From now on, when they are alone, Iamb and Bicca will speak with quotation marks. This will make sense later on, as they will start to think for themselves more and more. This doesn't mean they are actually speaking human (or Hylian/Kokiri, come to think of it...) words.
After Saria left, the cubs were miserable. The Temple was dark and unknown, and they spent the first half-hour after she departed whining and huddling closer to each other. Every sound was terrifying to them—every murmur, scratch, and drip cause for a yelp of fear. They buried their heads in the leaves to blot out the noise and fill their noses with the mother's green scent. When they were older, the cubs would look back on this first night alone in the stone-den with something approaching scorn. They would be unable to believe that the sounds that their ears could now tune out had scared them so badly. They would smirk at how pressing and menacing the darkness had seemed—darkness which they could not sleep without now. They would feel almost ashamed at how pitiful they had been...But for here and now, the unfamiliar sounds and shadows petrified the poor little Wolfoses.
The night was long, but when day finally broke, Iamb and Bicca were left with a new sense of accomplishment and pride. They leapt up, eager to poke their noses into corners and snarl at the fleeing shadows of the previous night. The stone-den was theirs now; they had passed its test and survived a night alone within its walls. Bicca spotted one of the trees and realized that its spreading branches had given him the impression of reaching claws in the darkness. He stood up on his hind paws and swiped at the trunk, leaving two diagonal rows of scratches. The cub nodded. That alone would teach the tree not to scare him, but Bicca felt the need to add insult to injury. Haughtily, he cocked a leg and urinated on the tree. The tree was unmoved by either the clawmarks on its trunk or the strong-smelling puddle spreading at its roots. Bicca stuck his nose in the air, pretending not to notice the tree's indifference. (1)
He turned his attention to the entrance of the stone-den, noting with some curiosity that something was inscribed above the doorway. He was fairly intrigued by the carving above the script, depicting two large Wolfoses. The carving showed them on their hind paws, their forelegs spread out to the sides. They were holding paws and looking away from each other, but the younger pup did not really care if there was symbolism involved. Bicca's tail wagged as he recognized his species. He knew deep down (although he did not know just where the knowledge had come from) below the Wolfoses was writing, and that the mother would be able to read it. But the mother was not here, and the writing passed out of Bicca's mind almost as quickly as it had entered it. The only thing that remained in his thoughts was the image of the two Wolfoses, and that image would later become a kind of talisman for him. Whenever he felt alone or afraid, he would look up at the carved creatures above the door and smile. He wondered if they might be guardian spirits for him and his brother, and later on, he would look to them for help. He would live his whole life without ever truly knowing why the carving was there...Or why the Wolfos on the right had a red line going across its chest.
Bicca trotted off after his brother, who was making his way towards the hallway where the spider-thing lurked. Iamb turned to acknowledge his little brother and looked glad to have company. Together, the two young Wolfoses bounded through the vine-draped corridor and out through the door on the other end, pausing only to lift their legs and mark the hallway as their own. The mother had opened every door to the rooms they had explored the previous day, and left them open so the two playful beasts could roam freely. They laid down scent markers in every room they could enter, side-by-side, claiming the stone-den as their territory and home.
Pale, warm sunlight crept through the door to the courtyard, drawing them into the open. Bicca tilted his head back to sniff the morning air. Iamb started towards the small river and bent his head to drink. His brother followed suit, glancing occasionally out of the corners of his eyes. Bicca finished first after a few sips, but Iamb seemed to have an unquenchable thirst. Have to fix that, the younger pup thought mischievously. A Wolfos's mouth was only so big, and if Iamb needed more water than his mouth could hold, then Bicca felt it his duty to help his brother. Though he was not as large as Iamb, he was more adept at swiping with his front legs. The smaller cub pushed himself up onto his back legs and gave his brother a quick, but hearty, shove. Iamb tumbled head over tail into the small river. Bicca shrank back from the mighty splash, howling with amusement.
