"Some see the world and assume that is all there is. Others see the world and wonder if their is more." quote from a teacher in the grand academy of the Kipinian Empire

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Days had passed with nothing happening, with more time awake, this gave me time to think more on my situation and my thoughts weren't in the best place at the moment. I have just woken up but I don't feel like moving, so many worries were going through my head.

Questions like what was the portal? Am I still on earth or on another planet, another universe? How did you earn EXP, was it just from killing? Was the system being used by someone like a game or was It just like a force of nature? Do gods exist? What about my family, are they ok? what now? Will I see again? Will I hear again?

"Whine" I cried, everything felt so hard and I felt useless. Unable to see, to hear, I knew that dog and wolf pups couldn't open there eyes as pups. Intellectually I knew that, it didn't make me feel any better about it.

Mother hearing my cries picked me up by the scruff and put me next to her teat but I was to depressed to move I felt as if there was no point to living, the potential of the system scared me, all the books I read had being of unimaginable power just roaming around. I'm just a wolf a baby at that.

Seeing that I wasn't moving and still crying, mother started to lick me. I didn't respond to it at first too sad to but then she flipped me on my back and started to lick my belly and my sides, she was giving my whole body a cow lick. All my hair was facing the wrong direction by the time she was done, the weird sensations of having hair all over my body facing the wrong way was weird enough to get me out of my depressing thoughts. At that point the hunger in my belly was almost painful so I crawled in the direction of the teat and started eating.

My sibling huddled up next to me and started eating as well. As I was eating, I came to the realisation that I wasn't thinking properly, so I decided to fix that when I was done. When I finished I crawled a little bit away from moms belly and towards her head.

One time about a year before I died I was depressed about a bad decision I had made, In that moment I had decided to tell my mum about it, she couldn't help me with the problem but the act of telling her about it calmed me, it let me know that I wasn't alone I was doing the same now. Granted my wolf mother was just a wolf and couldn't really help talk me through my problems. What she could do was be there, for the past how many days I had been here as a wolf, she had also bean here providing food warmth, she was now a reliable presence in my mind something solid, an anchor for my turbulent thoughts to latch on to. Laying down next to her with my head resting on my forelegs was warm and comforting, she gave me another lick before settling her head next to me.

In this calming position I almost fell asleep but I had one more thing to do before that.

Meditation, nothing special, I find that I can only get the mindset needed to fix my current state by meditating, a person to rely on helps but doesn't fix the cause of my stress. Laying completely still I focused my mind, I striped away thoughts of yesterday, let plans and worries of tomorrow fall away. I focused my mind on my body body, on my breath, In, hold, out, hold then repeat. I felt my new lungs expand and contract. I felt the small movements of my heart in my chest, "dun dun dun" I followed that beat around my new body, in my chest, forelegs, back legs. I felt the beat from my new ears to the tip of my nose. I entered a state of calmness and was now able to look at everything objectively.

In this meditative state I thought of all I know for certain, I am not dreaming, I died and got reincarnated as a wolf pup and I'm currently in a wolf den with mother and my 2 siblings, their seems to be a system like those in my books, levelling seems to be locked for now. Then I though of what I was doing now, I was meditating to help me get out of my depressive mood. Thinking on that I asked myself why was I depressed, I cant see or hear, the system scares me with its potential for killing me, I can't move that well, I'm worried about my old family. Then I thought of what I can do about it today or tomorrow? I can't do anything besides wait, and make sure to eat as much as possible. A few of my problems with solve themselves with time and I can't worry about the ones I can't fix. Now to think of everything that is good with life at the moment, I have a caring mother and two siblings, I no longer have to stress about work, about other people, I will probably be able to use magic as there is a MP stat, I no longer have sweat, I'm living out one of my fantasies.

I laid there meditating next to mother, sorting out my thoughts for the rest of the time I was awake, falling asleep next to her.

The conclusion to my mediation was that 'everything would be fine, don't worry about things you can't change'.

