Chapter 7: Winter and Trespass
Winter
Winter is hard, those were the thoughts of IT, although his fur has grown thicker IT could feel the cold seeping in his skin, this was the first winter IT had experienced. A lot of the trees around him look dead and barren, but some tall pointy looking trees have retained their small bristle-like leaves.
Everything was white and everywhere was snow. The winter season has turned the green luscious forest into a white superficially lifeless land, yet it was also peaceful. The river was beginning to freeze, small chunks of ice are seen flowing down the river.
IT can see both sides of the river slowly forming ice sheets. Days are now shorter and it's getting colder and colder as the days go by. IT tries to take a step on the river, the cold water gives him a shiver but continues on in order to catch any of the fishes that might still be swimming around. It now takes a whole day just to catch food barely enough for everyone.
The two young wolves are now being taught how to hunt small game. they are slowly getting better, although still quite small compared to the adults they are big enough to hunt rabbits and other small animals. Although the territory was small there was quite enough small game to catch, at least for a while. Pretty soon the pack will be forced to cross other territories in order to stave off starvation.
One morning IT heads to the river in order to catch fish. As he arrives he sees the river completely frozen over, their main source of food was now gone. IT heads back to the den in order to join the others for catching small game. Upon arriving IT notices that nobody was there. He starts to breathe in a lot of air and then howls, IT makes a slightly high pitched howl that slowly drops into a deep tone. IT waits and hears the familiar howls of his pack, IT then starts to go towards the source of the sound and finally to his pack.
Trespass
Hunting around the territory was becoming harder and harder as the animals became scarcer and scarcer. As the pack circled around their territory twice, they didn't pass any small rabbits that were hopping around, nor any squirrels. The pack circles one more time and then they reached the border of their territory, they stop. They are at the end of the line. There is little to no animals in their territory. If the pack enters the territory of other wolves there will be risks and danger when they are encountered by the territory owners but if they stay inside their borders, the pack will surely die of starvation. While they are still strong and well fed, the grey wolf along with the mother decides to move and enter the territory of their neighbors
They head for the direction of the packs territory where the sun rises, the rest follows.
The pack was currently following some tracks, the tracks have similar hoof prints to the one IT saw during autumn. The group they were following weren't the same group since the hoofs were not as numerous, there were five distinct prints, two prints were larger than the others.
They continued to follow the tracks until they see five figures lumbering ahead of them.
The pack increased their speed in order to close in on the animals they were tailing. When the pack was close enough IT studied the features of the group. They have dark brown color, short and relatively thin legs, their hindquarters are more developed than the front legs, their necks were short and thick, they have a large head and a long snout. They also have a slightly pungent odor wafting around them. What made them dangerous were two sharp tusks on their lower jaws, which can gore and injure any predators that attack them, leading to death.
Two of them were approximately the same size of IT and the other adult wolves, one looks extremely older and had a lot of scars and bald patches around its thick hide, the other three were quite small, they look like young juveniles.
IT noticed that the grey wolf and mother wolf knew what these creatures were so he followed the two adults lead and stayed back. From their reactions these animals were prey. The group of prey notices the predators behind them and stands their ground, the small ones hid behind their larger counterparts while the large ones snorted and made ' ukh! ukh! ' noises and then started to make high pitched squeals.
This was the first time IT saw such a defiant and somewhat threatening prey so he continued to stay a little farther away waiting for the actions of his elders. The two experienced wolves began circling around the group of prey on different sides, trying to get behind and get an opportunity to attack and steal one of the small ones hiding behind.
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The group of prey reacted by each of the bigger creatures facing the two circling wolves, having the two big creatures backs behind each other and the little ones sandwiched in the middle. As the mother and grey wolf circled around, they from time to time tried to prod the prey's defenses by getting closer and falling back while continuously growling and barking. This causes the group to get agitated but they still continued to face the two wolves circling around them in a clockwise motion.
IT got an idea of what the older wolves were doing so he decided to join in and began circling the prey in a clock-wise motion, and started growl and bark as well. This causes one of the big prey to divert part of their attention to IT giving an opportunity for the grey wolf to close in, the hog tries to turn away and managed to swing its tusk towards the grey wolf, the grey wolf jumps back and evades the animals tusks. Having failed the grey wolf then continued to circle around again.
Eventually, the two younger members of the pack joined in imitating the actions of the adults by barking and growling but only as distractions not going in themselves to prod. this went on for quite a bit of time, prodding and then retreating, more prodding barks and growls, the tension increases. The grey wolf repeats his actions and comes dangerously close to one of them. The prey he went close to finally snaps started charging, a very risky tactic but it opened an opportunity. With quick judgement and fast movement, IT runs towards the little ones while one of the bug creatures full attention was focused on the grey wolf.
IT quickly reaches one of the small prey and bites its snout. The small wild boar begins to squeal and the other larger old boar, who was facing the mother wolf turns around and tries swing its tusk at IT, another opportunity. IT lets go of the young boars snout and backs away evading the strike while the mother wolf began going in as well and bit and dragged the smallest boar away from the group. The wild old boar's attention turned away from IT and began to run towards the mother wolf.
Too late though the mother wolf was already behind, with the young juvenile boar in tow and was guarded by the two young wolves intimidating the boar with growls and barks. IT circled around the sounder of boars {group of boars} and joined in with the intimidation while the mother wolf drags the juvenile away from the group of boars.
Finally, the boar stops following the pack since protecting the other young boars were of higher importance and also because one of the wolves were still with the sounder.
As soon as they were far enough, the pack proceeded to bite the jugular killing the juvenile boar and then they started to howl, giving away their location to the grey wolf who was separated from the pack, and unintentionally some others.
When the grey wolf came, they then proceeded to feast on the carcasses until nothing but bones were left, the risk was worth it. As the pack were chewing on the bones a howl is heard near the packs proximity. They stopped chewing on bones and proceeded to look on where the howl came from. A pack of wolves were coming near them, growling and snarling at the trespassers that dared to enter their territory.
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Info Section
I really like to read the comments left behind by the readers and I've noticed that they've dropped to only two to three replies, so I'm encouraging you guys to start commenting below. Please, any comment will help whether it be your thought, suggestion or funny reactions, ANYTHING!!. Your comments will contribute a lot in helping me improve thereby making future chapters increase in quality, so please feel free to comment below. anything helps! Though it is optional.
{Last Note For This Chapter: if there's any grammar, mistakes or any other confusing stuff in the story let me know in the comment section below and I will answer it there on the comment section or on the next Chapter of the info section and do the fixes on the current chapter. looking proof-readers, I'm kinda blind at seeing any horrible sentences that need some rephrasing or any other info that I might be confusing, so I'm looking for any help I can get.}