Iamb surfaced a heartbeat later, his head dark with wetness, his ears pressed flat against his skull. He splashed fearfully in the gentle but swift current, making his way steadily towards the small, sandy bank. Bicca howled with laughter, kicking his paws up in the air as he rolled on his back. His tail slapped the ground rapidly. Iamb dragged himself out of the water, his once-pale coat now near-black with water. He stood dripping for a heartbeat, then flung himself across the small wooden bridge that spanned the river. With a wild growl, the larger cub flung himself at his brother, and put an end to his laughter. Bicca let out a short wail as Iamb's heavy, dripping body crashed into him, pushing him against the ground roughly. "Not funny," Iamb rumbled. Bicca whined plaintively and licked his brother's nose.
"You wouldn't fight me," he whimpered. Iamb frowned, but Bicca saw an amused glint in his green eyes.
"Wouldn't I?" (2) Iamb nipped his brother's nose and crushed his soaked body down a little harder. Bicca writhed and yapped in protest. He hated getting wetter than he had to, and Iamb knew it. The smaller Wolfos brought his hind paws up under his belly and gave Iamb a solid kick to the stomach, nearly sending him reeling into the river again. But Iamb stopped himself a few claw-lengths from the bank and darted around his brother's side. Bicca stood up and shook off, grimacing with distaste at his damp fur—damp, not wet, so he couldn't rid himself of the clinging moisture. As he was shaking, Iamb saw his chance and charged.
The heavier cub bore down on his lighter brother with a speed and grace that belied his bulky paws. This strange grace became apparent when Bicca attempted to swerve to the side. Iamb wrenched his forequarters in that same direction, his hindpaws scrabbling the air briefly as he tried to balance himself out. It was an easy maneuver, and it didn't take much more running until Iamb's muscular shoulders slammed into Bicca's side. Bicca yowled unhappily as Iamb's assault threw the both of them into the water.
Bicca surfaced first with a kind of frantic light in his brilliant eyes. He splashed about, thrashing his body like a snake with its tail trapped. Iamb's dark head broke the rippled surface of the water, and the older cub merely blew water from his nostrils and floated with the current. He watched his floudering brother with a smirk. Then, with a quick, broad-pawed slap, he struck the water, sending a glittering wave over his brother's head. Bicca yelped and dove underwater to avoid the wave. It was only until he was fully submerged that he realized he had made himself wetter than if the wave had hit him. Angry at himself and his brother, he rose up and returned the favor. Iamb spluttered with amusement. Bicca snarled and proceeded to haul himself out onto the bank nearby. Iamb, a little upset that his fun was struggling away from him, wrapped his forepaws around Bicca's back leg and pulled him back into the water.
"Come on, not so—" The larger cub broke off and pricked up his ears. Bicca, with one paw on the sandbar, turned to face him. He cocked his head curiously.
"What—?" he began, but Iamb's paw smacked his muzzle and silenced him.
"The mother is calling us," he murmured. Bicca perked up. "Probably has food. Let's go." With that, he began clawing at the sliding, golden sand. The thought of the mother holding out something like the rabbit he and his brother had had as their first kill excited him. Bicca, who had already had a paw on the bank, darted ahead, giving his brother a light shove on the nose with his hindpaw as he did. Iamb growled and redoubled his efforts. It wasn't long before the two soaked Wolfos cubs were pounding through the passages of their Temple. Their wet paws left sloppy prints on the stone floors, interspersed with drops and skidmarks where one pushed the other out of his way.
When she saw that the two Wolfos cubs were dripping wet, Saria flung out her hands to signal a stop. She laughed as they hastened to obey. Iamb, who was in the lead, was knocked onto his belly when Bicca slammed into him from behind. The burlier cub started to growl, but when his ears caught the Kokiri's giggles, he stopped and turned to look at her. Bicca's tail wagged, even as his brother sat up and tipped him off onto the floor. The girl smiled warmly at the two pups, reaching into her bag to produce two bottles of milk. They looked at the milk with skepticism and perhaps a little scorn, but obediently sucked it down. Though clearly not what they had been hoping for, they were glad of something to eat.
Briefly, she wondered how much longer milk would keep these two growing animals happy. There had to be something in the Temple that they could hunt. If anything, there were plenty of monsters that could sustain them; if that failed, there had to be mice or rats or even a rabbit. The two young Wolfoses started sniffing and nudging her bag curiously, hoping to find more milk. The girl sighed and scratched behind their ears sadly. "Sorry, boys," she murmured. "That was all I had. I guess I figured you would have found something to hunt here."
