A Drizzle of Home

3 | A Drizzle of Pity

"Spruce, stop!"

The wolf's weight rocked back. Seeing my chance, I mustered the strength I had left in my foreleg and jerked upward. The top of my skull collided with his jaw, and his teeth came together with a loud crack. He stumbled back and off of my body, shaking his head and holding his muzzle askew. His lip curled in pain, yellowed fangs stained with a sliver of crimson.

An even more sinister growl emerged from his gut, and his burning eyes grew to a blaze of death. He locked his gaze on my throat, this time telling of a pain I couldn't imagine.

"Stop it!" The voice rang out again, this time drawing both of our attention.

I yanked my muzzle toward the trees, scouring the forest's green to find yet another wolf beneath the needles of a pine. Slick fur shimmered in the sunlight, the color of pure, perfect ash. A small and slender body, with thick white curls cresting the neck and chest, gave the wolf more volume than... she had. The calm but terse voice had emerged from an equally petite muzzle, now curved into a frown. A round and narrow nose topped it, while wide and angled eyes sat higher up on her face, the area around them lined with dark, faultless lines. There was something about the color––what I could only guess was silver––that reflected a glint of the soft blue in the sky. Despite the discontent in her icy expression, a spark of something warm twinkled deep in her gaze.

"What do you think you're doing?"

My heart nearly burst as I tore away my eyes. I swallowed the nervous acid rising in my throat, blood rushing to my face as I struggled to find anywhere to rest my sight. Only when she cleared her throat, prompting an answer, did I realize her glare was not on me––but the yearling wolf near my side. He'd been stopped so effortlessly by this soft-tongued female, the hatred melting from his face and replaced with a subtle scowl. He avoided her eyes.

"He started it," the pup, Spruce, mumbled. "He threatened me."

The muscles above her eyes lowered into a similar glower, no color on her fur to differentiate the brow-region from the rest of her face. "I don't care. You don't attack until I tell you to."

Until? So she was here to kill me, but I wasn't sure why she was so intent on keeping the pup from doing it first. Her small and soft appearance didn't seem like much of a killer, body short and rounded, her legs long and lean. There wasn't much muscle anywhere else on her, and she was much smaller than I was. But looks were all too often untruthful––just like the juvenile's claims that I had started anything.

A chuckle drew my ears back to the ashen wolf's side. There, another pup sat, similar in color to the first. Less black singed her fur, and more pale, sandy brown bristled up from her undercoat. Her pelt formed a blur of bark and shadow that blended perfectly into the trees.

"Shut up, Pine!" A groan escaped Spruce's muzzle. He locked his eyes on me, now with a little more vigilance than pride. The juvenile stepped around my form without lifting his gaze, treading cautiously until he stood at the two females' side. "I wasn't going to hurt him," he claimed. "He was trying to run."

The first part, I doubted, remembering the glow of yearning in his eyes––for excitement and bloodshed. But the second half was true. What did they think I would do, so carelessly leaving their strange and hostile scent on the riverbank for me to find when I woke? Warning me that someone had been here, seen me. If only I could run, and I hadn't failed so miserably in my attempt to leave before they returned with reinforcements... oddly, in the form of a runty she-wolf and her pups.

As if on cue, the female pup stepped forward in a crouch. "I don't think he can." She crept closer, muzzle pointed intently at my bloodied foreleg. Her inhale was audible, voice growing in pitch with curiosity. "He doesn't have a paw."