Hard Times
With shivering legs, the little wolfess stood next to the cold body of her mother. She was freezing and because of the long time she had lain in the cave, her legs hurt and were not used to baring the weight of the little body. Her mind was still captured in the trauma she received, but her survival instincts had moved her body and made her stand up.

One shaky step, then another. With each step that she took around her mother and towards the entrance her legs shivered a bit less. The wind had picked up and ruffled in her fur when she stepped out of the cave.

She slowly walked through the pack grounds until she reached a small puddle from the rain that had poured down the last day.

Imyasel felt the cold water moist her dried up throat and soak into her body, making her shiver from the cold feeling that did not only scratch her skin when the wind blew through her fur, but also filled her from the inside from the water in her stomach.

She drank for a long time without a pause, suddenly feeling an unquenchable thirst inside her body. Even though the water made her freeze inside, it also brought back a bit of her energy and cleared up her mind. For the first time in days, her senses returned, and she smelled the fresh air mixed with the scent of blood, sweat and death around her.

When she lifted her head a long while after starting to drink, when the wind already let up a bit and the moon peeked between the clouds in the sky, sending a mild silver light down on the little pup, she saw a big pile of fur just a few steps away near the puddle.

She was drawn to the dark bundle of fur and stepped through the puddle, feeling the water cold and wet at her paws, when it soaked her fur and gushed over her toes with every step. The whistling of the wind got more silent, as if the nature itself held its breath.

She winced and stopped, when she got around the bundle of fur and a big and scary face greeted her. It was bigger than a wolf’s and had big fangs. This was the first time Imyasel saw a tiger, but her mother had once told her about these monsters.

The big cat was twice the size of the wolf in front of it. Both were dead, the fangs of the wolf deep in the throat of the cat. As a revenge, the cat seemed to have cut open the full flank of the wolf and crushed the bones with its paws. It took a while until Imyasel realized, that it was her father that lay there. To protect the pack, he had fought this monster and even killed it.

More corpses lay around and Imyasel saw one more of the large cat and many wolves. None of them moved and with the wind keeping silent, it looked like they were turned into stones with their fur not moving one inch.

The little wolfess ran around to see if there were any traces of survivors. She found bloody stains on the rocks and now and then a paw print that was far to big for a wolf and surely was caused by a big cat.

The rain had washed away most of the blood but there were still marks of blood that dried before the rain and that the water had not been able to wash away yet.

Another shiver ran through the small body, when Imyasel realized, that there were bloody trials of at least two big cats leading into the opposite direction than the river. The faint signs of blood here and there showed, that at least one of them was injured or they carried injured bodies, but the little wolfess was too inexperienced to determine if the blood was from a wolf of the big cats.

The girl stood there, in the middle of wolf carcasses, looking into the direction the intruders went with only the silver light of the moon giving a bit of light. She could not see any moving creature. The intruders were long gone.

A shiver ran down her spine, when the wailing of the wind started again with a strong gust. Fear gripped her. These cats even had killed her father, the strongest wolf she ever had seen. She realized that she herself would not stand a chance against them. She hated the cats for what they had done, but she was afraid to follow them. She knew that all of her family were dead, but with all the wolves laying around and some of them half eaten, she was unable to verify if one of them was missing. At least she did not find any trial of a wolf that led away from their home, and she also did not find any survivor.

She came to realize that she was alone. There was no one left to care for her, and she could only wait for the big cats to return and eat her just like some of her pack.

Before she came to any conclusion or even realized her situation, her body moved on its own again. She turned her back to the path the big cats used to leave and turned towards the river.

To get away from the tigers as far as possible, she used the only orientation she had. She knew that the big cats went up stream and so she followed the flow of the river and stayed near the water to climb down the mountain further and further as far as her legs carried her, until the morning started to dawn and color the sky red.

In her mind, she apologized to her mother for not listening to her and for what happened to them. She felt guilty for the fate of her pack and felt like it was her fault.