Saria started towards the hallway, Iamb and Bicca at her heels. She trailed her fingers along the wall idly, lost in thought. Something whirred quietly overhead, the sound growing steadily louder and louder. The child started to look up curiously, only to be roughly brushed aside by Iamb. The large cub was growling low in his throat, an angry, hungry sound. Bicca positioned himself in front of Saria at a curt bark from his brother. The girl watched as a creature dropped down where she had been moments before, its pincers spread apart as it hissed in anger. Scratches on its carapace marked it as the same monster the pups had assaulted the previous day. Fael gasped. "It's a Skulltula!" she whispered.
Iamb moved quickly, leaping up to snap his jaws at the spider-like monster. Bicca yelped encouragement as he brother jumped and pounced at the Skulltula. The arachnid dangled tantalizingly out of his reach, churring taunts, or so it seemed. It drew its legs up when Iamb snapped, relaxed them when he dropped back to the floor, and pulled them away when he leapt again. Suddenly, Bicca's tail began to wag fiercely. The younger Wolfos lunged forward, pounced, then scrabbled up Iamb's back to take his turn at the Skulltula. He was rewarded for his quick thinking as his fangs closed around the monster's hard-shelled body with a loud crunching sound. Yellowish fluid spurted out from the small cracks. Iamb ducked out from under his brother, and as Bicca fell to earth, he wrenched the Skulltula free from the line of webbing that had held it to the ceiling.
Bicca set the Skulltula down on the floor and prodded it curiously with a paw, as if he could not believe it was dead. Iamb trotted over and sniffed the leaking fluid, his nose wrinkling slightly. He bent down to growl at it. The Skulltula remained lifeless. Bicca, tail swishing, took one of the spider-like beast's legs in his mouth and gave it a tug. The leg came loose with a small amount of whitish muscle attached to it. (3) Bracing one of its crooks on the floor with his paw, the smaller Wolfos started chewing the white meat off the end of the leg. Iamb licked his nose, and, glancing back at Saria, picked up the whole carcass and trotted into the large room at the end of the hall. Bicca walked after him, the Skulltula's leg trailing from both sides of his mouth like a banded mustache.
"The mother doesn't like us eating," Iamb barked once he set down the dead spider-thing. He licked his chops, grimacing at the strange salty-bitter fluid that filled the body. Bicca dropped the leg he had been carrying, nodding. "What does spider-thing Skulltula taste like?"
"Like meat," Bicca replied as he cracked the leg apart with a quick snap of his jaws. "Spider-thing flesh is different, but a little nice. Maybe because we wanted to kill it this time." His tail wagged as he slurped what little meat there was out of the cracked leg shell. Iamb took a jagged, broken shard of the Skulltula's ribbed underbelly and yanked it away, revealing rows of the same white flesh. He took a mouthful and chewed thoughtfully. Bicca was right, it did taste very different from rabbit—their first taste of meat. But it was a welcome difference, a kind of sharp flavor that the woodsy-tasting, brown rabbit had lacked. He tore off a leg to see if that was any different.
It didn't take long until the two young Wolfoses had demolished the Skulltula. All that remained from their first kill in the stone-den was a cracked shell and a few bits of leg. The spider-like monster had satisfied the two of them in a way that milk could not. Iamb stretched pleasantly. His nose told him that there were plenty more wall-spiders to be had in this place, as well as other creatures he had never smelled before. Another quick sniff told him that there was a small patch of dirt nearby, and with a flick of his tail to beckon Bicca, the older Wolfos started dragging the Skultula's empty shell towards it. Bicca followed, grasping the shattered legs in his teeth as he did. "The stone-den must be clean," Iamb told his brother firmly. "If shells are left lying, scavengers will come." Bicca nodded as he dug a long hole to bury the remains of their meal.
Iamb looked up to see the mother standing behind him. She laid her hand on his head and murmured words that could be praise. He picked up the sounds for "good" and "thank you," and reasoned that he was being praised for taking the Skulltula away to eat. His tail wagged fondly and he licked her hand. Bicca wiggled closer to the mother, whining for praise and affection as well. For once, Iamb forgot to be annoyed by his brother's attention-seeking. If Bicca had not been such a quick thinker, they would not have been able to eat the spider-thing. That earned him the right to act as he pleased today.