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Over the next few cycles my senses started to return, gradually I was able to open my eyes, to hear and to smell and my teeth were also growing in and were pretty painful. My eyesight was terrible just a blurry collection of brown and grey in different shades. My hearing was just as bad, it was as if I was wearing earplugs and my sense of smell was hard to use as my nose was hard to breath through, not blocked like it was before but it felt off as if it was shaped wrong. I was hoping that like my other sense it was just because I was still a pup and I would grow out of it.

I continued to meditate next to mother before going to sleep if the situation allowed, sometimes I would fall asleep after playing with my siblings or I would be to tired and fall asleep next to mother.

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Now able to see, I was able to roughly tell when days would pass. I was sleeping more than once a day and was slowly staying awake long enough to see the transition from day to night which wasn't anything special as all I could see was blurry colours becoming darker. Since my birth I have been crawling, mostly by using my front legs but more recently by my back legs, it didn't feel that different from when I was human. Every time I've been a little bit stronger. Recently I have been trying to stand, I haven't been successful. Today though I would walk I was sure of it.

I had just finished eating and I was bored, looking around I couldn't really see anything my vision had been getting clearer over time but was still unusable besides telling the direction mother was in, even squinting didn't help. Mother looked like a mountain of grey in my vision and my siblings where smaller mounds of grey, looking past my own nose which covered a greater part of my vision than when I was human, I could see the grey of my forelegs contrast against the brown dirt below.

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Putting strength into my legs I started to push against the ground, It took a lot of effort but I was able to stand on my four legs. My legs where still weak so I was swaying back and forth from the effort, I hunched down to lower my centre of gravity and balance my self putting more strain in muscles unused to the effort. I was starting to shake and pant from the effort, not willing to give up I took my right foreleg of the ground. I almost tipped for ward before I leaned the rest of my weight back on my other legs, I slowly put my paw forward. Not having any depth perception due to my blurry vision I leaned into the leg to much I hit the ground earlier than expected and leaned to much in to the leg. It buckled under my meagre weight and I came crashing down.

"Argg" I let out a high pitched squeak as I came down head first into the dirt.

It didn't hurt to land like that but my whole body was burning from from the effort of trying to stand and take a step. Technically I did take a step even if I collapsed just after so I take that as a win. Panting on the ground I was exhausted I laid there, I was pretty happy with my accomplishment evidenced by my wagging tail.

The tail was new and weird, I can control it as well as I used to be able to control facial muscles, which means that I could wag it, curl it towards my self and all other things that the could to with a tail but my emotions also controlled it. When I was happy like now it would all by itself and when I was sad It would curl up to my belly.

My ears twitched and faced the direction of mother, another new and weird thing was that I could also move my ears like my tail. Mother sat up and looked at my or at least I think she looked at me as I could see 2 faded yellow coloured blobs looking down at me. I heard her chuff at me, she looked at my siblings who where still laying next to me doing nothing. She gave them a nudges with her nose as if expecting them to follow my example but they continued to crawl on there bellies. Seeing this mom gave up and gave me some congratulatory licks which caused my tail to wag faster.

I don't know if mother is more intelligent than a normal wolf from my last life I haven't noticed anything that would suggest that she is smarter but then again there is nothing to flex intelligence on in the den.

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"Sniff" "sniff"

I was smelling something new this morning and couldn't place the smell, consequences of being reborn as a wolf I guess. Due to being a wolf my sense of smell has upgraded, nothing smells like I remember them smelling. Dirt for example doesn't smell like dirt anymore, Its like my human nose was only able to smell the end product whereas my new nose could smell the building blocks of that end product. My new nose was like smelling in 4k, I was able to tell moisture levels, all the things in the dirt, if mother or my sibling had passed over the spot I was smelling. Things no longer smelled like they did when I was human, everything was much more complicated and and interesting to smell.

"sniff" "sniff"

The air had something new in it, a new component to the normal smell of the den this component itself was constantly changing as if it itself was made of different components. This new smell was starting to make me hungry for some reason. Crawling in the direction of the smell a new blob of colour entered my vision. It was a mix of brown and brown with a very slight green tint, crawling closer It started to become clear what was making the smell.

