at her. "They're good names.", he said. He then turned his attension toward the next pup, a small, gray female with a white mark on her forehead in the shape a "V". He stared at her for awhile and finaly came up with a name. "I think Veena is a good name for her." Roan then looked at the other pup, a gray male with brown patches around his eyes. "We'll call him Jared." Roan looked at his mate and she she nodded her head as conformation that she approved. They then settled down for the night, a sense of happiness enveloping them, allowing them to be content with the feeling that nothing else could get any closer to perfect.
=1 and 1/2 years later=
(give or take a couple seconds)
"Hey Winter. Winter! Wake up!" Winter groaned and slowly lifted one eyelid to reveal one of her deep blue eyes, still glazed over with the weary effects of sleep. Her brother, Jared, was standing before her with a wide grin on his face.
"Come on, Winter. Lets go outside and have some fun!" She sat up and yawned. Then, glancing outside, she realized that the pale sun had not yet raised itself all the way above the snowy horizon.
"Jared, do you know how early it is?", she said with a tired and irritated tone to her voice.
"Well, yeah.", he said, looking down at his paws and shifting them uncomfortably. "But I'm already up and I'm sooo bored and I just want to do something. So can you come? Please?"
Winter gave a heaving sigh and looked up at him with pleading eyes. "Isn't there anyone else that you could ask?"
"No, not really.", he said after thinking for a minute. "Mom and Dad don't like being woken up early, Veena doesn't want to play all that often, and I don't think Twilight would play if I asked him, which you know I wouldn't.", he added with a shiver.
Sighing again, Winter briefly thought about pointing out to him that she didn't like to be woken up early either, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings, so she just finally relented and followed her brother outside to the small clearing in the front of their cave.
After the pups had been born, Hiata had left to go back to her pack, and after they were a few weeks old, Roan decided that it would be better if they were to move their family to another, larger cave that he had discovered a few days earlier.
When they got outside, Winter and Jared began to mock fight playfully. This continued until the sun was higher in the sky, when Roan emerged from the cave, yawning away his sleep until he was fully awake, and asked, "What are you two doing out so early?"
"Oh, we just woke up and came out to play.", Jared said. Winter, of course rolled her eyes at the less-than-accurate statement, but didn't say anything.
"Well, since your already up, would you like to join me for a morning hunt?" Then he noticed that Winter looked incredibly tired and added, "That is if you'd like to go, Jared."
"I'd love to!" Jared said enthusiasticly. He started toward the forest while Roan walked over to Winter.
"I can tell your tired. Why don't you go get some more sleep." Winter smiled, thanked him, and went back inside, thankful to finaly get some well needed rest.
As she was going back to her corner of the cave, her mother and Veena came up to her. "Winter, Veena and I were going to the stream to get some water. Would you like to come?"
"No thanks mother. Jared got me up early and I was just going to to get a few more minutes of sleep." Her mother nodded understandingly and Veena gave her a small smile of sympathy, then they left.
Winter continued and finaly laid down to rest. "Ah, finaly. Peace and quiet, with no one around but me.", she thought. Then, however, she remembered that she was not the only one there, and an uncomfortable shiver ran down her spine.
As if sensing her discomfort, a quiet voice came from the shadows at the other end of the cave. "Am I really all that frightening, sister?"
"No. Just enough to make me lose all interest in going to sleep for fear of having a nightmare.", she responded casually. A soft chuckle came as response to the statement. "What are you doing awake, Twilight? I'd have thought you'd still be asleep, as usual."
"You weren't the only one Jared woke up with that yaping of his.", he said with distaste, opening his errie,pale-yellow eyes and giving her a side-long glance.
Sighing, Winter stood up. "I think I'll go for a walk.", she said. Twilight nodded and closed his eyes again. She walked out of the cave and into the forest. Winter stared around at the familiar trees and paths of her home and felt happy to live in such a wonderful (if very cold) place, with a wonderful family, and nothing to worry about.
-Two Days Later-
"I've got To go hunting with your mother.", Roan told Winter. "You are in charge until we get back."
Winter nodded and watched as her parents went into the woods. As she did, she couldn't help but feel that something was off, a sense of foreboding, like something bad was going to happen but she didn't know what it was. Winter decided it was probably just the sight of the gloomy gray clouds that hung overhead that was doing it and shrugged the feeling off. She continued to think that as she went back inside... until she noticed the same troubled look she must of had on Twilight's face as well, and Winter knew that if Twilight was disturbed, then something had to be wrong.
"What is it?", she asked.
Twilight glanced in her direction briefly before answering, "Something doesn't feel right. Something horrible is about to happen. I can feel it."
That was exactly what Winter had been afraid of.
* * *
Roan ran swiftly and silently through the forest, his every sense on high alert, searching for any sound, any smell, any visible trace of a potential meal. They had gone four miles already and nothing had turned up, which, as he noted, was most unusual. The forest should be teaming with life in this area at this time of day. He began to feel uncomfortable as he saw an open field ahead, and began to slow down, finally coming to a complete stop. Rain noticed he was no longer with her and turned back for him.
"What's wrong?", she asked when she reached him.
"Haven't you noticed this part of the forest is strangely deserted?"
Rain stopped to take in her surroundings and nodded. "Your right. I can't even hear a bird singing or a squirrel chattering. Something isn't right."
Roan nodded and was about to reply when he happened a glance past Rain's head, and his eyes widened as they met the most fearsome sight he had ever seen in his life... and one that he'd only ever had to look upon in his nightmares. In the end he only uttered one word, "Run!"
*
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