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I'm not sure what i'm going to call this story as of yet. It's the first chapter in what I belive will be a semi long story. I hope you will enjoy it and leave me some thoughts on it. It's rated PG for some gore, but I didn't go into deep detail on the gore. So once again, please enjoy. There also seems to be some problem with indenting on this and i can't get it to indent, so, sorry.





Silver snowflakes fell gently on the breeze, swishing this way and that in long calloused strokes towards the snowy land below. The grey billowing clouds above had not yet morphed into a full blown snowstorm. But the minute whirlwinds carrying loose flakes of snow began to whip across the open fields between the forest and the river with greater frequency and intensity as the clouds swept over.
A deep gouge in the land showed where the slithering river snaked back and forth from one side of the valley to the other, sometimes curving back so hard it almost doubled around on itself. Snow laden willows lined either bank, and beyond them fields of pristine snow stretched out to the foot of the forest some distance away. The tree’s stood so motionless and so close together that the snows on their limbs at times stretched for hundreds of yards without a break.
On one side of the river the forest stretched out indefinitely over low hills that went on forever. On the other side the forest went for nearly a mile over the same rolling hills before the land rose quite sharply. A series of mountains pushed up out of the ground thousands of feet into the air and ran north and south as far as the eye could see. Trees wrapped around the bottom half of the mountain like fuzzy wool socks. Though here and there the trees found spots where they could climb up the side of the mountain; but none made it more than halfway up the rocky sides before the air became to thin and the trees gimped out.
The land beheld a certain unnatural feeling. It was as though a blanket of mystique had washed over the true way of things, froze it still underneath it’s crushing weight and refused to let go no matter the consequences. But the true way of things still existed. It was there when the sun rose to the far south over the trees, when the river cracked and overflowed, and when the snow became unbearably bright to the eyes. For a brief moment the day became as it once was and showed the coming spring. Although for now it remained locked.
From up the valley there came a long and mournful howl that shattered the silence and the mystique. It was a howl filled with pain and sorrow greater than the last dying screams of any animal. The sound moved down the valley from one side to the other before it died in the trees and swirling snows like a fish trapped in the ice.
The young pup opened his eyes quite suddenly, but continued to lie where he was unsure of why he had awoke. Realizing quite slow and lazily that something was different, he raised his head off his dark brown front paws and looked around the den for his mother. The den was dark and the pup had to squint as he peered across where the ends of roots hung down in front of the dirt wall on the other side. But his mother wasn’t in the darker part of the den. Turning his gaze up the brightly lit tunnel the pup cleared his throat, and then spoke. “Mom?”
He waited for an answer, and after several seconds expected to see his mother’s long black face appear against the grey sky. She didn’t appear though, and the pup repeated his call. “Mom?” Still nothing.
The young pup shook the sleepiness and dust from his fur and rose to his feet with a long stretch that started in his heels, arched up his back, and down to the tips of his toes. He walked briskly up and out of the den, squinting as the hair-like roots brushed across his face, and into the grey light of another winter day.
At first the pup sat and let his eyes adjust to the difference in light. He looked around the den entrance area expecting to see his mother, or one of his brothers and sisters coming towards him with smiles and kind words to greet him. But none of them seemed to be around.
“Mom?” He called out again with no reply.
The pup began to feel a series of panicked thoughts running through his brain as he looked around at the loneliness. Out in front of him a field opened up in a great wide oval filled with a thousand different wolf tracks going in a thousand different directions from a thousand different games they had played. On either side the trees moved further and further away from the den, eventually vanishing as they reached the river. Back behind the pup and the den entrance located under the roots of an unusually large pine, the forest sunk back into shadows and a hundred different trees leaning this way and that. Here and there trails filled with wolf tracks moved up into the woods and the sleeping areas in and around the trees. The only thing different was the wolves were missing.
Yet the pup refused to let the fear in his mind get the better of him. He was older than that. There had to be some explanation to why they weren’t in site. And so the pup stood up and moved around the roots of the tree along a worn wolf trail into the woods. He came upon an empty sleeping spot right away, set close to the den on a very small hill that made it the highest spot around for some distance. It was nothing more than a spot where the snow had been scraped down in a semicircle to the dead pine needles below. The pup stepped into the circle and felt the fuzzy needles prick his feet. He sniffed at the ground and recognized the smell as that of his father.
His father’s spot was a perfect spot the pup thought. He had played on the small hill many times during the late summer, but never really noticed why his father had chosen it until now. From where the pup stood he could see all the way down to the river and beyond to the trees on the other bank. He could see and hear very well through the trees for several hundred yards all around. He could also see the entrance of the den almost below his nose, which from the pup’s perspective made it a perfect spot for his father to be watching from.