When she could not move on anymore, she drank a bit from the river and crawled into a bush. Her instincts told her that she needed to be hidden during the day and once she was in hiding, she closed her eyes and fell asleep exhausted. Her sleep was restless and scary dreams with bloody faces of wolves and big cats crossed her this day. She woke up a few times, listened to the frightening noises of the forest around her, the many voiced of birds and animals that she could not identify and that made her feel small and helpless, until she fell asleep again.

When she woke up next, it was dark around her and only her racial traits allowed her to see everything around with the little light the stars and the moon provided her.

There were only a few clouds this night and the wind was weaker. Imyasel continued her journey south along the river, accompanied by the silent wailing of the wind, the mumbling of the river and the more frightening noises of an owl or some other nocturnal animals of the forest.

She remembered fractions of the lessons her mother had told her. That she should not walk around in the open, because predators could see and catch her more easily this way. She always stayed closed to the river, so that she could still smell and hear it, but she made sure to move close to trees and bushes. At first, she felt new energy filling her, but sadness, exhaustion and lack of food soon made her grow weaker with every night she continued her journey.

She managed to catch a few fireflies to have at least a small meal, but she grew weaker every night and it happened more often that she lost her balance or stumbled over rocks that her attention did not recognize anymore.

Her mind did not realize how her energy was drained by the constant journey and soon she only moved by instinct and somehow her body moved on every night. At least she had enough to drink with the river nearby, but water was not able to give her all the nutrition needed, and her skin started to stretch directly over her ribs soon, making the small wolfess look even smaller, like a forest spirit that vanished from the eye when one would blink.

She was soon covered with cuts and bruises that she got from tumbling over a root and cutting the skin at a sharp rock or from sliding down a sudden steep. Her fur became ruffled and dull, losing all its silky character that it once had.

Imyasel had not once spared a thought on her appearance or on grooming herself, so rests of the blood of her mother still sticked to the fur at her belly and paws, only being rubbed of slowly by the wet gras or the dust that covered her whole body.

Every few nights she managed to find some bugs that were not fast enough to run away from her. They did not taste good but at least it was something. The mice and other small animals she saw were too fast for her and she was no good huntress because she never paid attention to her mother’s lecture.

A few weeks past, she had lost the count of the nights or how far she had followed the river, she got lucky and found a mouse that either was killed by a different predator and left laying there or, what was more plausible, died from a careless act and she had been lucky enough to be the first one to find it.

This night was the first one where she felt at least a bit satisfied and got back a bit of her energy, but she knew that she would not be lucky like that again.

Her mind dulled like her fur more and more, and after a few months, her legs only stumbled over the ground without her even looking at the environment around her. The lack of food drained her energy more and more and because her body needed all the energy it could get, there was not enough for her mind to function. Her senses dulled and she barely listened to the mumbling water or the moist scent. 

The river grew to a big and strong stream, because over the time more and more rivers joined it and united. It got harder to find a calm zone at the river side to take a drink without being washed away.
Only at times like that, Imyasel regarded her surrounding, after she had nearly been pulled into the river once. At every other time, she ran around like a dream walker, not regarding anything around her but just taking one step after another.

She still did not know where she was headed. She had no goal and did not know how long she would continue to run or what would await her at the end. The panic and fear of the big cats made her move on to bring as many distance between her and her old home.
She ran through a world hidden in fog and with a constant loud whirring, shielding her own senses from anything that could cost her energy or distract her from her journey.
Then she arrived at the end of the forest. The trees opened wide and in front of her was a steppe with only dried gras and a few trees around the river that rushed into the distance. Her sight cleared up to look for the way to take, but the cold shiver down her spine returned when she looked at the wide savannah.

Big animals were visible in the distance. Imyasel did not know these animals and fear gripped her because of their size.

There were only a few trees and no constant shielding to hide in. She was afraid to follow the river out in the open because she knew that she would have no protection there and would be an easy prey.

