Epilogue
The End of Lilly's Last Story
Lilly was now an elderly wolf as she told her story about the only twelve survivors out of hundreds of wolves who'd once lived in Jasper National Park, Canada. She was still on the same tree stump she had been when she began telling this story. If it wasn't for her voice and her wrinkled skin showing through where patches of her fur had fallen off, no one in her audience would've known she was an elderly wolf. Lilly had snow one fur from the day she grew her fuzzy coat to today.
Everyone else from her generation had passed away already. Her mother Eve was obviously the first who had passed away, given she had become a great grandmother two months after the twelve survivors had reached Baffin Island about five years ago. Everyone else of her generation had passed away anywhere from four years to five years after they arrived at Baffin Island. Garth, ironically, considering his obsession with fitness and being health was the first of them who'd passed away. He'd died of a heart attack a year ago when he and Lilly had been sleeping in their new den. They'd moved out of the Alpha den when they'd first begun showing signs of being elderly. Their oldest pup, their oldest daughter Kaydence—an Alpha—had become the pack leader with her mate, who was a young Alpha wolf called Sawyer. Sawyer was not the offspring of any of the Jasper wolves, but two Alpha parents from Red Deer Park who had fled to Baffin Island after hearing the same rumors the Jasper wolves had heard.
After Eve and Garth, Marco, the crow who'd followed them for almost the entire journey from Jasper to Baffin Island, had passed away due to natural causes—old age, to be specific. Hutch and Candu had passed away for the same reason in their sleep. Except for Claws, they were the oldest of the final for who had been alive at the times of their deaths. Claws had passed away two weeks ago, from old age, surrounded by her six adult children and all her adolescent grandchildren, in addition to Lilly, Claudette, Runt, Stinky, Mica, and Magril. The three children of Kate and Humphrey, plus Mica and Magril, were no longer young adult wolves, but about the age Eve had been when she'd been the Alpha female of the Western Wolf Pack of Jasper Park.
Lilly was the only survivor of her entire generation now and even she was getting old. She was older than Eve had been when she'd passed away five years ago. She was now blind in one eye and deaf in one eye. It would be odd that they were both on the life side of her body, but Lilly had suffered an almost massive stroke a few months ago that had devastated the entire left side of her body. She had very little control over her left legs, and had lost all control of her eye and ear. She couldn't even use the left side of her face to blink, smile, or twice her ear anymore. Her children always usually had to help their ailing mother around their new territory.
The half-crippled wolf was helped down off the tree stump by five of her children. She looked at the gathering with her one good eye. It was all of the children and grandchildren of the wolves she'd traveled here with, in addition to the families of those children's mates. Basically, her entire pack was here. Lilly knew as she was led back the den where she and Garth had lived in together until his death, that her life was coming to an end. She was an old wolf, older than all the others had lived to be, of those who weren't killed by Scava on this island all those years ago. She still remembered how Claws and Stinky had pushed his body into the Hudson Bay before leaving the shoreline. The last time they'd ever seen his body was when, oddly enough since Claws had mentioned it once, it was eaten by a shark that had swam through the opening at the north end of the bay from the Northern Atlantic Ocean.
"I want to be alone, my children," Lilly said to Kelsie, Kaylee, Maddie, Cody, and Cooper, her three oldest daughters and her two oldest sons, as they helped their mother lay down on her a bed of mosses. "You all know what is going to happen."
"Oh, mother," Kaylee cried. "Don't leave us now. You grandchildren, our children, will be really devastated by your passing…and so will we."
Lilly coughed a sickly cough. "Don't fret, Kaylee…all of you. I have lived a full life for a wolf…and then some. There isn't much reason for me to go living…especially with only half a functioning body. I've done a lot in my long life…and I'm content. So leave me be and you can come check on me later…" Lilly let her still snow-white head fall onto the moss as her children reluctantly left their mother's den. They knew she was dying, and so did Lilly, so why did she want to be alone when she died? Claws hadn't wanted to be alone when she'd passed away, so why did their mother, who'd been there for Claws?
When Lilly was positive her children had left them, she began to let herself slip away. She closed her right eye—the left always had been closed since she had that stroke. Lilly closed her muzzle and only breathed through her nose. She could feel her old and ailing body shutting down and her soul leaving her body in this instance. Lilly breathed once, no, twice, and then her breathing stopped. Her chest fell once last time, and then didn't rise again. She would not move from this spot again, under her own will, because she'd passed away, and her soul was on its away to heaven to be with Kate, Humphrey, and everyone else who'd died on the journey to Baffin Island, Scava excluded, and everyone who died in the five years since their arrival. Lilly was content with her own death as her soul rose higher…she would get to see all her late friends and family once again…and be with them forever…