A flash of sandy brown moves through the thick underbrush of the woodland, golden eyes searching left and right for a place she could be safe in dropping off this burden. It mattered not that she left the children, she had never wanted the things to begin with, as she could barely keep herself fed, let alone others. Finally, the female comes to a small thicket made of a small bush. Climbing beneath it, she started the whelping process, and soon she has only one pup. Unfortunate that she should look like the mother, perhaps this is what causes the small bit of hesitation before the mother lays with the only pup she birthed and the only one she ever would. There was every intention to leave the pup, but the bleeding the mother endured told her she would be leaving in a different way. Karma, she supposed was the cause of her bleeding, a vengeful act by a force of the unseen that caused her to be torn by the little golden pup at her abdomen. "I am sorry, little one. I did not want you, and now the world does not want me." Not too long after her apology, and the sandy blonde wolf was gone to this world, leaving her daughter at her breast.

***

Something had made the fluid sour on her tongue; where it had once been sweet and warm, it was now cold, hard to get, and foul tasting. The soft belly she had been at and kept warm by was now only warm where she was. It raised an alarm in the newborn, something was wrong with her mother, and so she wanted to do something to get her help. The little golden child also wished to stay silent as her instincts demanded, but her mother would be important if she was to survive. A war went on in the small child's mind, her brain already working at a higher level than most newborns, and she fought over calling out for help or staying quiet and alive. It was fear that won in the end, and fear that made her cry. With her loudest - albeit weak - cries, the pup hollers for help.

Only two days have passed since her mother's passing, but the girl knows she is on the edge of death. Her cries become more desperate, as if a predator already has her in its grasp, but soon she is too tired to ask for help anymore. The nameless ball of golden fur curls tighter into her dead mother's fur, hoping she would warm up soon and that help was on the way.

zero - female - alone in the world