The mother left her two cubs around sunhigh (4), and they stood side by side in the entrance of the stone-den to see her off. They were not afraid to spend the night alone anymore; she could leave if she wanted to. Since their kill, Iamb felt that the stone-den well and truly belonged to them. They had survived the night within its walls without the mother to protect them, and had defended it from a rather tasty intruder. He smirked to think of what it meant. Though his bloodsong said a pack was needed to hold and defend a territory, Iamb and Bicca had done it with just two. Iamb reasoned that this meant he and his brother were some kind of super-Wolfoses, stronger than any other. He swelled with pride until Bicca's voice interrupted his thoughts.
"It's a shame the mother doesn't speak our language," he murmured. "I wanted to ask her what the carving says." He stepped back and reared up on his hind paws, pointing with his extended two claws to an engraving Iamb had never noticed. The older cub studied it briefly, then shook his head.
"It probably means nothing," he barked.
"I wonder if it's us, brother."
"Why would there be a carving of us in the stone-den? This place has never been claimed by anyone, and even if it had, how would someone know we were coming?"
Bicca frowned and dropped back onto all fours. He padded after Iamb, who was heading back to their leaf-nest for a nap. His forehead was wrinkled with confusion. "I don't know," he said at length. "Maybe you're right, brother. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it was just made to look nice." He sighed and laid down beside his brother. "And it is nice. I like to look at it."
Iamb snorted. He didn't really care for the carving. It didn't hold his attention the way it seemed to capture Bicca's. He did not see guardians or anything of that sort; the only thing he saw was a carving was two Wolfoses holding paws, and even that was not entirely interesting. Later on, when he grew older, he would look back on Bicca's humble observation and feel sick to his stomach. He would wonder if his brother ever truly understood why they were not facing each other, and yet had their paws touching. He would wonder if Bicca ever realized what the carving meant to stone-den, and to them.
The months passed quickly for the two brothers, and it wasn't long until they woke one morning to be blinded by a mysterious, strong light. Iamb raised a forepaw in front of his face to shield his eyes from the glare, whining in confusion. His curiosity was aroused at this strange light, and he tip-pawed away from the nest to see where it was coming from. He shivered as he walked, fluffing out his thick, gray coat against the chill. The stone-den had been getting colder and colder with each passing morning, and he had felt his pelt get thicker and thicker., until the cold stopped bothering him so much. The light was beaming in from the entrance of the stone-den, and Iamb prowled up to the entrance to get a better look. He stood with slitted eyes and glanced around below him.
The ground was covered in a few sideclaws (5) of white stuff, and the rising sun slanted off the white in a blinding curtain. Iamb was a little fearful, for he had never seen anything like this before in his life. Was it dangerous? Would it try to harm him or his brother? For starters, was it even alive? The big Wolfos snuffed the air nervously, then reeled back as the unfamiliar scent of snow hit his nose. It was a strange, icy smell, somewhat like water, and somewhat like the sharp-sticks he had Bicca had discovered deep in the stone-den. He growled a challenge, but the snow did not rise to meet it. Iamb decided that snow was either cowardly or not alive. It bolstered his ego to say it was a coward, and he snorted derisively at the stuff.
"Why are you growling at the sun, brother?" Bicca's sleepy voice murmured from within the depths of the leaf-nest. Iamb turned. His brother was already getting up from the nest, shaking a few skeletal leaves from his hind paws. He trotted forwards and gave the smaller Wolfos a quick nuzzle of greeting.
Bicca truly was the smaller Wolfos now, but there was a kind of limberness in his small frame. For some unknown reason, Iamb had started growing at an incredible rate, doubling his size in a little more than a month. Bicca had grown steadily, but slowly, and now stood a full head shorter than his brother. Both of them were approaching adult size now, and some of their puppyish appearances were starting to fade away. Their eyes had started to take on a yellowish cast, typical of adult Wolfoses in these forests. Their snouts were long and narrow, no longer snubbed by cubhood. Bicca's sideclaws were nearly invisible now, his middle claws having grown to nearly five inches in length. Iamb's body was now the shape of every Wolfos that had ever roamed the Lost Woods: long-necked, broad-shouldered, thin-bellied, and stocky in the back end. Bicca was leaner and less muscular than his brother, with a gangly look that belied his inner grace and strength.
