The Wolf Goddess
The voices echoed loudly from behind the bushes, telling Moro their exact locations. Humans were terribly noisy; it was almost disgusting.
She had first spied them atop her den in the hillside, the center of one of her many hunting grounds. Like all humans, this pair had staked out a forest clearing for their encampment. Their intention was to have freedom of movement in the event of a boar attack; they would be able to flee in any direction, while the boars would only charge in one.
But that was the mindset of prey. Moro was a predator.
"We'll keep going in the morning," said the man of the pair. "For now we have to get this lean-to up to mask our scent."
The rustle of leaves told Moro that another sapling had been cut down. The humans were gathering wood for a shelter – not that it would help them. They had strayed into her territory, near her cubs.
They would feel her wrath.
Sensing the moment with almost supernatural intuition, the monstrous white wolf exploded from the brush. The man swore, and the woman sitting beside him screamed. Moro crossed the distance between them and lunged, but the man was quick enough to dive sideways, and her jaws found only open air. The wolf goddess spied a tiny lump of cloth roll out of the distracted woman's hands, but paid it no heed.
Moro dug her paws into the soft, mossy dirt of the clearing. She turned on a dime and found her prey's trail once again. The man had already broken into a run, tracking away from the woman. He might have been hoping to save his mate by serving as a distraction. He might have been hoping to save himself. Moro didn't care. She caught him in seconds, clamping his right shoulder in her mighty jaws. She jerked her head sideways, feeling the satisfying snap of his joints and then weightlessness as his dismembered body was hurled through the air and into the foliage.
NEXT! Moro felt a focused rage pour into her heart. She turned to the woman, who had made it to the edge of the clearing. The human turned her ugly, hairless face as she ran. Strength surged through Moro's legs and she bounded upward, across the entire clearing and down onto her prey. The human screamed.
It was over. The clearing looked like a battlefield; a bloody, severed arm lay motionless in the moss. Beside it was a still, unrecognizable corpse. Moro stalked away from the carnage. She had no intention of eating fatty human flesh, and the smell of their blood was bitter to her nostrils.
May they know that the gods own this land.
Her thoughts were already turning to her cubs when she heard a whiny, bothersome noise. Moro turned toward the bundle of cloth that the humans had dropped earlier. To her surprise, it was now moving.
A human cub.
The wolf goddess padded to the squirming lump of fabric. She had never seen what a human infant looked like; for a moment, curiosity overcame her, and she carefully lifted a fold of fabric with her teeth.
What she saw was uglier than she had expected. Like a human, it had a squashed face, hairless skin, and little arms with long, grasping fingers where paws should have been. But this one – this thing – was fat, had a voluminous head, and made the most bothersome whine she had ever heard.
Moro snarled and reared her head, preparing to silence the child in one gulp. Seconds passed, however, and the end did not come. She was now staring at something else entirely; a halo of wild grass had suddenly sprung up above the moss, surrounding the infant and growing up toward Moro's still-snarling head.
It can't be...
There was only one being that could have done this.
A soft footfall alerted her to his presence. A giant deer, covered in shaggy fur, strode toward her from the brush. A multitude of antlers burst from his head, forming the most beautiful crown in all of nature. Human-like eyes stared at her from a bearded face, sometimes like a man's and sometimes like a deer's. Fresh shoots sprung up around the Forest Spirit's every step, only to wither moments later. The grass around the human child, however, remained stubbornly vibrant.
Moro backed away from the approaching god. She did not fear him, but instinct told her to stay out of the way. He stepped over the human remains; both withered to dust as he passed, drifting off into the forest breeze. Moro glanced at the particles as they left, but Shishigami's eyes remained fixed on her the whole while.
Finally, after she had retreated to the edge of the clearing, he stopped at the crying infant. The Forest Spirit slowly stooped down and licked the child, first on the forehead and then on each cheek. Moro did not think; she merely watched, unable to understand what she was seeing.
A bird called, signaling its retreat to the nest for the night. Shishigami looked up at the twilit horizon, his face now very much that of a deer. He gave Moro one last glance, then turned into the brush and vanished.
The crying had stopped. She cautiously made her way back to the baby in silence, examining it in a new way. The spots where Shishigami had licked it were now red and swollen – changing before her eyes into dark red markings. Moro knew that they would never fade, no matter how old the child became. Still, despite how painful it looked, the human cub slept soundly in its bed of grass.
Moro, like all the forest creatures, could not interpret her lord's reasoning. What she could see, however, was his intention.
This cub... it must live.
She would not pretend to be pleased with her fate, but she would fulfill it. Gathering the baby into her jaws with all the care that she would her own cub, Moro padded into the forest and left the strange clearing behind.