Change

Change

Bo looked at the sky thinking about the day he’d changed everyone’s lives.

The wolves had roamed the valley for as long as the elders remembered. Bo had heard the stories, as he grew, of how their beloved home was surrounded and protected by the high mountains. But even then the humans had begun moving in.

Many of the younger wolves questioned why they did not move up into the mountains, but the elders shut them down. The mountains were dangerous, they warned, full of huge predators. The younger wolves had never seen these predators, but the stories, so vivid, planted fear in their hearts. Yet still more humans came.

Bo mated, and his mate, Cara, was preparing for birth. Bo had been hunting when he saw his first human. The human didn’t see him, so he stayed hidden watching. As he watched, the human pointed a stick that made a loud noise. A noise he’d heard more and more lately. As he watched, the human followed the direction he had pointed the stick, and picked up a rabbit, it was dead. Bo was shocked, humans could kill by pointing sticks.

That day when he returned he told the pack about them. The elders still protested, but finally they agreed they needed to get away from the humans. They would take their chances in the mountains.

Now his pups were almost grown. The land here was rocky and wild and the wolves flourished. The predator stories were wrong, the predators were bears, big and scary, but also gentle and not fond of wolf as food.

Bo looked out over the valley, their whole world when he was young. Then he looked out over the mountains to the real world beyond, the world they never knew existed until now.