Young Briar Rose and the Wolves


Young Briar Rose is playing with some of her squirrel and bird friends. She is a little ways from the cottage, but it can't be seen from here. When all her friends fly away and scatter, saying wolves are coming.

Curious, she climbs into the trees, like her squirrel friends and from high above she sees a small pack of hunting wolves. She climbs a few more branches up, Aunt Fauna told her wolves can be dangerous if you are small and on the ground.

She is not on the ground, but she knows she is small.

"Hello, Mr. Wolf and friends," Briar Rose says politely. The wolves looks around and then up. She hitches up her newish dress, she needed to have Aunt Merryweather try fixing it again. She tries so hard, but it still didn't fit right.

"Who are you?" asks the alpha wolf, his grey and black fur dappled in the forest sunlight.

"I am Briar Rose," introducing herself with a curtsy, her bare toes curling on the branch, as her etiquette book has taught her, "How do you do?"

"We hunt."

"Why?"

"We hunger."

"There is a nice patch of berries not far, that way." Briar Rose says pointing, she likes berries.

"We do not eat plants," the alpha said with disgust.

"What do you eat?"

"We eat prey."

"What is prey?"

"That which we eat. Deer, squirrels, flesh," the wolf answers slowly, considering the juicy man-cub.

"Would you eat me, if you could?"

"Yes." There was no need to deny the nature of the wolf. The man-cub could not get away from the encircling wolves.

"That wouldn't be very nice. I want to be your friend." Briar Rose twirls a golden curl around her finger.

"Wolves do not befriend prey," says the alpha wolf.

"Rose! Lunch! Briar Rose! Lunchtime!" They hear Aunt Flora call from the cottage, they all swing their heads to the sound of the call.

"I need to go to the cottage now. Will you let me pass?" Briar Rose asks nicely. The wolves had encircled the tree she was in.

"You may come down," said the alpha wolf, slyly.

Briar Rose thinks, biting her red, red lip. Aunt Fauna told her to very careful of wolves, they are smart and will try to trick you. Her book of fairy tales has several stories where wolves trick their prey so they are more easily eaten. The big wolf did not say he would let her pass.

"I think I'll go another way," says young Briar Rose, gracefully bounding across the branch to the neighboring tree, like she does when she chases her squirrel and chipmunk friends.

"If you fall, you will be our prey," calls the alpha wolf behind her, giving chase.

Briar Rose isn't worried, she has never fallen. One of the three gifts of Maleficent, though she does not know that.

She has to take a circuitous route to reach the tree that stands above the cottage, the wolves below her giving chase, reveling the chase, ready to devour her in case she falls.

Briar Rose leaps to the roof of the cottage and climbs in her open window, careful not to tip the vases over. She races down to the kitchen where Aunt Merryweather is setting out a vegetable stew for lunch.

"Aunt Fauna, Aunt Fauna! Wolves are chasing me and are outside!" Briar Rose calls as she jumps down the stairs.

"Hm, What is it dear? Wolves you say," says Aunt Fauna, distractedly.

Briar Rose stops right in front of Aunt Fauna, takes her hands and makes sure she is looking at her so she knows she had her aunt's attention. "Yes, wolves, Aunt Fauna. They are outside and want to eat me as prey."

Merryweather starts to pat her pockets, feeling for her wand, but it is still in the box under Flora's bed.

"What! Wolves? Prey!" Aunt Fauna gets a focused look on her face and heads for the door pushing up her sleeves.

Briar Rose rushes up the stairs to her room and climbs up to her window and watches as Aunt Fauna berates the small pack of wolves for coming so close to the cottage and endangering the girl. They sit before the powerful, disguised fairy, they know who she is. Making this one angry at the pack would be very bad.

The alpha looked past the powerful fairy as she finished, to the man-cub up in the window.

The little one had evaded them successfully, with cunning and her given abilities and had given good chase. So he said respectfully, with a little nod, to the hidden princess herself and not because of the fairy, "You are not prey."

"Thank you." Briar Rose said back from her window, then she stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth in a credible imitation of a wolfish laugh and waved.

The wolves let their tongues hang out laughing back, then turned and ran into the forest to find prey.


Author's Note: I continue to work on my Aurora story. This is a little background into Briar Rose, that brings some things together, that she doesn't reference directly, but the effects of this encounter are seen in the rest of her life.

She is an amazing person. You'll see those books she references sitting in a little cubby next to her bed in the movie itself. Just don't ask how many times I've seen it or how long I stared at the frame of her crying on her bed before I noticed it. And the vases too.

So that gives her a total of 4 books: Cooking, sewing, etiquette and a book of old school fairy tales, filled with wolves, fairies, witches, wicked queens and poor princesses who go through terrible ordeals or who die.

That gives her the same number as Rapunzel: cooking, geology, botany, and an assumed sewing book that fell apart which was turned into a paper mache head. :)

Details, details, details. Weaving just what's there together makes for an amazing story.