Daughter of the Wolf.

🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺

They named me Dróttning. Queen!

I am a daughter of the forest. I cannot remember a time when I was not here running wild with the wolves. 🐺I heard them calling me from the depths of my mother's womb. I knew that they would come for me.

All I can ever imagine is being here, in this emerald forest where sunlight filters through the leaves like golden rain. Have I not always been a wolf child, long before I became the lost baby girl named Vernia. Have I not been cradled by the towering trees and whispered to by the wind. I, who was born to human parents but taken by wolves in the dead of night. Not as Vernia did I grow up, but as the wild child of the forest, embraced by the wolf pack that had become my family.

The wolves taught me to run with the grace of the wind and to hunt with the cunning of a fox...to fight for my survival. They protected me as my senses sharpened, my instincts honed, I became one with the rhythms of the forest. I was happy, my laughter echoing through the trees as I played with my wolf siblings.

I never imagined that I could ever be any different than they are.

DISCOVERY🐺

One day, while exploring the fringes of the woodland home, the wolf child stumbled upon a group of humans. She watched them from a distance, curious but wary. They were unlike the wolves, strange and rigid in their movements, upright...their voices a cacophony of sounds that grated against her ears.

The humans spotted her, she was now eight years old, and they remembered the story of a long-lost baby girl, believed to have been eaten by wolves. The story spread of her sighting and they came in great numbers to find her. For days they hunted, setting traps for the wolves. They eventually caught the human child-wolf in a net-like thing, she was naked, filthy and with hair so tangled, it was best to cut it all off than try to detangle it. And so they took her from her beloved forest home.

The wolves howled mournfully for three whole days. The river, terrified, sad and melancholic and in sympathy for the awful grieving of the wolves, honored the forest's heart by flowing backwards for as long as their wolf-child, Dróttning, their Queen, stayed missing.

🐺

Vernia, they called her as she was returned to the village, to joyful weeping parents who had given up all hopes of ever seeing her again. They bathed her. How she growled as they brushed her teeth, clothed her in strange fabrics, and tried to teach her the ways of their world. But Vernia felt trapped, her heart aching for the freedom of the forest. The walls of the village closed in around her, and the rules of human society seemed pointless and suffocating.

For one year they taught her to live as humans do, to speak like they did... she was a fast learner. Unwillingly, she learned to read and write, but, try as they could, they could not get her to wear shoes. She refused to befriend the others of her age. Vernia's parents tried their best for her to fit in, to conform, but it was of no use. She yearned to be free.

Her mother, sad at her child's indifference towards her kind, explained to her that she was growing up fast. She told her of the changes that happened to a human woman that she should not cope with alone. That wolves could not help her with. Quizzically, the child cocked her head, digesting but not quite understanding all of the knowledge that was being fed into her still maturing psyche. She nodded, hoping that such things would never happen to her as a wolf child.

Every night, the wolves howled and people were a bit upset with the river, for its backward flow kept taking them where they had no wish to go.

One night, when the moon was full and the forest called to her with its familiar song, Vernia made her decision. She slipped away from the village, her bare feet pitter-pattering over the ground, she ran back to the heart of the forest. Her wolf family awaited her, their howls of joy echoing through the night as they welcomed her home.

The river, elated and feeling whole again, reversed its course. The forest was again at peace, except for the few who felt threatened by the human among them. But that is a different story for later.

Vernia stood at the edge of the clearing, feeling the cool breeze on her skin and the soft earth beneath her feet. She raised her voice in a wild, joyous howl, her spirit soaring as she reclaimed her place in the world that was truly hers. The forest embraced her once more, and she knew that she would always be the daughter of the wolves, the wild heart of the woods.

🐺

Years passed, from time to time the people returned to the forest to search for her. They left her clothing and human food which would disappear mysteriously. Vernia took it and hid it all in her secret place. Some said that she could be heard howling happily with no wish to return to the human way of living. Eventually they just let her be.

When Queen turned twelve, she found her own private cave, her own space, and within its confines she faced her womanhood and learned to cope. The mother wolf guarded her fiercely, growling whenever she needed to be alone. She understood now what her human mother had meant. Still, she was not ready to leave the forest.

🐺

Now, we meet Vernia as she turns sixteen years old. The mother wolf now notices the change in her cub, the yearnings that wolves could no longer fulfill. She knew that it was time for her child to seek out her own kind again, to form the kind of relationships which she would not find among the wolves.

Furthermore, dangerous humans had been seen in the forest, hunting for the human wolf child, now almost a woman. she was no longer safe in this place.

So they washed her in the river and encouraged her to dress herself in the clothing of the humans. Mother wolf was inconsolable as she bid her cub goodbye...the entire forest and the rives hushed to an eerie silence, as if the very essence of their being was, for a cosmic moment, disturbed.

They howled and wept as she left, accompanying her to the forest's edge.

Vernia told them that she would visit often. Hurriedly she ran, for her pain on leaving them was deep. But she was ready.

Vernia remembered her parents, Whanita and Favel and her home of years ago, so she ran, she walked, alone and frightened to their door.

Her parents, now looking older than she remembered them, for their hair had gone gray, both burst into tears. The mother hugged her child, for she had returned, willingly, to her.

🐺

There had been a young man who came often to the forest to read out loud. He knew that she watched him, and his eyes always searched for her. He would listen until he heard the human wolf girl howl low and growl her arrival.

Then he would read form a book:

To sleep, perchance to dream

of stories, books and a claim to fame

I want to say what my heart needs to say

to pen my words like the sages of old

those who wrote with such profound depth

that their immortal words transcend the ages

Dare I open my creative vein

And so allow the words to bleed

unto the pages red as crimson blood

I want to run with the wolf and be free

I want to bay at the full moon

My voice reverberating to the sky

Come words, be the blood in my vein

be the beating of my heart

Be my first waking thought

And my last sigh before I sleep

Be the bone of my bone

and the breath of my breath

I beseech and importune with might

Yet the words in shyness hide their face from me

Will they find me in my dreams

and like little elves

Leave me perfectly written manuscripts

To fill my coffers full of riches

Yet truly what I really wish

Is the gift of words so rare

They bring tears to the eyes of the

truly discernable and appreciative minds!

Vernia remembered his smell...his laugh when he turned his head and she ran off into the trees, but never too far away. He would leave little carved wolves where he sat, and she treasured them. She kept them safe.

She smelled him now, as she watched him draw near to her mother's door.

He was a very skilled carpenter, her poet. Vernia later came to learn that he had written the poetry himself. He had written it just for her. His name was Mathel and she grew to love him.

She returns to the woods every chance she gets, her family by her side, her two children now play with her beloved wolves.

🐺🐺🐺

The lioness Vyvia watches from her hiding place, she had never liked this human among them, perhaps one day she will taste one of these young pups that now play in the forest. She smiles and swishes her tail, turning to walk away. Vernia howls, letting her know that she smells her threat, and dares her to try.

+

Vernia is now twenty-five years old. Her children, Waylen is three years old and Nylah turned one year old today.

During the birthday celebration, Vernia feels a strange sensation in her entire body. Her vision is sharpened, her senses heightened to every sound, her tastebuds craved meat and blood .

To be contd.