Red and Her Wolf

Prologue: Secrets

The small cottage door was quaint against the sizeable one story brick sprawling summer home that her Grandma kept as a position of power and little else. That wasn't the best thing about the cottage, however. 

No, the best thing about the cottage was that there was no surveillance around it or it's grounds, which made it more secure than anywhere else in the forest.

Red grimaced and rolled her eyes thinking of the hundreds of security cameras hidden in the trees around her home, her town, "protecting" her against the scourge. She checked around herself out of habit, hoping no one was walking up the pressed dirt path bordered by innocent flowers and perfectly placed stones before inserting the key left for her as agreed.

She entered the dark and cool house, smelling the familiar scents, and one extra. That one set her heart racing.

She shut and locked the room behind her, never too careful, and took off her red hood, sick of what it represented and who it represented. She brushed down her plain pants and white shirt, eagerness to get inside further balanced against her desire to look presentable.

Usually she didn't want to care about being presentable, but she did when she came here.

She walked through the front seating area and past the kitchen, noticing a pair of glasses left out. The sight quickened her heart again.

"Hello?" she said quietly, but knew she'd been heard. A rustle of sheets came from further in the cottage. She smiled to herself and whispered "I'm coming to get you!"

Quickly, barefoot now, she passed the various rooms of the cottage making her way towards the back where the bedrooms lay.

She peaked into each room, hoping to see a figure between the sheets. But the guest beds were empty.

Her smiling lengthening, she moved towards "her" room which was as impersonal as the other bedrooms, just the one she'd been told was hers. She pushed the door open, catching a view of the empty bed.

Just as her smile creased into a frown, she heard another sound, a shifting of soft things together.

Red inhaled sharply, realising where the sound was coming from. She shook her head and sneaked towards the last bedroom, the room she hated entering.

Not trying to be subtle, she pushed open the door and subdued her reactions.

On the bed lay a giant wolf with a comic floppy hat resting against long grey ears. The wolf shuffled against the soft cotton sheets and flashed white teeth at Red.

"Oh, Grandma," Red said in a low voice. "Is that you, Grandma? You look...different?"

"I have transformed from the Betrayer at last?" The wolf's returning growl somehow morphed inside Red's ears into human words, while still sounding exactly like a wolf.

Red pursed her lips. "It's not that." She moved forward. "Grandma, what big eyes you have. I've never seen your eyes look so large before!"

The wolf, lying on all fours on the bed sat up and batted large lupine yellow eyes at Red, the show of white teeth growing larger. "All the better to see my favourite and easily controlled granddaughter with.

Red frowned. "Oh, Grandma," Red continued to inch around the bed from the door, taking her steps very carefully. "What big ears you have."

"All the better to hear the cries of the weak with," The wolf wiggled her ears, making the precarious hat fall off.

"Wait, is that not you, Grandma?" Red said with disbelief, and the Wolf nuzzled under the hat until it was lopsidedly sitting back in position.

Red breathed out in relief. "Oh, I was confused for a second there, Grandma. But Grandma, what big TEETH you have!"