The Wolf -Part 1

Alright, everyone!

John & Clara is being put on temporary hold for various reasons. Mainly, I need to let my imagination wander a bit with something less realistic.

This is a story I've had in mind for about a month now (I came up with it when I was staying with my dad, though it stems from a lot of ideas I have had in the past), and my biggest problem was that I couldn't think of a good way to get it started. And then it came to me, and it fits like clockwork. I'm really excited about this one, so we'll so how it goes.

As a child, Adrian had lived with his mother in a small house removed from the city. The days he remembered the most fondly were in winter, when it was too cold to work, too cold to play, so she and he just wrapped themselves by a fire and she told him stories. Fables of Kings and Queens long dead, wars both great and small, fantastic tales that weaved through his dreams and drove his aspirations. There would be milk in a kettle over the fire, and cups full of cocoa as she whispered to him the forgotten legacy of dead cultures.

But as children must, Adrian grew. And as he did, his mother’s stories became darker, the endings less optimistic. Characters died when once they had lived happily ever after; the winsome hero found his true love bereft of another man and so banished himself from the kingdom. But one night she told him no story at all. She just stared into the fireplace with the look of someone in grief.

And she whispered, “It’s coming on your sixteenth birthday, isn’t it, son?”

He nodded. “Tell me a story,” Adrian said, somewhat frightened by his mother’s depression.

“Not tonight, I’m afraid,” she said, then sighed. “Tonight is a night for truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come the next full moon, you will know.” She was fighting back tears. “I will send you out to gather some wood for the fire, and then you’ll see…her. The next morning you will be forced to find your way back, and when you return this house will be empty. And I will be gone.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“The way things are,” she stated. “The way they have always been. Once you have tasted the strength of Luna, no one can hold your hand. You must find your own way.”

Adrian waited in silence, uncomprehending of his mother’s meaning.

She looked towards her son and smiled wanly, “I know you don’t understand right now, but you will.” Again she paused, seeming to be making up her mind on an important decision.

Taking a deep breath, she turned to her son and held him by the shoulders, “There are others like us in the world, Adrian, but they are terrible people. After ten years, they will come for you. Change your name, move far away, go into hiding, do whatever it takes. Do not let them find you. Do you understand me? Do not let them find you.”

“I still don’t get-” he began.

She touched his forehead and pressed forward with her palm. Adrian’s eyes went blank, and he fell forward into his mother’s arms. She cried as she whispered, “Goddess moon, protect my son. Remind him of these words, when the time is right. Give him strength, Luna. Give us all strength.”

The next morning Adrian awoke with no recollection of the night before, and he went about his day as normal. Two weeks passed and Adrian’s birthday came and went. He received a short knife and a compass so that he could venture further from the house. Each night his mother told him stories, and they were as happy as they had ever been. The war was resolved before it could begin; the winsome hero lived happily ever after. All the while Adrian’s mother watched with growing sadness, and on the third week she sent him out to gather firewood.

He smiled at the sound of snow crunching beneath his feet, but his eyes felt wronged. It was nighttime, but the forest was bright. The falling snow, it seemed, was reflecting the light of the moon and the faraway city.

And then the snow stopped. The world fell dead silent as the winds ceased and the animals hid. Something in the air was different, and Adrian’s heart slowly welled with excitement. The diffuse light from above grew more distinct, and he looked up to find the clouds were parting ways. And up there, nestled amongst the stars, was the full moon.

He was filled with an overwhelming calm, all thoughts losing their meaning and falling away. Suddenly he felt aware of the world around him, as though he could give an accurate count of the number of trees, the number of squirrels and deer, just from the feeling in the back of his mind. All of his senses were at their peak, and with every breath he could feel energy building within him. His hands were trembling.

And then, a convulsion in his stomach. He reeled over, holding his sides, looking down at the snow with a confused expression. A second shook his entire body, and he fell to his knees. His vision narrowed and his breaths grew shallow. Excitement and confusion mingled as his whole body trembled, because as part of him was scared, the other part was screaming victoriously. Somewhere deep down in the back of his mind, this felt like what he had been waiting for all his life, the very reason he had been put on the earth in the first place.

An ache began in either of his arms, then passed into his chest, up his neck, down his legs into his feet. A migraine built to such heights that he fell to his side, gripping his skull with both arms, screaming at the top of his lungs. His bones cracked, and his mind split in two. Adrian felt as though he were being pulled away from his body as his vision seemed more and more distant.

Adrian passed out, but his body continued. Something had been sleeping in the depths of his heart and mind since birth, and it was finally awake.

He was naked and covered in snow when he woke up the day after. He tried to move, but his muscles were on fire. With each unintentional twitch he gave out a cry; he did not consciously know why, but he understood that something had happened to him. His memory was loose and mixed, the only clear recollection being that the night before had been a full moon.

And then a whisper, cold, unfeeling; You know what it was.

He shook away the thought and forced himself to move. It was painful, but eventually he brought himself to his feet with the aid of a nearby sapling. He moved from tree to tree, using each as a support as he found that every step was a struggle. He was shivering all over, the sound of his clattering teeth the only noise present in his slow moving mind. He couldn’t feel his feet, and he knew that before long the rest of his body would follow if he couldn’t return home.

It wasn’t hard to find, and he didn’t have to worry about freezing to death much longer. Another sound became apparent, a crackling; and the smell of smoke. As the trees cleared, he knew all too well what to expect, and his worst fears were granted him.

The house was hopelessly on fire.

But just out of the flame’s reach, there was an unusual lump in the snow. He walked towards it, now too overwhelmed to process the fear that his mother might be dead, that he was now homeless and alone, that death was literally just around the corner.

The minor curiosity held him as he stumbled, heat blasting him from the house as a ceiling timber fell inward.

Be brushed the snow from the lump, finding it to be a folded set of clothes, a fur coat, a few pieces of dried meat, a small jar of water now mostly frozen, and a folded piece of paper.

Adrian grabbed it with clumsy, shaking hands, almost tearing it in two as he opened it up. It read only: I’m sorry.

He went to his knees, desperately pulling he clothes over his body. They did little to improve his oncoming frostbite, but would be paramount in keeping it from getting worse. He laid down as near to the house as he could stand, letting the warmth swallow him. His eyes settled on the side wall of the house, and Adrian felt confused.

Mostly because none of this surprised him. Some part of him had been expecting it from the start, and now his biggest worry was what to do next. Assuming of course the frostbite didn’t take his limbs.

Another whisper then; It isn’t obvious?

“What?” he said aloud without realizing.

The city.

Adrian sat up and looked to the west. He had never been around people, never lived anywhere but the now destroyed cabin. But the prospect was not daunting, somehow. It seemed obvious that it was the only logical course of action.

After nearly an hour warming his bones, he stood (muscles still aching, but by then he was used to it), gathered what few things his mother left for him, and set off.

He never looked back.