It was a corpse, of what was hard to tell but it was a chunk bigger than me, it still had a portion of furred skin on it. I was confused why was it the exposed meat a green tinted brown sort of looked like a brown vomit colour. I was confused before I remembered that dogs and wolves where said to be colour blind, I knew that dogs could see some colours so maybe I was only partially colour blind. Due to the meat that is supposed to look red looking a green tinted brown I deduced that I couldn't see red, something to think about later as I now hungry and I realized that I was looking at food.

The thought of eating raw meat was kind of disgusting, but also not as it wasn't dangerous to the current me and it smelled good. As an armature home chef I have eaten raw meat before, I have eaten undercooked steaks and kangaroo meat before and that wasn't really disgusting more just unpleasant and I loved smoked salmon which was close enough.

I gave the exposed meat a lick, tasty. I licked the meat some more while also sniffing it and memorising the smell of meat. It was as tasty as moms milk, I went to bite a chunk off but all I was able to do was wiggle the chunk of meat back and forth. Lacking a strong jaw and not having any teeth besides my front ones caused me to be unable to rip a piece off the meat was super tough!

I was to hungry to care and kept tugging at the portion in my mouth, I got tired before I was able to separate the meaty potion from the rest. I wasn't even able to move the chunk from its initial spot, in conclusion mothers milk was more satisfying as a meal.

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My tongue was longer than I was used to and my teeth pointier, I have only grown in my front teeth so I didn't have fangs but my teeth were still sharper than they were in my past life. I have been careful when drinking milk as to not hurt mother but my sibling seem to have also grown teeth and I blame them for my current predicament.

After waking up one time instead of mother laying down for us to drink milk she started to make a yakking noise, she was vomiting. I was worried until a bit of meat came out of her mouth and landed in front of us.

I looked at it confused for a second before looking back up to mum concerned for her. She looked back down at us and then the meat before nudging the the meat toward us with her nose, she then licked her lips cleaning her face before laying down in front of us on the other side of the meat.

The message was clear to me, she wanted to us eat the regurgitated meat.

I wasn't the only one to notice the chunk of meat and not seeing the problem of regurgitated meat my siblings rushed in. I on the other hand was not, I knew about ways to tenderising meat I didn't realise that wolves did it for their pups by halve digesting it. I also knew that this regurgitated meat was going to be really healthy for me, not just the fact that its a good source of protein and some amino acids but also the fact that it had mothers whole stomach microbiome on it.

These facts did not help me make the decision like my siblings of eating it. The smell of the meat was arguably more appetising now which was apposed to my mind which saying that it was pretty much vomit. I skirted my sibling which where digging in and made my way to mother.

"Grrrrr" My hackles raised and my tail pulled in to my stomach, mother had just growled at me, an instinctual part of me knew to look down at the ground to show that I knew who was boss

I stopped moving closer, Mother had stopped growling but I knew for certain that if I tried to get closer she would growl again, I had a weird disconnect in my thoughts at that moment. A small part of me felt like Chris the human encountering a dangerous beast in the wild this was the logical part of me and I knew that if mother wanted to she could tear me apart. A larger part of me, the current me disregarded that quick thought and just felt as if scolded like the growl was the equivalent of my old mother brandishing the wooden spoon.

Not about to test mothers resolve I slowly turned back around and made my way back to the meat. My eyesight was still blurry so it wasn't disgusting to look at and the smell was actually more appetising than the chunk that I found earlier, so the only thing stopping me was the memories of what vomit tasted like from my past life. I steeled my will before giving the meat a quick lick, It tasted just like the chunk except their was also an acidic feeling to it. It was actually pleasant so with a little confidence I tried to tear a piece of, It was still had but much more tender than the chunk and with the help of my sibling on the other side of the regurgitated meat who were pulling the meat in their direction I was able to tear a bit of. I gummed the soggy meat in my mouth tasting it and it was satisfying so I swallowed and went for more.