"There is something strange outside, brother," Iamb growled, his hackles half-risen. "I don't know what it means, though."
"Let's see what it is," Bicca barked, scratching behind his ears with a forepaw. The smaller Wolfos trotted after Iamb, bouncing from side to side as he walked. Iamb couldn't help a glimmer of affection. Bicca was his little brother, and he had charms that Iamb wished he did. They stopped a few tails away from the entrance, for together they were now too large to fit side by side in front of it. Bicca stepped forward, squinching up his eyes as Iamb had done. He sniffed, paused, sniffed, and shook his head.
"Do you know what it might be?" Iamb asked.
"I think it's water."
Iamb scoffed. "Water is see-through, not white."
"It smells like the rain, but colder."
"Is this what happens to cold rain, you think?" Iamb asked, his head cocked to the side. Bicca shrugged his shoulders, his lean muscles rippling beneath his thick, mottled pelt. "I wish we could get a closer look at it."
"The stone-den's roof doesn't cover the patch of land beside the river," Bicca pointed out. "We could look there." He crouched low in a play-bow, wagging his tail in the air. Iamb barely smothered a smile as he gave his brother's rump a light slap. Bicca yipped and darted towards the hallway, Iamb in hot pursuit.
The stone floor of the hall, its cobbles once lumpy and dusty, was now smooth and covered in dirt from months of heavy, muddy paws pounding over it. Only a few clean patches remained on the sides of the hall. The vines crisscrossing the ceiling were still there in full force, but their further spreading had been slowed considerably by the increasing cold. The two Wolfoses charged through the passageway with reckless abandon, both full of the puppyish glee of new discoveries. Their excited barks rang through the domelike room at the heart of the Temple. It was in this open space that Iamb took the lead, cutting nimbly around his brother and surging ahead with his powerful legs. Bicca snapped the air in disappointment at being overtaken, but he seemed to take it as a chance to prove himself better than his older brother. They barreled through the small door to the courtyard.
A thin sheet of glassy ice covered the river, and it threw back the morning light at double its strength. Iamb and Bicca carefully checked their wild run when they came through the open doorway. Iamb skidded back on his heavy paws, throwing up a wave of powdery snow as he slowly slid to a stop. Bicca, coming up behind him, flung himself to the ground. A single experience with ice on the small river had taught the two young Wolfoses that the water was very cold this time of year, and it took their lengthening pelts a very long time to dry. Their mad dash over, the brothers set about investigating the snow in their own ways.
Iamb snorted to himself with amusement as he heard Bicca frolic and paw at the white stuff. He didn't need to look to know his brother was learning through play, tossing his head and rolling around. The larger cub preferred to study things carefully, a sniff here, a prod there, a bark every so often to make sure nothing was going to bite him. Bicca had been right—the snow did smell like water, but much colder. There was something else to the scent as well, a metallic kind of bite that reminded him of the rusted tips of the sharp-sticks he'd found deep inside the Temple one day. Iamb drew back with a snort, a few clumps of burningly cold snow clinging to his dark nose. He rested a hefty paw on the surface of a nearby drift, steadily putting more and more weight behind it, until the drift swallowed his foot. The big pup lost his balance and fell onto his belly, a surprise that drew a quick yelp out of him. Bicca turned to look at him, his ears pricked with interest. Iamb pulled his paw free, shaking it vigorously and snarling.
It wasn't long until both Wolfoses, each engaged in their own separate search, snapped their heads up and pricked their ears. A soft, yet piercing, whistle drifted through the cold air towards them. The mother was calling them. The two snowy beasts shook off the worst of their clingy, white snow-coats and bounded back to the entrance of the stone-den. The mother had been visiting less and less frequently over the course of the past few months, sometimes up to a week passing between her visits. The two young Wolfoses accepted this as the way things would be. Had they been raised in the wild, their mother would have steadily distanced herself from her cubs bit by bit, until they were fully grown and ready to make their own place in the pack. Iamb and Bicca were rapidly approaching adulthood, and since their mother was so much smaller than they were, perhaps it was good that she did not visit as frequently as she had in the past.
