Dlefen: A Wielder's Journey

Chapter 7- Wolves alike the dogs

Chapter 7

Wolves alike the dogs

I woke up to someone poking me. I opened my eyes to see a whiny look on Zaphkiel's face with a stick in his hand.

"What is it?" I managed to croak out. He started to say something but no words came out of his mouth so he just wailed his arms around and looked at me expectantly.

I stretched slowly and rubbed my eyes, "Let me guess, you want food?"

He smiled and nodded. I furrowed my brows,"Why didn't you just say so?"

"Um... Well I don't know. I guess I was too lazy to talk. But give me some fooooooooooood!" he was jumping up and down. I chuckled quietly and rose to my feet.

For a second I felt as if we were being watched, so I did a quick 360. I couldn't see anybody. What I did see was that the weather was unusually beautiful. Birds were singing loudly and I could see a little bunny hopping by from one bush to another.

"... but I didn't find anymore potatoes there so- Hey are you even listening?" Zaphkiel glared at me.

"Pardon?"

"As I was saying, I think that we're out of potatoes," he stated shortly.

"Yeah, we ate the last ones yesterday. Let me see what I can find," I told him and searched our surroundings with a gaze. My eyes stopped on a bunch of berries, which I identified as wild strawberries.

"Look over there. Did you even try to find any food?" I scolded him.

"Well I searched from your backpack so practically-" he mumbled quietly, so I scoffed and shooed him away to pick some berries.

I packed all my things together. When I was done I went to help Zaphkiel. We both got four big handfuls, because there were a lot of them. We ate them quietly, but I could see that Zaphkiel hadn't had enough, so I gave half of mine to him. He smiled gratefully.

When we were done we decided to walk instead of flying, because it was so beautiful down here in the forest.

We hadn't been walking for a long time, when a wolf appeared in front of us. It was midnight black and had piercing blue eyes. It looked majestic. Zaphkiel instantly shoved me behind him and got in a fighting position.

The wolf just looked at him, then sat down. When it realized that it's actions didn't change Zaphkiel's stance, it looked at me expectantly. I studied it, and carefully walked out from behind Zaphkiel.

It stuck it's tongue out and panted a little and it strangely enough reminded me of a smile. So I just smiled back and sat just a little in front of Zaphkiel.

"What are you doing?" he whispered to me. I waved him off.

The wolf stood up and slowly came towards me. I noticed that it was really cautious towards Zaphkiel.

Zaphkiel then took two steps back, "Liz whatever you're doing, you better not get yourself killed" he told me. I chuckled a little and sent him a playful wink.

That was enough for the wolf. Now it came bouncing towards me and was trying to get my hand to pat it's head, so I pet it and even scratched behind it's ears. It seemed to be in complete bliss.

I laughed a little and scratched it under it's chin.

"Are you a boy?" I asked it suddenly. It looked at me with surprise, then whined a little and stopped wagging it's tail.

"So you're a girl?"

She yipped at me happily and her tail went crazy. I pet it more and it looked like Zaphkiel finally started to man up. He came next to me and carefully pat her head.

She looked very happy, but then suddenly stood up and walked onwards a little, then turned her head and barked at us.

I took it as a sign for us to follow her, which I happily did.

"Where do you think she's taking us?" Zaphkiel asked me.

"I don't know, but I trust her," I calmed him. The wolf was bouncing left and right on the path, her tail wagging wildly in every direction. I had trouble dealing with her cuteness.

After following her for a while, we reached a small village. The wolf cheerfully yipped at me and got in a playing stance, crouching her front paws and wagging her tail wildly.

I crouched in front of her and softly pat her head,"Thank you. Now we can buy ourselves some food. Was that your intention?" I asked her. She barked at me twice.

Then two men in guard outfits came.

"There you are princess! We were so worried. Tom here thought that the king would get our heads for this," they told the wolf.

"Princess?" I asked the wolf, furrowing my eyebrows in confusion. The wolf stopped her tail from wagging, took a bag from the guards and ran behind a tree.

We waited for a short while, then a girl came from behind the same tree, clothed in a simple but expensive looking dress. She was of average height with light brown hair tied in a ponytail. She skipped towards us, waved to the guards and stopped before me.

"Hi! I'm Destiny and I was the wolf that led you here! I'm a werewolf, you see. A princess actually," she rambled. My eyes were wide in shock.

"Oh sorry I didn't want to sca-" she started to say with a frown on her face, but I engulfed her in a huge hug.

"That's so awesome! So you can shift into a wolf? Can you wield something, too?" I asked her after letting her go.

She smiled widely, "Yeah I can transform into a wolf, everyone here can actually. You're in the werewolf village. Welcome! But no, wielders and werewolves are different things so I'm just a plain old werewolf."

After the very warm and unexpected welcome, we set our destination to go to Destiny's home. It was a enormous castle, so I was really surprised that I hadn't seen it yesterday during our flight.

Also me and Zaphkiel had an agreement to stay here for a while and, you know, get some rest.

Never had I ever felt so at home anywhere. Yeah, I had lived at the orphanage all my life, but here you could just feel the love oozing off of everyone.

The village in front of the castle was very much crowded by playing children and their parents watching them, elderly people, and just people walking around. I loved it here.

Destiny led us into the castle, where she told us to wait for her while she would ask her dad to allow us to sleep in the castle. That was so sweet of her.

***

After a while Destiny came back.

"My dad allowed it. Now because I'm so bored, I shall guide you to your rooms." She excitedly told us.

We were walking towards our rooms, and were just about to round a corner when we heard a loud bang. It was followed by what sounded like breaking dishes, some screaming and running footsteps.

I froze in my place.