After a last drink, she turned to the west and followed the edge of the forest, in hope that this would help her to get around the savannah and maybe find the river again.

Her journey began again but it was much harder for her now. Food was as scarce as before but in addition, she did not have the river to drink now. The only water she got was the morning dew that she licked from the gras before going to sleep or a small puddle here and there.

The lack of water, in addition to the low amount of food, made her skin dry up and rip easily, so that her whole body hurt all the time and her rips now showed clearly from her very skimpy and light fur that looked more like a ragged carped than a pelt.

Her eyes and tongue were swollen from the lack of water and her mouth felt dry all the time even after she drank from a puddle at the rare times, she stumbled upon one.

Because she did not find so many insects anymore, she began to even eat gras or the skin of the trees to at least have something to bite on, but without her noticing, she slowed down a lot and even though the distance every night felt like miles, she barely traveled hundred meters every night, stopping a lot, shivering, and shaking from the heavy burden on her small body.

Her muscles started, as the last part of her body, to give in and slim down, because water and food were so scarce and when she thought she walked a whole night, it was just an hour before she lay down to sleep and rest to regain at least a bit of her energy.

She did not realize that she even sometimes turned around after waking up, being drawn to a puddle she just visited the last night to gain back a bit of her energy, just to walk east again afterwards instead of west, just to turn around the night after.

The little wolfess ran aimlessly back and forth not realizing that in the last month she did not move from the spot and just traveled between two small puddles that quickly dried up in the sun that got hotter every day.

Her energy finally ran out of steam and this night she just stood there in front of the bush she used as a hiding and just looked into the wide dark savannah until the morning dawned.
The sun slowly moved over the horizon and Imyasel still stood there, motionless with shivering legs, determined to continue her journey but not realizing that her body did not have the energy anymore to move forward.

She saw the group of hyenas only when they were already close to her. A group of five hyenas closed in to her and the crackled when they noticed the little wolf that just stood there with no signs of running away.

They circled around her and then the first started to step forward and give Imyasel a push into the flank that send her flying to the side and tumble a few times before she came to a rest in a lying position, looking up to the hyenas with shocked eyes.

One, two, more of these attacks hit her, making her tumble around like a play toy for the bigger canine creatures while she had no energy and no strength left to run away or fight back. Only her eyes still fixated on them, as if she could fight back just with her gaze.

This went on for a while, until the hyenas seemed to have decided that it was time to enjoy their meal. They stopped their snickering and playful behavior and the biggest of them, three times the size of Imyasel, closed in on the small body that could do nothing more than looking at her with a shivering body, helplessly trying to stand up with her shaky legs.

Imyasel managed to get her front legs on the ground and get into a half sitting position, when the hyena was just a step away from her. She could smell the foul breath of the creature and see the big yellow fangs of the wide opened muzzle.

Imyasel knew she had no chance, but she opened her own muzzle to show her baby fangs and hiss at the bigger creature, prepared to sum up all of her remaining energy to give as much of a fight as possible.

The sun turned the whole area into a golden light and turned the world around Imyasel into a world of light and shadows, with the constant growling of the hyenas and her own heartbeat that seemed to pick up in strength in this moment that would mark the end of her journey. Imyasel heard the strong beat and felt her heart pulse in her chest. In her mind she saw her mother, her brothers, her father, and all the other pack members how she remembered them.

All this way. The months of torture and fighting for survival, just to have it end like this. What had she been searching for? With this end, she could have stayed in the mountains and wait for the tigers.

This could not be the end. Her mind, weak, confused and traumatized as it may be, sparked in resistance and the will for survival. Imyasel blinked and the golden light dimmed down so that she could see the clear silhouette of the hyena in front of her and the wide-open muzzle with the big and sharp fangs. A low growl in her own throat, the first sound in months, rumbled through her body and broke free in a wailing sound, small and insignificant, that was ripped away by the wind that picked up and rushed in her ears. The hyena was only one step away.