The pup moved on without thinking to deeply on it. He would have liked the spot better if his father had been there. Right now though, he wanted to find his family, and so he continued on.
From one sleeping area to another all he could find were more and more empty spots. Each time he found another empty spot he continued on to the next one a little faster and a little antsier. He began to call out. “Mom?” “Ruther?” “Kish?” “Anybody!” Nobody answered, and the pup began running frantically while yelling at the forest, becoming more and more hysterical with each passing moment that somebody didn’t jump out and yell, “Surprise.”
“If this is some sort of game I give up.” He yelled out and ran along begging each empty sleeping area to give up his family. “Please come out, I’m scared. I’ve had enough.” He ran down another trail and eventually flew out of the woods in a panic sprint where he bolted to the den entrance and sat. He had found nobody. He was alone. They had left him. Why?
Immediately thoughts leapt through the pup’s skull like rabbits fleeting from a fire. He remembered all the stories that Ruther had told to his older siblings during the late summer when the sun never set. They had been out in the field before him, all of them had been there gathered around Ruther while he told story after story. Some times they were happy stories, other times they were scary.
There was the story about the great white bear, a ferocious beast that stood ten times as high as the tallest wolf, with teeth as thick as tree roots, and eyes so black they held no glimpse of a soul. He came in the middle of winter when food was scarce to kill anything he could get his paws on. The ice coat he wore made him impossible to kill and impossible to injure. The only thing anyone could do was run, and even that would be impossible since the bear could run like a river without ever getting tired.
The pup shook his head away from this horrible idea. He remembered the dream he had the night after the story where everybody had vanished and all he could find were bones and blood down by the river. Around them he found the prints of the great white bear. That nightmare had only happened once, but it had stuck with the pup like a scar he tried to keep well hidden.
For a moment the pup wondered to himself, standing in front of the den looking out at the field as the grey storm clouds above moved over, if they might be down by the river for some reason. At first the images of his dream and the bones and blood came to him. Did he actually want to go down to the river and see if they were down there, possibly dead? Or would he rather sit tight and wait to see what happened?
From up the valley it came with the same deadly mourning. The howl echoing softly across the snow, through the trees and sliding stealthily into his ears At once the pup realized why he had awakened earlier. He had heard the howl and didn’t register it at the time.
Joy and relief overcame the pup in one long sweeping wave that almost sent him into a puppyish fit. At least someone was out there trying to communicate to him that they were there. The pup stood up and before he could properly think about the message behind the howl he tried to begin walking towards it. But then he stopped and sat down to think on it better.
Why was it a mourning howl? Had something happened? Something had to of happened if the mourning howl was being sounded, right? Again the pup thought about if he actually wanted to go and find out what had happened, or just sit tight and wait. Looking behind him the pup thought about how lonely he would be waiting for someone to return to the den with sad news about someone he would possibly never see again.
The pup made his choice without thinking on it for another second. He began down the trail along the trees to the river. He moved briskly along at a quick and steady trot through the trees. The trail was well worn into the snow and meandered back and forth through the brush and trees without any hurry to get anywhere. Which at the time didn’t help the pup’s internal race to find his family, so he began running along the trail. Here and there he slipped on a slick spot, but each time jumped back up and kept running.
He reached the river and ran down through a trail through the willows and came out on an open flat area. Just ahead he could see the deep blue of the river ice swept clean by blowing winds. A sudden wind gust made the willows quiver and brushed snow across the ice, sending up a whirlwind that flew like a miniature tornado to the opposite bank as the pup.
For a moment the pup hesitated on the edge of the river. He had been warned before by Ruther and his father about the treacherous conditions the river ice could have. He remembered there stern warning about never going out on the ice alone unless it was a dire emergency. The pup hesitated for several moments more, questioning. Was it really an emergency? The pup thought so, and he made his first steps out onto the ice.
At first he moved slow, feeling the cold on his paws, listening for the telltale crack that said he was about to break through. Nothing seemed to be breaking or cracking. In fact the ice felt just as solid as the ground, and so the pup began running up the river as fast as his large puppyish feet would allow.
Up around the first turn of the river the pup ran as fast as he could, and he full expected that at any moment he would run into his family. The first turn of the river came then went with no sign of them; except for their tracks where the wind had swept the snow into thin piles.
The pup slowed down, too exhausted to keep running. How far would he have to go to find them? There was nothing he could do but to keep going. After walking and getting his breath back, the pup once again began to run.
After several miles of running walking and panting, then more running walking and panting, the pup began to loose confidence. He hadn’t heard a howl since the den, and he wondered if perhaps he had been mistaken. Maybe it had been nothing more than the wind playing tricks on his ear? Or maybe the howl had come from downriver?
