Millennia - Raven Slake (love letters to the dead .txt) 📗

 Being a wolf has its advantages. We can stalk prey much easier than a human can and we always keep another wolf with us at all times. Safety in numbers, but even wolves have their limits on how many friends we carry on our backs. We do, however, tend to use strategy when killing deer, unlike humans. There are two main ways we take down our prey and it always depends on the victim. Moose and other large game were subject to my favorite hunting style. Three wolves would surround the moose from all sides except the front. The fourth wolf walks, or runs, forward and rips the throat out of the moose. Otherwise, we tend to chase our food and take down what we can, usually focusing on the stragglers. They were the easiest and sometimes the most fun from the smaller game.

The hunt began as the large herd of deer went sprinting when one of their own was taken down by Lefty, a fellow selsa wolf. Suki and Okami were containing the deer from the sides with Teva Hali, Preston, and me charging from the rear. Lefty would soon begin sprinting to the three of us, allowing me to go straight through the herd with Teva Hali. This herd knew our original techniques, so we devised a knew plan. Teva Hali looked me in the eye as we quickened our pace and seperated the herd into three sections. They reformed at the front, giving us a somewhat clear path. We raced around the head of the herd, leaving a few powerful stags confused and refusing to give in. Another look from my gamma friend, and we turned around and growled fiercely at the herd, making the front set of deer halt to a stop, not giving the back deer anytime to slow down. Teva Hali and I backed up, ensuring that the pile-up did not hit us. The stags in the back that saw it coming tried turning around, only to run into Preston and Lefty. Others, who neither crashed or ran into the rear wolves, split to the sides, only to be cornered by Suki and Okami. The formation resembled that of one we use on a large moose, but on a bigger scale. The whole herd was pinned into a circle formed by six wolves that showed no signs of hesitation or wariness. We were ready, but not quite prepared for a retaliation. Two stags came galloping at me, both appearing scared. The first ran low to the ground, suggesting the back stag was going to jump. Just as the front deer came deathly close to me with the antlers, I ducked even lower and dug my teeth into its neck, shoving upward. The second deer and already jumped, but not high enough, causing it to crash into both the now dead deer and myself. So much for an easy kill, stags never usually fight back, leave that to the moose.

Preston was sent to retrieve that pack for a feast. We allowed most of the herd to flee us, but we took a few with us. A quarter of the herd had died in the pile-up, breaking necks, crushing bones, and making our life easier. Regardless, the stags had encircled the does and fawns after leaving. They knew what we could do, but they were focused on me. Even Kaire appeared a tad scared that we had killed so many deer, mainly the powerful stags in front. Those were always the hardest to kill and never really our primary target. However, it did provide us with the adequate amount of food that we need to get through another day or so if we stayed here any longer.

"Nice job, Millennia," Zeke said loudly. Everyone heard him and I thought there was going to be at least one wolf that would start getting angry with just me being congratulated by the alpha. Things like that happened with wolves, not just humans as I have seen in past experiences. No one like being singled out, and no one liked not being appreciated for something that they assisted in. It would not be the forst that a wolf would attack me for being treated as someone who was far more superir than they were despite me only being a selsa. Zeke was constantly getting me attacked and better yet, getting my packmates killed for exposing my specialties. He made Trigger go crazy, just like everyone else.

"The rest of the hunters from the pack helped too, it was not just me," I replied, nervous that the others were getting angry. My fur began to rise, my fear becoming a little too obvious. Zeke just laughed, and looked at everyone else. They were all smiling, happy that my hunting party had brought down so much food. But no one was mad at me or at anything. This was the food we have been needing for quite some time now. And that alone set aside any grudges and let us all become happy. To some, that may seem completely fine and normal. But to me, that was the strangest thing I had heard since I lost a vast majority of my memory.

"Not that, you did come up with the plan though. I am talking about the two stags that tried to escape the circle. You handled that very well. Penelope would have liked that," Zeke corrected. Until the ceremony, everyone was going to say that Penelope was going to like this and that. It always ended with the ceremony. Too bad the ceremony was so far away though, I hated it when wolves said that a dead wolf would have liked something that they never liked. Sure Penelope liked war tactics, but she was never a hunter or true fighter. She was the beta female because she knew how to set up good plans, not because she was an excellent fighter. She assigned me as selsa so that I could enact the plans without a flaw and so that I was happy, so that we were both happy. She was a good friend and beta. Penelope knew that I loved the thrill of a hunt. We used to joke about how our prey never liked to cooperate with us, especially the stags. Does, fawns, and moose knew that they were going to die. Stags fought until the end, and that made things fun for wolves like me, but terrifying for the wolves that were just like her.

Zeke moved on, talking to all the other wolves and congratulating the hunters. The pack felt euphoric, but there still was that aura that said that someone was hiding something. But I ignored it, hoping to enjoy my meal. It was not everyday that the pack was not forced to ration out the kill. It felt nice, just like the good ole days back when Trigger was alpha. Trigger. I missed him. I tried to set the new thought aside as I continued to eat. But it never went away, everything that had happened had happened so fast and sudden, and it was all my fault. Desperately I needed to forget like Kaire does, he's good at leaving things in the past and living like not a single day was wasted in the process of his life.

We returned to the river after the feast and set up proper nesting grounds. It was windy but we would manage, just like always. We coped, but never actually recovered from anything before we were struck by tragedy again. And it always happened in three's. Penelope was strike one, strike two did not feel too far away. Maybe it was hiding in the blackberry bushes or it was hiding within the pack. We never knew when the next wolf was going to die or become injured. Maybe this time, it would become the full war that would set the pack free from our boundaries.

 We dream. All wolves do. Humans, as much as they think so, are not the only creatures that can have a high intelligence. Animals are smart too. Monkeys can do the same things humans can, just a few steps behind in evolution. With mammals, we just keep to ourselves and avoid getting noticed. That's why so many smart animals are found so late in their lives, they forget that someone is watching them and then they caught and become splattered all over the giant boxes with moving pictures on them. If humans were the only clever creatures on the planet, then Earth would already be destroyed. Because to be smart and to have dreams, you need to be able to feel emotions. The way that some humans see things, animals have no emotions and no conscious thoughts. But they are so wrong. Hate, anger, compassion, crankiness, they are all emotion that animals feel and humans recognize but still they claim we feel nothing. About a year ago, before I reunited with my pack, I met a group of cats. They did not mind me but they wanted me nowhere near theur young. Two of the cats, a mother and her baby, were not born into the clan like the others, thus, the leader refused to trust her. Mamba, that was her name. The stress of hiding in the outskirts of the territory built over time and eventually, she walked out into the road, and stayed there. Mamba was killed by a human vehicle, and her son was left back in the territory, where he was accepted because of his young age. He was saddened and he stopped playing with the younger cats until he got over her death. Sadness and guilt, if cats can feel that, so can every other creature in the world that humans doubt. I know I feel things, especially guilt.

 My old alpha haunts my dreams. His death was on me, I had killed him, but I never wanted to. It was all so sudden, one moment I am sitting by a pond, the next I am being shoved into it. Trigger had ran up from behind me and used his head to shove me forward. Face-first I splashed into the water, wondering who wanted me dead. When I got my head above water, I saw the face of Trigger. He looked crazed, saliva pouring from his jaws and his golden yellow eyes were bloodshot. Growling, he stared at me with hunger sprawled across his face. The wolf that I had