Little Wolf Ch. 1.1 by Jesse Cowan

Short hair is seen falling in the sky, and then a boy is seen shaving his head with a short mohawk in water. When he sees his reflection he’s proud of his new look. He sees a bird take off into the sky and smiles, the bird shows they’re near a river and in a forest, a clearing not too far off and a wood fence in the distance. The fence surrounds a village, the people idling their time with each other or doing chores. 

The boy is walking in his village looking proud and hoping to get some positive feedback. As he’s peacocking, he runs into older boys, and they stare down at him, he next dashing off and the boys chasing. The boy finds a time to hid behind a building and then his name is yelled by a woman. She asks if it was actually Little Wolf, and every question he yells a quick deflective answer. 

He’s not doing anything, he’s not running from anybody, and he doesn’t know what she’s talking about with his hair. He then asks if Black Stone was still there, and she confirmed this, adding he didn’t look pleased. She looks at him seriously then offers he come inside so he doesn’t get skinned alive. She stares at the back of his head, and Little Wolf admits he did it himself and how did it look. 

She states it looked like it, and to sit down, she cleaning it up. While she does, she takes a guess what happened with Black Stone and Little Wolf declares they didn’t laugh, so she finishes, he fought back and couldn’t back it up so ran. He states how they started it, so why should they get to do what they want and he gets picked on. Her answer is because he’s still a child, which he couldn’t argue. 

She works in silence until stating Little Wolf wasn’t a child, but not grown yet, and Black Stone, Crow Feather, and Stag Horn went through the same thing when they were his age, but earned the respect of their elders since then. The men respect them for their hunting skills, and the women respect them for protecting them when raiders attack, and she’d bet they’ll treat you differently when he proved himself. She tells him not to worry about them and have fun. He looked much better now, like a warrior, and to be a good little brave and stay out of trouble. 

When Little Wolf goes outside, one man is running past him, other young boys and men are carrying animal carcasses, and he sees how they were admiring and feeling good about what they and their peers were doing, Little Wolf disappointedly standing alone. Later there are other young kids discussing what it mattered Little Wolf had a grown up hairstyle, and the answer being due to it being a warrior’s roach an adult haircut and looks silly running around with one. One girl says she likes it and who cares what the older boys think, nobody cared what they thought. Another girl says she’ll care when they beat Little Wolf to a fine pulp. 

The two girls stick their tongues out at each other defensively. Another boy adds it didn’t matter since Crow-Feather and the others mess with them even when they don’t stand out, it’s only due to them being bigger, and the adults don’t do anything to stop them, only strut around like they own the place. Then another boy asks what Little Wolf thought, who wasn’t sure, he was thinking about what Singing Moon had said, they went through the same thing as them. One boy comes up with a plan of getting them back by putting skunks in their beds when they slept, it taking days to wash the stink off. 

The girl who hears him, says it’ll take him just as long washing it off when he tried to catch one. Little Wolf then has an idea and leads his friends to the forest, one girl asks if he knew this was the sacred white wolf’s forest, and Little Wolf replied he was counting on it. They have a bit of a fight on whether to continue with Little Wolf’s plan for knowing the forest was dangerous, so the girls decide not to continue and the boys follow Little Wolf. They see a paw print some time later, then they see an outcrop of rocks with a cave opening.

Little Wolf has the 2 other boys stand outside while he goes into the cave and find the wolf’s den, the plan to signal him if any sign of trouble is seen outside and for them to take cover in the trees. Little Wolf then states if nothing is inside, he’ll grab a clump of full and they’ll leave. One boy with disbelief asks that was the plan, to get some fur, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. Little Wolf states if they came back with wolf’s fur and no injuries it’d prove they were brave and cunning, and show they can handle danger while keeping level heads. 

This convinces them and they agree, Little Wolf next stating they just needed to see if the wolf was home, so another boy decides to throw a rock, and it was too late for Little Wolf to stop him. So they wait to see if anything showed up at the opening. Nothing does, so Little Wolf decides to continue and has Silent Star watch Arrow before he accidentally killed them. Little Wolf then approaches the cave opening and looks inside, he sees nothing so goes in, hugging the wall, he looks like he’s listening at the wall, and then notices long horizontal scratch marks. 

Next, he falls and when he picks his hand up, it looks like blood has gotten on him with bones looking a bit rib-like on the ground. He walks past on tip-toe, disgusted, while the boys outside are getting impatient because it was getting dark quick. The two boys start bickering about who should be able to be look out in the tree when they hear a howl. Silent Star notes it came from the west but he couldn’t see the wolf yet, but judging by the howl, he might be a mile away at least. 

When he looks down, Arrow is nowhere to be seen. As he’s shouting and looking around, Arrow pops up behind him and the tree asking, what. Silent Star tells him to get back down, but Arrow refuses, saying it was Silent Star’s turn. Meanwhile, back with Little Wolf as he’s edging toward a light in the tunnel, and upon getting closer, he looks through a hold in the rock to see the moon. 

Then he hears something in a smaller opening in the cave wall, and when Little Wolf investigates, he finds a wolf pup sleeping. Little Wolf smiles, and reaches behind it, grabbing a handful of its fur, which makes the pup start howling. As Little Wolf reaches the opening to the cave again, he hears his friends bickering in the tree, so Little Wolf calls up to them, and asks if that’s what they thought keeping watch was. He next tells them to relax and as he’s about to mention what he’d been up to, the boys look scared. 

So Little Wolf looks back toward the cave, and then sees the white wolf on top of the cave, snarling and growling at him. Next the wolf is right in front of Little Wolf, he yells out and falls back, and his hand reaches for a rock, which he throws at the wolf’s face as it lunges at him, knocking out the wolf and his friends urging him to keep running. So he does, jumping over branches, but then falls again, the white wolf is catching up to him as Little Wolf scrambles to climb a rock face just missing his foot. The wolf then, without taking his eyes from Little Wolf climbs an easy side of the rock he was climbing to meet him at the top. 

Little Wolf gets to the top and grabs a short and broken tree branch, the wolf facing him as he swung wildly. The white wolf, eventually grasps the stick in its mouth and breaks more of it free, growling at Little Wolf as he clutched the remains of the branch. The wolf snarls and lunges at Little Wolf again who jumps backward over a bush, the wolf falling in it, and gives him time to sprint away, brambles stuck on the wolf, but this seeming to be enough to allow Little Wolf to reach a ravine with water, he making a jump for the other side, but falling down the opposite slope and into the water. When he comes to, he starts crying, then when he opens his eyes the white wolf is growling at him again. 

When it lunges again, Little Wolf has another broken stick and this time impales the wolf when it jumps onto him. Little Wolf gets swiped on his chest before the wolf stops moving. Then he hears his name called and Singing Moon with a man is standing at the top of the slope. She runs down and hugs him, the man follows, then asks what had he done. Little Wolf looks down at his hand still grasping the fur, and opens his hand, the fur being taken by a light wind. 

Well it was fast-paced and entertaining, and would be interesting to see where it went after this, but it still hasn’t gotten a second chapter. There’s a 9 minute short of the story which I haven’t seen, but it’d be great to see the story continue in some way. Good story if you can find it, I’d say for free if possible.