The World Of Wolves

Chapter Three: The Large Tree

Cutting arrowheads was never really Lyra’s strong point. Coupled with pure exhaustion, an aching body, and no tools, she struggled even more. She somehow managed to cut half of the arrowheads in the basket before falling asleep. She only woke up when she felt something brush against her cheek and she shot up in her haze, immediately panicking she had missed the deadline Reanne gave her.

“Reanne, I’m so sorry-” She stopped as soon as she saw Tristan’s face.

He stared at her for a moment, worry across his face before he took a deep breath and sighed. “Ly, what happened?”

“Nothing, I just fell asleep making arrow-”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” Tristan’s tone was filled with irritation. “This morning everything was fine, I leave for training for the day and preparing for our next hunt and by the time dinner rolls around you’re nowhere to be seen. Your mother had no idea where you were and I had to find out from Eli you had been sent to build yourself a place. Since you weren’t at dinner, I had to search for you and honestly, Ly, you’re not exactly very close to the group. I find you here finally and you’re covered in bruises, your head is bleeding, and you’re passed out from what I'm guessing is a mix of trauma, exhaustion, and dehydration.” With each word he said, his tone grew from irritation to anger. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed sharply.

Lyra stared at him for a moment, before looking down and seeing a small bowl of food and a sack of water. She sunk back trying to make herself small compared to the growing anger resonating off Tristan. She couldn't find her voice despite knowing he wanted her to say something.

“Lyra, I was gone for less than a day! What the hell happened?!”

She jumped as his voice boomed around her. “I-I-I just…” It felt like a lump was stuck in her throat and she felt her eyes begin to water. “I just w-wanted to be in-independent. I’m fine.” Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.

Tristan stood up, turning his back to Lyra, placing a hand on the back of his neck and the other on his hip and he smoke through gritted teeth. “Why didn’t you come and find me? I could have helped you build a place a lot better than sleeping in a hole in the ground! And why are you making arrowheads?! We both know you’re terrible at it, you should be making be fletching the arrows!”

Lyra tried desperately to make herself smaller by sinking back into herself and hugging her knees. “I worked really hard on all this…” She mumbled softly.

She could handle her mother’s cold shoulder, Reanne’s beating, and sleeping in the dirt, but Tristan yelling at her was different. He was silent for a moment before groaning and turning around. He stared at her sternly before reaching down and grabbing the basket of flint. “I brought you some food and water, finish it, and then come to my place. You can stay there for the night and then tomorrow I’ll get you set up somewhere.”

With that, Tristan walked away before she could say anything back. Lyra stared at the food, but her appetite was gone. The last time he lectured her like that was when she almost drowned when she was twelve. He rarely saw her in this kind of state, people were usually too busy preparing for the hunting parties to come back and in the short time they were here, they were busy skinning and preparing whatever was brought back so any wounds or bruises she received healed before he ever saw it. It was a group pastime activity, humiliating Lyra or just beating her blue. The women grew restless quickly when the men were away, it drove a lot of them crazy to be confined to the jungle every day, but most of them found release by being overly prepared whether it be making weapons for the hunting party, making more clothes, or canning food for the winter. When they grew tired of constant doomsday prepping they found it easy to relieve stress by finding a human punching bag. Lyra made a perfect one.

Lyra knew if Tristan knew about it, he would try to put a stop to it, but it would just end with everyone hating her more and getting double the beatings but in a lot less obvious ways. Eventually, Tristan would stop believing her and he would turn on her too, so it was easier to just stay quiet and out of people's way. Not to mention, this wasn't Tristan’s job. He had an entire group of 56 men, women, and children who all looked to him for guidance and he was only 20. Adding the stress of protecting her was selfish. Everyone pulled their weight and then come and Tristan pulled all of that behind him. If she couldn’t even handle making her own place to live or contributing by making weapon ammo, she had no business eating the food he brought back or relying on the group to keep her safe.

Lyra had picked at the bowl of food a bit, trying to force herself to eat the little bit given to her, but the only thing she craved was water which she went through quickly. It was pretty dark, which means the sun was either completely down or setting, it would be hard to navigate to a stream, but she knew one was fairly close.

Lyra pulled herself up, the events of the day hitting her at full force. She latched the sack to her tattered shorts that use to be jeans she wore when she was ten, and she began walking toward the direction she believed the stream was in. She walked in between the trees, counting the steps before turning in another direction.

The trees began to get thicker, and it wasn’t until Lyra tripped over an exposed root and landed in a thick shrub, giving herself some extra battle wounds, that she realized she had been counting the steps as if she was coming from her mother's place. She glanced around to find any kind of landmark that may show her the direction to head to get back home. She tried fighting the anxiety knowing Tristan was probably losing patience and on his way back to her little burrow and she did not want him to find her even further from their village.

She managed to do the opposite of staying calm and her casual walk became a sprint as the forest became denser and denser. She tripped and clashed with shrubs and trees alike, losing more light to the jungle and it didn’t help her vision began to tunnel just increasing her anxiety. No matter where she looked, nothing looked familiar and even though each breath she took was painstaking she couldn’t stop running.

