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The Blood War

Chapter three

“Walking SO much walking. You see what I mean, right?” Bone whirled around to face what he was complaining to; a deer skull lying on a low rock, eyes hollow and face reminding him all too much of himself. His tail lashed lightly, stirring up fallen leaves behind him.

“What wolf pack needs me to walk around and say, ‘Hey, you know your great great great great great great step-uncle you never met? Yeah, he says hi!’. It’s not necessary!” He clawed at the dirt, plucking a broken branch out of the leaf litter and snapping it in his jaws. “If a wolf wants to talk to to their descendants, they can visit them in a dream. They don’t need a monster with no organs telling them. ‘Family drama, oh no! A bear!’ And I’m caught in the crossfire.”

He sat down with a heavy sigh, bowing his head and fixing his dazzlingly blue eyes on the ground beneath him. Faint dapples of sunlight reached through the treetops above him, freckling the earth in warm, golden-white shafts. Bone extended a paw slowly brushing his time-beaten claws over the light.

“I just want to die,” he said finally, looking back up at the skull. “Is that too much to ask? After seven hundred years, is it so unfair to make that one request?”

He slowly lay down, tucking his nose beneath a scramble of leaves, and dropped into uneven sleep.

“Up here,” a voice said nearby, snapping Bone into wakefulness again. He scanned the straggled forest around him, narrowing his eyes slightly as he listened.

“I smell it, too,” a deeper voice replied, and he caught the flicker of movement as something moved further into the forest. He rose to his paws, tail swaying slowly in the wind that shook the multitude of leaves overhead.

“You’re paranoid,” another spoke, tone demanding authority. “It’s probably a fox. There’s no way a wolf could have gotten into our borders without us noticing first.”

A low growl. “See for yourself! You can CLEARLY smell wolf, and one that isn’t from here.” Pawsteps fell over the earth, closer now to his location. Bone stepped slowly towards the the opposite trees, keeping his eyes fixated on where the patrol of wolves were.

“There is nothing to—” the authoritative voice began, but dropped into nothing as she appeared from the underbrush and saw him. Her chalk-gray fur rippled in the wind, eyes widening the longer she stared. “Oh my stars,” she whispered finally, as two other wolves appeared on either side of her; one charcoal-black, one the color of swamp reeds.

“Get back to camp,” she whispered to them both. “Now.” They turned, sprinting back into the trees, at the same time that Bone turned and fled into the forest, vanishing from the sight of the gray wolf.

- President Loki

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