Wolf's Daughter.

In the darkness, the she-wolf is giving birth.  Peace surrounds her.  Outside her mate stands guard, pacing anxiously.  He is unusually worried, but then they are, after all, not really usual wolves.  Suddenly a voice invades his mind.  
  Venbar!  
  Instantly he is at the entrance.  His own mind answers.  
  What's wrong?  Can I come?
  Come quickly.  Oh dear!
  He enters the hole, and the two wolves gaze down upon their new children.  The reason for their concern is immediately obvious.  Three tiny cubs are already suckling.  The fourth, a human baby, raises her voice and wails.
  Her name is Souna.  

Sarah's teeth, everyone agreed, were a medical impossibility.  They were small and pointed, and one on each side (about the fifth from the front) was quite long and very sharp.  They simply couldn't occur in a human.  Still, there they were.  They had been there when she was found, at an age when most babies had no teeth, and they showed no sign of going away.  As for the rest of her, she was quite small, with high cheekbones, dark hair and eyes, and slightly pointed ears.
  Despite her medical miracle teeth, Sarah was a very unhappy girl. She was in Year 8, and her friend Lianne had recently moved overseas.  Sarah, who had never been part of a group, now spent her lunchtimes alone.  Most people just ignored her completely.  It was nothing to do with them.  She hardly ever spoke at all.  Boys didn't even look at her.  Had it not been for her parents, she might have sunk into depression, perhaps suicide.  But Sarah had the sort of parents some people dream about having.  They always seemed to have time to listen to anything she had say, they could really be called full of love.  
  The day after her uneventful fourteenth birthday, something happened.  Walking home from school, she passed through the local park, as always.  Leaning against a tree was a tall boy.  She would have ignored him completely, but he appeared strikingly similar to her.  Dark, high cheekbones and an intense expression.  As she approached, he came forward with a strange look on his face.  
  "Sarah?"  
  She stared at him startled.  
  "Are you Sarah?"  
  "I...yes...but...who are you?"  
  He flashed her a quick, relieved grin.  "Just your friendly guardian angel."  
  She blinked.  
  "Look...I just...wow..."  He broke off, as if struggling with something.
  "What?"  She beginning to be frightened.  
  "Listen, any time you're in trouble, just give me a yell, OK?"  
  "Um...OK...I guess.  But..."  
  He grinned again.  "Oh sorry, my name's Tavas."  
  "Tavas?"  
  "Don't worry about it.  Just don't forget."  
  He seemed about to go, but suddenly Sarah said "Wait."  He turned.  "How do I know I can trust you?"  
  He looked straight into her eyes, "By this." and bared his teeth.  They were just like her own.  Then he was gone, vanishing into the growing darkness.  
  For two years Sarah succeeded in banishing the encounter from her mind.  And then she found out that she was adopted.  It was almost funny, how she found out.  There was a school project, and she needed her birth certificate.  For three days afterwards, she locked herself in her bedroom, without eating.  After three days, she had barely begun to come to terms with it all.  Then the house burned down.  
  Sarah woke in the middle of the night to a room filled with smoke.  She ran for the door and fell against it.  Locked!  She collapsed against it, breathing smoke.  Where were her parents?  She wanted to scream, she tried to, but nothing would come out.  The scream built up inside her.  And then suddenly it seemed to burst out of her, not through her mouth but through her mind.
  Tavas!
  Her consciousness faded.  She was vaguely aware of the room collapsing around her, of a great grey shape crashing into the room.  Then everything went black.  

She awakes surrounded by wolves, and stands slowly, shaking her head.
  How do you feel?
  Terrible.
  She drops to her haunches, panting slightly.  Then she looks at her father.
  What happened?  I can't remember anything.
  Her brother comes forward.
  Don't worry about it, Souna.
  You always say that.
  Abruptly their father stands and moves away.
  Come on Souna, Tavas.  We want to reach the den before dawn.
  In perfect unison, the wolves who are not wolves fade into the shadows.

(c) Copyright Hespa.
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