FAMILY

Woods Part 1

A white wolf that looks like puppy on a brink of a growth spurt, is keeping a watch on the surrounding terrain for any predators near its pack. After a perimeter check the puppy settled near the entrance behind some bushes and her thoughts drifted.

Mina is the guard to the pack. Ever since she could remember, she lived with this wolf pack. However her pack leaders told her long ago that she was adopted. Long ago they found her wondering in the woods by herself so they took her in. They decided to raise her as their own when they saw what was left of her family home. Mina does not remember her family home nor knows why the pack leaders won't take her there to see it.

The leader and his mate raised me as their own pups. Then when I reached the age of teenager they thought me to become a guard and puppy sitter. As I grew in to my teenage body, my growth spurt stopped. I guard the pack, but I can't become an adult until my body changes. I was a pup for many seasons. Only the first few seasons were the toughest for my pack parents, but they raised me with a stern paw. After that I guess I would say I grew up inwardly but not outwardly. The Alpha saw how my behavior changed and not my growth, and decided that I would make a good guard as his mate is rasping the young. I knew that I was different from the others in the pack when my growth froze. And my ability to tell if a person is a poacher or a camper. My pack avoids both, but we are more cautious around the poacher territory. I am turning eighteen soon, the reason I know this is through my dreams of a woman and a man who told me tales of warriors who grew up from scrawny kids. I had a feeling that this tales were memories and not made up dreams. Recently my pack sensed that I am going to leave them, for I've been experiencing some mental changes. I've become very interested in human shapes and ways, as well as what they eat.

"Crack!"

I came to an instant alert; it was a sound of a twig near our cave breaking. I sniffed the air and smelled hunters. I silently woke my pack and we took an underground tunnel to get out of the cave. When the whole pack was safe, I sensed that this was it. My pack leaders understood and we expressed our silent goodbyes and I watched them leave. I knew they would always be my family. As soon as they left around a bend I went back through the tunnel to distract the hunters from the pack.

The hunters threw some kind of canister. It hissed and the next thing I knew I was on the ground. But before I lost consciousness, I felt burning liquid going through my body from head to tail.

The hunters walked cautiously inside the cave, when they were inside what they found shocked them. There on the ground lay a girl, naked as a bird, maybe sixteen or seventeen for the looks of it. Clearly not hurt, she looked as if she had lived in these woods for a while. Her long, silver-white hair was tangled with twigs and leaves. Her body was lean but muscular. She was knocked out cold.

The hunters realized that the gas had put her to sleep. One of the hunters walked over to the girl and draped a jacket over her. That got the rest moving. They called in a helicopter with medics to transport the unconscious girl to the closest hospital. One of the hunters had to go with the girl to give a report. But before the head hunter's partner left, she spoke to him in a whisper. "You need to look around for an ID or something to identify the girl." The headhunter nodded, but silently cursed himself; I am the leader - I should have thought of that myself. But it's as if the girl mesmerized me, thought the hunter.

He watched the chopper take off with the girl and his partner, and then gestured for his remaining partner to go back into the cave with him. Inside they found nothing. No clothes, wallet, shoes, or even a blanket. I wonder how anyone could survive in this weather in the middle of the woods during late December, thought the headhunter.