A howl, sad and longing in its tones, resonated through the vastness of the crags of which I call my own. My mother and I rule our own sectors of this physically challenging realm – our dens sure to be far enough apart that we do not butt heads too often. I know that she has birthed yet another litter, though how many they are is uncertain, and for the rest of the spring season I will be on edge. While Stella and I have a rather distinct and perplexing relationship, I still will not allow her or her new brood to come under any harm while I am breathing.

But this call, it is not threatening in any manner, yet still all too close to the pools that linger by my mother’s side of the mount. I rise onto gray brindled paws and begin to move like the colossal harbinger that I am toward the caller. My ears are lain slightly back upon my golden skull, hackles prickling up ever so slightly as I weave slowly through the large rock forms throughout my home. The odor of the crier begins to rise upon the warm air of spring, stinking of a promised infection and blood. It is clear that this wolf is no problem to confront and yet I am still curious all the same.

Another scent beings to mix in with the injured female’s as I approach closer, their voices but a mumble as I come around the final boulder to see them both affectionately touching one another. Clips of her words reach my ears as she speaks softly to the younger male and it is only by these that my ears prick forward in further intrigue. Words of fire and dark ones, cleansing things, and young children. They are interesting mixtures and I step forward ever more as the female moves into the depths of the pool.

Her adjusted position affords me a look at her tormented body; the hairless flesh, the seeping eye socket, the crinkled ear. Not to mention all of her newest injuries which appear to be healing already. Her demeanor shifts into something less mopey and more playful as she splashes in the water, but I am not here to play with either of them. I am here to talk. ”What was it that you were talking about? Cleansing?” I speak to her directly, my eyes only glancing toward the male briefly before returning to her. My voice is a deepened female timbre so similar to that of my own mother’s that I could nearly play her part. But that is where the exact similarities cease to exist. I am but an evolved form of her, destined to accomplish so much more and beat back the hand of fate. Something of which she was never able to do.