The mother was waiting at the entrance of the stone-den, her paws held out in front of her to slow her wild cubs. As the weather grew colder, she had been growing her pelt thicker as well, sometimes so thick that she seemed to have grown. Iamb and Bicca started slowing down as soon as they burst through the doorway, and were fully stopped by the time they were halfway across the room. They padded forwards lightly, necks outstretched, noses twitching, tails thumping. Iamb reached the girl first, and whined as he leaned into her touch. On his hindpaws, he was nearly twice her height; on all fours, he was equal to it, but with so much more bulk that he looked even bigger. The mother scratched lovingly behind his ears, murmuring to him in the voice she saved for him and his brother. Bicca joined him quietly, and the two of them basked in the warm love of their mother. It would have been a remarkable sight for an outsider to see: a small girl pressed between two Wolfoses who could easily rip her apart, speaking calmly and patting their fur. But to Iamb and Bicca, as clearly of a different species as she was, she was their mother, to whom they could do no harm.
The mother's visit was brief, but it brought a warmth to the den that not even the most frigid of winter winds could take away. She had led them over to the leaf-nest and sat down, and there they had stayed. She had brought out a small lump of wood, and the two brothers had listened in rapture as sweet, soothing sounds filled the cold walls of the stone-den. It was bittersweet, though, for the sounds had an edge of unsettling sorrow to them that neither animal understood. When she had finished with her wood, the mother had carefully stowed it away underneath a layer of her fur and put her arms around both Wolfoses' necks. They had leaned in closer, licking and nuzzling, until warm drops had fallen on their furry faces. Water was falling from the mother's face as she held them tightly. There was nothing the cubs could do but lounge alongside her and offer their love. They licked her paws when she left and stood at the door to watch her until followed the slope of the ground out of their sight.
Bicca did not know that this would be the last time he ever saw her.
Saria leaned against one of the log tunnels, her face pale, her hands shaking from more than just the cold. With fumbling fingers, she took out her Ocarina and studied it carefully. The song she had played for the dying mother Wolfos had been unrehearsed, just strands of mellow notes that sounded good when played together. She hadn't given the song another thought, but now it returned to her full-force. Somehow, her fingers had played back every note from that ad-lib song, perfectly, unconsciously. As the simple melody rang through her mind, the Kokiri pieced together enough to realize it was a sad, simple song of farewell. It was then that she knew what she had to do. If Fate had led her fingers to play that particular song, then there was no other choice.
"Fael?" she whispered. The fairy hummed out from under the hood of the girl's cloak and hovered in front of her. "I think it's time."
"Time for what?" Fael asked.
"Time for me to let them go," the child replied simply. She was amazed at how calm she felt saying those words, how evenly they came out despite her breaking heart. She licked her chapped lips. "They're getting old enough to take care of themselves now, and I think I should let them be. Besides, if I don't, they'll just be my pets, pets that I don't keep in my home because they're too big." She sighed. "Their mother wouldn't want that for them. This is the closest I'll be able to get them to being wild Wolfoses."
"Are you sure?" Fael, despite her best efforts, had grown rather attached to the two cubs that had survived, especially little Bicca. "Saria, they're not pets. If they were your pets, you'd still be feeding them—and ever since they caught that Skulltula, you haven't brought them milk."
"My mind's made up. It's time for them to start living on their own." Saria snugged her hood down a little tighter as an icy wind gusted past. She took Fael into her mittened hands and held the pink fairy close to her body. "Come on, it looks like there might be more snow on the way. We should get back home before it starts up." And with that, she headed back towards the Kokiri village, casting one final glance over her shoulder at the entrance to the Sacred Forest Meadow. She was far enough away that she couldn't even see the entrance of the clearing where the Forest Temple stood. But she knew that somewhere behind those trees, within the ancient stone walls, two young Wolfoses—her adopted cubs—hunted, played, and slept. And beneath the stone Temple, the bones of their mother lay like a white sentinel. Her eyes smarted with tears.
They're strong, she told herself. They can make it on their own. They don't need me to pet their heads or watch them hunt. She bit her lip. They've grown up.
