The Boy Raised by the Wild

Deep in the big Carpathian Mountains, where tall trees cover everything, a story happened that no one knew about. It was the story of a boy raised by wolves.
His life began with a loud crash. A small airplane flying through the mountains hit a bad storm and fell from the sky. The plane was broken into pieces on the ground. Inside, everyone was gone, except for a tiny baby. The baby had been thrown from the plane and was now lying alone in the forest, crying.
The baby would have been lost to the cold, but an old she-wolf found him. She had lost her own pups long ago and was very lonely. When she saw the small, crying baby, she felt she had to help. She walked up to him gently and nudged him with her nose. That night, she curled her warm, furry body around the baby to keep him safe from the cold.
She gave him a name in her wolf language: Singur, which meant "the lonely one."
Singur’s life was very different from other children. He did not learn to talk with words. Instead, he learned the language of the wolves. He knew what a tilted ear meant, or a soft whine, or a happy bark. He learned to walk on his hands and feet, scrambling over rocks and through bushes with his wolf family.
The forest was his home. He knew the smell of his den, which was a safe hole under the roots of a giant tree. He knew the taste of food after a good hunt. The sound of the wind was his music, and the howl of the wolf pack at the moon was his song.
The old she-wolf, who he called Mama, was his teacher. She showed him which berries were good to eat and which ones were poison. She taught him how to hunt small animals. Singur watched everything she did and copied her. Slowly, he started to think and act like a wolf. He could follow tracks in the dirt and knew when danger was near.
His family was the whole pack. The leader was a strong wolf named Fulger. The other young wolves played with Singur. They would wrestle and chase each other, which made Singur strong and fast. He was a strange member of the pack, with no fur and only two legs to run on, but he was one of them.
One year, the winter was very hard. The snow was deep, and it was hard to find food. A very large and mean brown bear came into their part of the forest. The bear scared away all the deer, and the wolves grew hungry. Day after day, the hunters came back with nothing.
Singur was hungry, too. One day, while walking with Mama, he found the bear's den. A low growl came from inside the dark cave. Mama was scared and wanted to leave, but Singur had an idea. It was a clever, human-like idea.
He remembered a steep, rocky hill above the bear’s cave. He knew the rocks there were loose. While Mama watched, worried, Singur climbed the hill. He found a very large boulder that was not very steady. Using a strong tree branch as a lever, he pushed and pushed with all his might.
Finally, the giant rock moved. It tumbled down the hill and caused a landslide of smaller rocks. The rocks fell right in front of the bear's den, trapping the angry bear inside.
Singur was a hero. He led the pack to the trapped bear. It took a lot of digging, but soon the pack had a huge meal. It was a feast that saved them from starving. Fulger, the leader, licked Singur’s face. It was a sign of great respect. Singur had proven he was a true part of the pack.
Years went by. Singur grew into a strong boy. His hair was long and wild, and his skin was tough from the sun and wind. He ran with the wolves, and his heart was as wild as theirs.
Then, one day, a new smell came with the wind. It was the smell of a campfire and cooking food. It was the smell of people.
Singur was curious. He moved silently through the trees to see what it was. He saw two men. They had hair on their faces like him, but it was cut short. They wore strange clothes and made loud noises when they spoke. They sat by a fire they had built.
Singur watched them for a long time. He felt confused. They looked like him, but they were so different. He saw them laugh, a sound he had never made himself. He felt a strange ache in his chest, a new kind of loneliness.
Suddenly, one of the men looked up and saw him. The man's eyes opened wide with surprise. For a second, Singur was too scared to move. Then, he turned and ran as fast as he could, back into the safety of his forest.
He ran back to his wolf family, to the home he knew. But something inside him had changed. He had seen the world of men. He was Singur, the boy raised by wolves, but he was also a human. For the first time, his wild home did not feel like the only place he belonged. He now stood between two worlds, and he knew a big choice was coming in his future.
In the end, After the sharp crack of the rifles faded and his wolf family lay still in the forest quiet, the men took Singur to their world of walls and strange comforts. They gave him a soft bed and warm clothes, but they had stolen the wild, beating heart from his chest. He would stare out the window, a silent ghost in a human house, forever trapped between a world he had lost and one he could never understand. The boy named Singur in the bustling wilderness had finally learned the true, crushing weight of being lonely in the heart of civilization.