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I have been running with the wolves for around twenty years.
I can barely recall any other family. No, all I know is the wolves and their ways.
My ways. You’re one of them now. You might be human on the outside, and you might live like a human, but inside, you’re as feral as any of them.
Is that what makes it so easy for me to get along with Kian?
Because I’ve lost the fundamental elements of what it means to be human?
Did I ever have those elements?
I have only just maintained basic humanity from sporadic contact with other humans.
Maybe that is why I get along with Kian. Because we’re both so far away from humanity.
The thought that I have lost that much of myself to the wilderness is disturbing, and I shove the thoughts away as I think about my life with the pack.
The wolf who took me in when I was small, who became my mother, is dead now.
I don’t remember her name. I don’t think she had one.
I was fifteen years old when she died, and the pain I felt upon her death was unimaginable.
I started naming the wolves after her death.
I think naming the wolves is a sign of your humanity. And a sign of your loneliness.
I buried her body, the body of my mother, in the mountains. It gave me some comfort to have her looking over me at all times.
Six.
This winter is going to be a bad one.
This is a thought that I keep repeating to myself, and I might seem paranoid, but it is the truth.
The summer was difficult. Hunting opportunities were far and few in between. And I spent a lot of time at the settlement’s trading post, trading my medicines for things like tools to fix the leaky roof or something equally stupid.
I lost even more of my meat supplies with Kian’s arrival. Having to feed him and the pack, and trade some of my meat for medicine, has me worried.
Everything will be fine in the end.
I try not to be too anxious about the winters. I can always go live in one of the shacks at the human settlement for a few weeks. They won’t turn me away.
But I cannot really leave the pack behind, because they might find hunting difficult, too.
I cannot let them starve.
I have experienced six months of unrest within the pack.
Six months of fighting among the wolves, some who have taken my side, and others who have stood against me as leader of the pack, with Safira by my side.
Sometimes the fighting became physical, and I spent a lot of the summer patching up wounds and coaxing injured wolves out from under the log pile.
They might be wild animals, but they’re my family, and despite the six months of unrest, I cannot leave them behind.
I cannot let them starve.
Yet there is an unknown amount of time before Kian recovers his memories and leaves forever.
