The savage wild

5. The first two weeks

Thanks for the votes! :) to the side a picture of the meadow i'm always blabbering about ;) enjoy!

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The wolf ran many miles while carrying me. She stopped sometimes to sip from a stream, but always resumed her run in a rapt tempo. Soon the forest became thicker and we encountered less and less clearings. We had long since left behind the places that I knew and we were on unknown territory.

We ran for hours; from midday till midnight and after that we still went on.

The wolf would sometimes let me run on my own and tried to teach me the gait of the wolf. I got better at it, but it was far from perfect. When I got tired, she would pick me up again and carry me. She was insufferable. It was quite impressive. The constant moving held my attention, so I didn't think of the horrors that I left behind. 

Finally, when it was almost dawn, we stopped at a creek. She let me go and nudged me towards some large boulders. At first I didn’t understand, until I saw a hole. It was a cave.

The wolf whined softly and nudged me harder towards the entrance. Reluctantly I set a step forward and smelled the cave. 

Outside I only smelled traces of the female wolf and another wolf, but something told me that inside the cave there would be a whole lot more of them. The wolf nudged me again and I knew I had to enter or she would carry me inside instead. I shook my fur and entered the cave. The beginning of the cave was small, the wolf behind me had to half-crawl to enter. However, how farther I entered, how larger the passage became, until it abruptly ended into one big room.

In the middle of this room sat four of the most adorable cubs I’d ever seen. They were still very young, I think it had been a week since they first opened their little eyes. Three were male and the other was female. The female had brown-colored fur with a reddish tint. Two of the males were black and the other was gray.

They all made soft noises of surprise and joy when they saw me and their mother. The mother wolf patted over to them and greeted them with licks and soft bites. They fell over each other to get her attention and receive more of her love. It hurted me to look at them. My own mother close to my heart, but far from my arms.

After a few minutes of this loving family reunion, the mother wolf turned to me and gently picked me up with her teeth. She proceeded to put me between the other cubs. The female cub looked at me and then licked my snout. I sniffed at her and licked her back. With that, the other three started greeting me in similar manner.

I was a lot bigger than they were.  I was, in wolf form, at the age of six to seven weeks, while they were only around three weeks old. They would soon be bigger than I was, because of my human genes. I grew up slower than they did. When I turn five I’d have the psychical body of a half year old wolf. Only when puberty started, I would be full grown. That was still a long way to go.

The mother wolf bit me softly in my ear and then she turned to leave.

I settled myself between the warm bodies of the other little cubs. I remembered how I lain in a similar way so many times before with my own pack. I missed them fiercely and that sharp pain stabbed me again. I fought against the tears and the memories, and when I felt the soft tongue of the female wolf against my ear I snuggled closer against her. This warm, fuzzy feeling was the same feeling I had back there. It couldn’t close the gaping hole in my chest, but it was close enough.

“Shivani.” I looked up when I heard my name and saw to my surprise that I was back at the clearing where I’d met Selene. “Yes?” I said.

“Do you like the wolf family?” She asked me. I thought back to the little cubs who had greeted me so warmly and took me in their midst. I thought about the mother wolf who had picked me up and brought me all the way to her den to care for me. It had not been my own family, but I felt treasured and warm. “Yes, very much. Thank you for this gift,” I whispered back.