Kiatana's Journey

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE: THE BEGINNING OF MANY MEETINGS

Lilja pounced. He knew that his sister must be somewhere behind the fern. She couldn't escape him this time. His black tail flew behind him as he jumped, ears up and teeth bared, huge paws flailing in front of him. To his surprise his sister was not behind the large plant and he fell through the air, rolling onto the ground. 

The wolf pup stood up expectantly. He scanned the forest quickly, realizing he had been tricked. He froze and all his training leapt out of his mind. At that precise moment a silver mass flew at him, tackling him to the ground and pinning him, white fangs and teeth at his throat.

He felt the mockery of defeat looming ever closer. If it had been a real battle she would have already delivered the killing blow. But he hadn't been beaten just yet.

Lilja pushed his sister off of him and tumbled into her, swirling in a mass of fur and fang. Lottie may be smarter, he thought inside his mind. Craftier and faster too. But when it comes to the real rough fighting, I can win. I'm stronger than her. He pushed Lottie onto the ground and had his teeth at her neck. But he got too cocky, and Lottie could sense it. Using this she flailed her legs and kicked Lilja's paws out from underneath him. He fell onto the ground. Within seconds she was up and the position had switched yet again. They scrabbled for a bit longer but it was no use. Lottie had gained the upper hand.

When he surrendered she backed off slowly and let him up. He sat up and looked at her, a little sour from being beaten twice.

"That was low what you did, tricking me like that," she said, staring disdainfully at Lilja. "I had already beaten you."

Lilja smiled, pulling his lips back and baring his white teeth in a way so that he looked like he was laughing. "I saw an advantage, and I took it."

"It was still low." Lottie shook her head and started walking up the path to the large clearing. Around her, trunks with many colors clambered to the clouds, hundreds of feet high. Uneven paths were marked by yellow grass and spring shoots, and they had to jump over patterned seedlings such as acorns that were the size of their heads. They kept on running into more and more flowers, trying not to step on them as they passed, enjoying their sweet scent.

Spring was beginning to bloom. The air smelled like fresh pine and rain. They crawled under a fern the size of a normal tree and slid down a purple colored rock, skipping over a few mud puddles afterwards. 

 Lilja followed Lottie, walking to her right and being ever watchful. It wasn't safe living alone, even if the Verinian Forest was the best place that they could be. Lilja wondered what could have happened if they both had stayed near their own territory. Maybe their missing pack would have come back. They would have been taken care of by all those older than they. But they chose to run away in the darkness of the night. Little ones, the adults had always called them...

But we're not so little anymore, thought Lilja, gazing at his sister. We're almost twelve moons old. Soon we'll be fully grown. No one will dare challenge us, and we won't have to hide from our enemies, for they will hide from us. We will be the strongest wolves in all the Lands.

That happy thought was enough to swell him up with pride. He thought of the hard first days of their escape from the pack. They were always hungry. Hunting was hard without an elder there to teach them how. There were too many nights where there was barely enough to eat. He remembered licking his wounds after he and Lottie had chased a foe out of his dwellings or huddling together under any type of brush, if they had lost the battle. There were many nights they wondered if they should go back home. But they were so lost that they couldn't go back even if they truly wanted to.