Why It Was Me That Ended Up Being Raised by a Wolf and Not My Twin Wolf-Sisters

by Anne Howkins

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

There was all the empty-crib commotion, and mother’s unwarranted wailing almost
drowning out the distant yowling, and her yanking and dragging me, and then we’re
stood on the riverbank while she-wolf’s haunches bristled, and what I said was that
they shouldn’t have been rescued from the river, even if the rescuer was a she-wolf
perfectly suited to raising them, they were put there for a reason, and I didn’t say that
it was because there wasn’t enough food for a girl and her wolf-sisters, or that a big
girl still needed her mother, or that everyone was bone-tired without sleep because
the baby wolf sisters howled when there was a moon, or when there wasn’t a moon,
and then mother’s pushing me towards those dare-snarling yellow teeth and she’s
snatching up the wolf-sisters and running off, and she-wolf mother wraps herself
round me while she licks away my tears.

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Anne loves the cha.llenge of telling stories in very few words. Her work has been published online and in print.

This story won Second Prize in the October 24 Monthly Micro Competition.