The Journey of the Fox and the Wolf

Prologue

It was raining heavily.

Cara shivered violently against the chill the storm brought. This spring storm was not unlike any other, but that didn't mean she wasn't affected. She was only a young fox kit, no more than a few moons. She shed silent tears that merged with the rainfall from the trees above, as she thought mournfully of her small but loving family that she had lost.

During a previous storm, she had been caught out playing too long and got stuck in the intensity before she could make it back to her family's den across the river. On her way back across the stepping stones, she had slipped into the raging river. Her mother had gone out to search for her seconds before the incident, but when she reached the river all traces of her lost kit had been washed away in the pelting rain. Her mother couldn't help but fear and assume the worst, that her only daughter had been dragged away into the violent tides of their favourite river. A place of carefree comfort, turned into a vicious and violent trap. She cried out in agony, cries lost in the sound of thunder.

Cara had hazily woken up, caught far downstream on a shallow muddy sandbar. The rain was still pounding, but the storm had lessened. She was lucky to be alive.

She dragged herself to higher ground, out of the way of the flooding river and collapsed once more. When she came to for the second time, she surveyed her surroundings with bleary eyes. The sun had only been in the sky an hour or two, but she couldn't use it to trace her way home. She knew the river branched off several times along the main one, so she could be any wear in the tangles of the water's web. She hadn't yet learned where her home was in according to the sun's position, as that was something her mother had planned to teach her soon.

Cara worried that she had been carried too far while unconsciousness had consumed her in the river, and that she was undoubtedly and helplessly lost. She whimpered.

Her stomach growled, pulling Cara back to the present, in the latest storm. Although not as horrendous as the one that made her lose her family, it was still horrible. She growled back at her stomach. Shut up, tummy. The darn thing was too selfish, Cara needed to focus on not only surviving the storm, but the night. She was in the heart of the wilderness, where many larger predators roamed, predators several times her size that could pick her off and eat her like a simple morsel.

Her hunger could wait until morning. That was, as long as she made it to then.