The pup continued on, tired and terribly cold. The wind had begun to pick up and slash him with freezing wind that rushed through his fur like the wind through the willows. His nose felt frozen and numb, so numb he wouldn’t have been able to tell it was there if not for the fact it was right in front of his eyes. The bottoms of his feet hurt from running on the hard ice. He felt desperately miserable and wanted nothing more than to turn back to the den.
It was then that he came upon it. Lost in his own thought of how bad the weather was and how miserable he was feeling, he hardly recognized exactly what he was looking at until he stopped and thought. It was Kish, his older sister figure without a relation. She lay on her side nearly a hundred feet away near the edge of the river. She appeared still and lifeless, snow gathered on her back, and her fur ruffled against the breeze. Even from this distance the pup could see the blood on her mouth pooling under her head.
Before the pup could even react he found himself running towards her. He slowed just shy of her body to let it all come to him. She was dead. Her head rested on her front paws with her eyes half open and looking down at the small pool of blood. Snow had accumulated on her eyelashes and around the edges of her eyes. Her chest remained still. As the pup came closer and began to walk around her he could feel the cold emanating from her like she was a large block of ice. On her right flank just behind her front shoulder the pup noticed a wound about the size of his own paw where something had entered her.
The pup could feel tears in his eyes and a painful pit in his stomach. It felt like knots being tied and untied inside him. He wanted to sit down and howl to the sky and snow asking at the top of his lungs. “WHY?!” But deep down he knew he couldn’t. Otherwise whatever had gotten her might get him.
From behind Kish the pup noticed a trail of blood leading to the edge of the river and up through the willows that lay bare of the usual covering of snow. Kish had probably knocked the snow off them when she ran away from whatever had been chasing her.
Where was everyone else though? The pup looked at the willows and the snowy bank which he couldn’t see beyond. Maybe they were up there somewhere? A deep cold ran through the pup that came with a strong breeze which made him shiver beyond control. But the shivering was more from his own fear, than the cold. He hoped they weren’t up there or else he knew there fate to.
He had no choice. He had to climb the bank and find out if the rest of them were up there. Tears ran from his face liberally, freezing to his fur as soon as they touched it. With all his will he kept pushing forward, one foot in front of the other, keeping at as steady a gate as he could. He pushed into the shoulder deep snow on the edge of the river and bounded forwards to the willows. Twisting his body around he wiggled up through willows and snow. The snow was almost too deep for his young legs. He had to stretch his paws down towards the ground, and he still barely touched bottom. The willows did little to help him forward.
Finally he made it through with a lot of grunting and groaning and managed to pull himself up to the top of the bank where he stood. Wind battered his face and filled his overflowing eyes with a blinding blanket of white. The pup blinked against the snow and turned his face away from it. As it let down he turned back to see, and for the first time the enormity of it all hit him.
Before him in the snow lay six bodies closely grouped together. Around each body the snow turned a deep shade of red, especially below each body where bottomless puddles had formed. The overwhelming metallic smell of blood filled the air, along with a peculiar smoky smell the pup had never been witness before. Long and thin prints surrounded each body, then trailed off in a single file towards the distant trees.
But the pup could hardly pay attention to the new prints and smell; because his attention was focused on the six skinless bodies before him.
How long had he been standing there looking at the bodies? He didn’t know. Time seemed irrelevant at the moment, but it felt like he had been staring at them forever. Finally some piece of himself must have come back from the shock and he managed to sit down and begin to cry harder than he had ever cried before. They were dead. They were all dead and he had no idea who had done it or why.
He looked at the bodies and the blood and the snow. Then when the wind picked up he looked away and cried and cried and cried. He sobbed and whaled without care to who might hear. His emotions ran raw and unbridled, from deep internal anger, to desperate whaling. What more than crying could a young pup do? He wondered what he was supposed to do now, then he flipped back to a memory he had of Ruther playing a pounce game in the grass. Then his eyes focused on one of the unidentifiable bodies and he cried.
Then something caught the pup’s attention as he looked over the bodies. It was at the top of his peripheral vision and vanished as a gust of wind blew into his face. He turned away and looked again when it passed. Before him on the opposite side of the bodies a lone wolf stood. The wolf let the wind and snow batter his fur mercilessly. He appeared to be without care to the weather. His eyes remained focused on the bodies. Yet he seemed cold and distant from them, as if he were saying in his mind, ‘Better them than me.’
The wolf then jerked his head up in shock and looked straight into the crying pup’s eyes with the same cold look he had given the bodies, ‘Better you than me.’
Another gust of wind and snow blew across the pup’s face, and when he looked back the wolf began to turn away into another blowing cloud. At once the pup jumped up and yelled at the top of his lungs. “WAIT PAPA, WAIT!!!” …….

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