When The North Falls

Prologue

Hi everyone, this is my first story on here and I've noticed it's quite a long first chapter.. hopefully it works in introducing you with how it all started, but please stick with it because later on it's about to get more dramatic. Also, please feel free to give me a vote or some feedback, I follow back everyone who follows me so y'know go ahead :)) - Lauren

It was not easy.

It was not easy to walk while hindered against the buffeting forces of the wind. It was not easy to breathe with the ice chilling the nostrils with every intake of air. It was not easy to be led by an irritant expectant mother.

It is not easy.

Of course, these are occurences that are not being experienced by the two-legged human race, the hairless faced cruel beasts who, with their weakness of limb accompanied by a lack of bearance in the Mother's storms and winters, had remained a figure of mystification to himself and his brethren. He himself did not want to confuse his thoughts with the fact that the Two-Legged's power came from their very burdened stash of materials that allowed them to take a life from afar, and to travel within large shining monsters that growled as they snaked swiftly across the solid grey pathways. The Two-Legged's seemed unhindered by winter, suggesting they had much food to spare, too much, and their bodies grew fat, and their pelts shiny, and their splayed paws covered in the wool of the sheep he liked to eat.

He is a wolf.

He is a wolf who, curious of the power of humans, believed it was gained through their ability to store and defend with the storage. It could not be from intelligence, no, his brethren were the smartest in the land. What a wolf did not know, or understand, was something that was not worth understanding. The ability to climb trees was an act of insolence, as no wolf could act upon it, and if one could, he would be shunned for acting unique in such a display, and the Alphas would see fit in posting them for scouting, which no wolf liked to do, for it separated them from the pack. It was a crime to defy instinct or tradition, and to be unique.

Craster, whom was the one under the lead of the expectant mother, was healthily-sized, with muscles rippling under his obsidian pelt at every fox-length stride. His eyes were a fathomless emerald green, a deep orb-like shine to the iris that complimented his features. He was the Alpha Male of the pack, although he did not know why; he was not the largest. That accolade went towards his son, Arys, who stood half a cat's tail taller, but Arys was only a Beta. Craster was not the fastest, that was a trait that the Mother Nature had given the second Beta Alys, a sandy-yellow she-wolf who could travel across land almost as swiftly as an eagle across sky.

Craster was also not the fittest. He was not even second or third in line for the throne of the fittest Brother or Sister. The wolf with the best stamina and endurance in the Hunt was metaphorically crowned the Free Wolf. He or she was almost always a Pack Leader and had proved themselves by the council of the entirety of all the region's multiple packs that they were fit enough to be part of the Mother's Dree, which was a select council of adept wolves in the Afterlife, where a Free Wolf would go once they had died.

The wolves of the pack said he was Alpha because he was intelligent, that he thought before he leaped, that he considered the act of tree climbing and its consequences interesting. And wolves feared the intelligence of others.

Here.

Craster's mate stopped ahead of him, and the signal of her bristling tail halted the entire pack in their footsteps. Her word was law, along with Craster's own, yet she burdened the leadership of the pack on her shoulders, and the majority of the pack submission was directed towards her, the Alpha Female. She led the hunt as well, yet allowed him on most occasions to eat alongside her, for she was ferocious in her blood-lust, and he knew when not to get between a she-wolf and her kill; especially when she was due with pups. Craster chuckled lightly, his breath steaming the bitter air with each exhale of breath, a smoky trail that snaked into the sky like the head of a cobra about to strike.