Shaking herself back to the present, the Kokiri girl turned her back on the two young Wolfoses and walked home. After she closed the door, Saria stood in the doorway of her home, gazing around in a kind of daze. She recalled her first morning waking up with the newborn Wolfos cubs, and marveled at how everything seemed to have changed. The shelf by her large window, once laden with crystals and feathers, was now heavy with shed fangs (Wolfoses, she had discovered, have three sets of baby teeth to go through before their adult teeth come in, and each set is sharper than the last) and other mementos. The carved stick, a gift from Fado, had been thoroughly chewed apart by curious puppy jaws. A few bottles of milk, what remained of the crate that had nearly cost Saria her life, sat on the small table. The child hung up her cloak on the hook by the door and pulled off her boots. She set her mittens, hat, and scarf beside the fireplace to dry, and took a jar of the cubs' teeth from the shelf.
The Kokiri sat down on her bed and dumped a small amount of teeth out onto her covers. She held up one from the first shed set and studied it wordlessly. It was an eyetooth, bright white and about a centimeter (6) long. With light fingers, she brushed the inner edge; because it was a milk-tooth, there were none of the serrations that later sets of teeth would have. It was a gentle fang, if such a thing existed, one that would not even bruise a baby. Saria set it down and picked up a slightly larger fang, also an eyetooth, from the second set. It was the same shape, with faint suggestions of the knife-like edge a Wolfos's adult teeth had, and a slightly flatter inside edge. She picked up a third-set fang and looked at that one. It was what passed for a molar in carnivores, with spiked cusps that would scratch and, if clamped down hard enough, make a person bleed. There were definite serrations on the inside of the cusps, but they were nothing compared to those on the fourth fang she chose.
She had found the tooth embedded in the bones of one of the cubs' Temple meals, and assumed it belonged to Iamb. There was no decay to suggest that it had been weak in the jaw, but it had fallen out all the same. It was a premolar, a tooth just behind the eyeteeth, with too many cusps to be a molar, but too many to be a "fang." The girl silently ran her fingers over the high, outside cusp and pricked her finger on the tip. Almost immediately, she could see a small spot of red beneath her finger, suggesting that the tooth had pierced her skin with grim efficiency. Saria held the fang up to the light and sighed. This, this, was a true Wolfos's fang, lethal and sharp, dangerous outside the mouth as well as inside. Iamb and Bicca had mouths full of these now. If they wanted to, they could be killers. The girl gulped reflexively when she remembered the rabbit they had ripped apart. Yes...her little puppies were very dangerous. Not to her, but potentially to others.
"They'll be fine," Fael assured her warmly, misinterpreting Saria's gulp of fear as swallowing tears. "That Temple is the perfect place for them to live, and you know it. They love it there. You made the right decision."
Saria didn't feel like telling Fael the other reason she had decided to stop visiting the young Wolfoses. The strange feelings that the Temple instilled in her, the eerie feelings of belonging and homecoming, had been growing stronger and stronger as of late. The Kokiri had been almost glad when she realized the two cubs were old enough to support themselves, for it meant that she would no longer have to endure that unsettling welcome feeling. There was something about the Forest Temple that she didn't like, something that made her suspicious of what the future might hold.
As she was gathering the teeth back into their jar, the girl heard the slapping noise of someone being struck upside the head with a slushy snowball, followed by a yelp of pain. Without even looking, she knew the yelp belonged to Link, and the laughter that followed it belonged to Mido. With a sigh, Saria started to set the jar back up on the shelf, then hesitated. She had decided to let the two Wolfoses live on their own in the Temple—to let them go, in her own words. If she was truly going to let them go, she needed to put them out of her mind and live her old life again. Shaking her head, the child put the jar under her bed and put a small bowl of colored stones on the shelf in its place. Then, she put her winter clothes on again and stepped out into the snow, drawing in a breath to begin scolding Mido for throwing what he knew would be a stinging slushball.
(1) They're starting to grow up, which means they're beginning to think for themselves. This explains why their scenes will be in mostly one point of view from now on.
(2) For those who haven't noticed, this is the first time either of them has used the pronoun "I." As with the first note, they're growing up and starting to develop a sense of "self-vs-collective." In other words, they're beginning to realize that they are individuals, and that just because they're brothers doesn't make them the same Wolfos.
(3) If you've ever eaten crabs before, I think you'll know what I'm trying to describe. Skulltulas are like spiders, and I believe crabs have eight legs, too, right? Okay, so they're not the same, but you get the idea.
(4) Noon.
(5) Inches. A "sideclaw" is the length of their side claws, which are about an inch in length.
(6) Sorry for using metrics, but I didn't want to say "roughly a third of an inch."