She kept pushing shrubs and branches out of the way and her feet kept going until suddenly there wasn’t any resistance anymore and she tumbled forward into a soft bed of grass. She looked up, trying to calm her breathing in hopes to ease the pain in her chest, and was at eye level with a small mossy stone tower. Her breath staggered as she looked to her right and saw the same large tree she saw in her vision earlier that morning. She slowly pushed herself off the ground and her eyes followed the trunk of the tree up to the branches until they were lost in the leaves. She took a few steps back, taking in the breathtaking views before looking to her right at the large meadow.

Even through the dark of the night, the field was illuminated with colors. She rarely saw any flowers in the village except for wolfsbane and nightshades, so she was captivated by the array of colors. Hues of pinks, yellows, and blues expanded extensively and she found herself slowly walking toward the flowers, bending down and gently touching the petal of a poppy. She smiled at the feeling of the soft fuzzy and silky petals beneath her fingers but her smile didn't last long.

A snarl erupted from the field only a few feet away and before Lyra could react she looked up to see red eyes pouncing toward her. She couldn't even get a scream out before a large silver wolf pinned her to the ground, its claws crushing her throat preventing any sound from coming out. She grasped the claws that were digging into her skin and tried desperately to get away, her heart was pounding underneath the wolf's massive paw and tears streamed down her face as the beast inched its teeth inches from her face. She felt the heat hitting her in the face, she could see what looked like blood surrounding its mouth and its red eyes digging into her soul.

Despite her heart pounding and a feeling of impending doom bubbling inside her, she noticed the wolf bleeding heavily from its shoulder. She stopped fighting the claw crushing her throat and reached up gently touching the wolf's shoulder, just a few inches from the wound. She noted the wolf's for was coarse yet also soft to the touch, and when she touched it, it jerked for a moment putting less pressure on her throat allowing a breath of fresh air to fill her lungs.

Just then the wolf was tackled off of her, and thrown almost ten feet from her. She sat up coughing and gasping for air, holding her throat realizing it has been cut slightly from the sudden movement just then. She looked up to see Tristan standing over her, his eyes on the wolf. "Ly! Are you okay? Can you move?!" His voice boomed causing her to jump.

She nodded but realized his eyes didn't leave the wolf as it was not standing up again, growling and approaching them. "I'm okay." She coughed out.

"I need you to get up and run. I'll hold it off for as long as I can." Lyra looked between Tristan and the wolf. Tristan was unarmed with no armor on, but the wolf wasn't attacking. It was growling viciously, but it was mostly just watching them until Tristan yelled," Ly, go now! " before charging the wolf which charged back.

Lyra stood up, her knees were weak and her chest throbbed with pain, but she was frozen in place. She desperately wanted to run, everything on her was telling her to run, but she couldn't stop watching the scene in front of her.

Tristan lunged forward causing the wolf to do so as well, but instead of colliding with each other, he twisted his entire body to the right, dodging the claws and teeth of the beast. Having the upper hand, he used the weight of his body to shove his elbow into the side of the wolf making it lose its footing. Before Tristan could attack again the wolf used its loose footing to simply roll away from him and set up for another pounce. Tristan had pushed himself back but hadn't gained his foot when the wolf was already lunging forward again. He barely dodged the nasty bite, but to dodge he had to throw himself, putting himself in a weak stance which the wolf used to its advantage. It used its back legs to kick Tristan back before spinning itself and landing on top of him digging its claws into Tristan making him cry out in pain.

Tristan's cry made Lyra's stomach drop and sprinted toward them. She fell to her knees next to them, grabbing the wolf's paw and begging it to get off.

"Lyra, I told you to run!" Tristan shouted, struggling under the wolf.

"Please, I'm begging you, please stop! Please I'll do anything, please!" Lyra begged the wolf, tears pouring down her face.

"Lyra go! I can't watch you die!" Tristan groaned, losing the stamina to keep the paw from breaking his ribs. The pressure continued on his chest until a crack was heard causing Tristan to groan out and Lyra to scream.

"Please stop! You're going to kill him! Please just kill me instead, stop hurting him!" Lyra pushed on the wolf's side

"Lyra, please! This monster won't listen to you, it will kill you! I love you Lyra! I can't watch you die in front of my eyes!" Tristan shouted, groaning at the pain.

Lyra stopped for a moment and stared at Tristan and the wolf stopped pushing down on Tristan's chest and just watched.

"Y-you love me?" Lyra stuttered, but before Tristan could respond, the wolf let out a loud and vicious growl as it jumped off Tristan, and bit down on his leg causing both Tristan and Lyra to scream before the wolf tossed Tristan at the large tree. Tristan hit it with a loud thud making Lyra scream his name and stand up to rush toward him, but before she could even take a step the wolf bit the back of Lyra's shirt and shorts and began sprinting away from the meadow.