Author's Note: Well, hopefully this chapter will be more exciting to you readers. The prologue was just an intro (why it's called a 'prologue') so things should pick up more now. And remember to pay attention to the ages of the wolves I have at the beginning! It'll help you understand a lot better, I'm sure.

Disclaimer: I don't own Wolf's Rain; it belongs to Keiko Nobumoto and BONES.

Important Note: The italicized part and the last part of this chapter are all excerpted from the second manga volume of Wolf's Rain. Well, technically just the verbal parts. The description is describing the picture in the book. After this chapter, there will be NO MORE excerpts from the manga. So PLEASE don't think I've come up with this great work. I apologize for my lack of creativity, but I needed these parts I am using to help you guys, the readers, understand. Again, I DO NOT own any part of Wolf's Rain (it belongs to Keiko Nobumoto and BONES!!), or anything relating to that.

If you are completely lost and need some help, email me if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them!

Read on! And please review. Constructive comments are welcome, as are praises. Flames will be ignored.

Wolf's Rain: An Other Story
Chapter #One: Been a Long Road to Follow
Current Ages (Wolf):
Tiben: One
Jakken: One

The blue-black wolf with the collar around her neck spoke to my brother and I.

We didn't understand her. We didn't understand why Mom wasn't talking to us. Mom was hurt, real bad, like the rest of our pack. But Mom protected us through the rest of the pack. Even though Reki, Jeven, Marcus, and all the others were going crazy. They had started a ferocious frenzy, as soon as they saw the girl with the strange flowery scent, who was with the other four wolves.

Why wasn't mom waking up?! I whimpered loudly, feeling helpless. Mom had carried us here, to this quiet place in the forest after she had staggered away from Dad's pack.

The black, collared wolf nudged our Mom gently with her nose, sniffing her carefully. I sat with Jakken, whimpering as much as he.

After a moment, she stopped, and sat down, looking at us.

"…Hey you two. This place… is full of humans wielding guns. Go on… go."

She stood up, this time as a human girl; tall with black hair and shiny blue eyes. Jakken and I did the same, going to our human guises, like Mom and Dad had taught us. Jakken looked like a small human child with dark blue overalls and blonde hair. I was in a black shirt with equally dark blue jeans. She held a hand out to us.

"Your momma isn't going to wake up…" She began.

Jakken was crying, and at first I wondered why, before I realized that I had started crying as well: hot, warm tears that came harder and harder with each second.

I found myself crying, harder and harder all the longer, and silently as well. "…And your papa… isn't coming back either…" She said softly.

My mind flashed back to where I had last seen Dad. Holding down one of our members and snarling at him to stop. Then there was a loud crack, like thunder, and Dad had collapsed after a speeding red ball had forced its way through him. He hadn't moved after that.

"…I'm sorry…" She murmured gently, crouching down and stroking the tears off of Jakken's cheek.

"I… couldn't protect anything…" She whispered quietly to herself.

But Jakken and I weren't listening. Silently, I had gotten to my feet and pulled Jakken after me, holding his hand and parting the way through the bushes.

"Brother, where are we going to go? How are we going to survive?" Jakken asked in his small voice.

Although we were born in the same litter, I was older by at least fifteen minutes. I had the responsibility to watch after Jakken, the only puppy beside me that survived birth.

"I don't know Jakken. But we're going to live… Somehow…"

We trudged on, without looking back. I never saw that wolf again.

- - -

-One Year Ago: Inside Freeze City-
Current Ages:
Tiben: Three
Jakken: Three

I awoke, jerking up after my dream.

It was one of many that I had of my brother and I's past, this dream being one of the better ones. There were others too, but for some reason that was one of my favorites, besides the ones of mother and father.

Yawning, I got to my human feet, pulling my cape over my head, brushing off the dust that had settled on my human clothes as I had slept.

I looked around, my eyes taking in the dim surroundings. Jakken and I had fared off well enough, being able to find this abandoned building for shelter. Then again, in this city, finding shelter wasn't very hard. There were dozens of secluded areas like these.

This city was mostly abandoned, but it was one of Jakken and I's first leads to the flower petal we had found. Strangely enough, in this city, the petal hadn't wilted from the environment, but had the opposite effect. It had bloomed, all on its own. To most eyes, it was simply a white-lavender flower petal, but to my brother and I, it shone with radiance when held in the light of the moon.

It also had a most peculiar scent. It smelled like… well… what the moon would smell like if our noses could reach it. It was new, and sweet, too. It was like the fresh and free scent of where my brother and I had lived before the day we left. It was like a wolf, and yet not.

I smiled faintly before stepping out of the musty room to the doorway, to jump back only a moment later as my younger brother, Jakken pounced up.

"Brother! Look what I… erm, 'found!'" He held up a basket of fruit, and despite their lumpy appearance, the fruit were what many people would describe as 'delicious' in this dump.

"Jakken!" I scolded him in a rather grumpy tone, after getting back to my feet. "I told you not to take from the humans here! They live in bad enough conditions without you stealing their food right from under their wimpy noses!" I admonished him, swiping a fruit from the basket and sniffing it tentatively before taking a large bite out of it.

"But – " He began, then his mouth broke into a grin as he saw me eating freely. "Tiben, you're cheating me." He chuckled before also taking a fruit out and eating.

He set the basket down on the floor and we both sat next to it.

We ate in silence for a moment, and I waited until he swallowed the core of his fruit before I jumped up and grabbed the basket, leaping out of the room.

"Brother - !" Jakken shouted, looking down twenty feet from the doorway to see me waving innocently back up at him.

After all, a drop of twenty feet is no big deal if you're a wolf.

------

The normally hushed market streets of the raggedy and forlorn town of Belfiar were alive with whispers and hushed voices at the animals walking between the stalls.

People stopped in the middle of their shopping time and stared at the strange sight that walked in front of them. Small children giggled and laughed, trying to catch a glimpse, while mothers gripped their small hands tighter in protection.

Two almost identical enormous dogs padded side by side in the street. Their dusty and dirty grey-white fur matched a little too well with the grimy city, and their huge paws were almost double the size of other dogs'.

One of the dogs carried a basket of moderately fresh fruit in its mouth.

"Brother, I was going to take it back… You know, after we had eaten enough." Jakken whined, walking beside me.

"I told you already. We need only natural food and the moonlight to survive, we don't scavenge off of humans who barely have enough to eat themselves." I swished my tail and ended the conversation.

People hearing these voices paused, and shook their heads, dismissing the voices that they had heard as a side conversation of nearby shoppers.

"That looks like a good enough family." Jakken pointed out with his long slender nose, blinking to clear the dust from his blue eyes.

He was indicating a raggedy-looking family, a mother of two small children. The woman was haggling for a piece of pathetic looking meat, while the two boys, scuffed and dirty, stood around her feet, one of the boys tugging on her dress.

I smiled a rueful smile. It figured. My brother was too predictable.

"Okay." I agreed. Quietly, I padded over to where the two boys stood. Both stared at me with wide, innocent eyes. I grimly thought, 'No one should have to live like this,' while tipping their mother's shopping bag over with my nose, and then dumping our basket of fruit into theirs. Quietly, I pushed their bag back up and nuzzled the younger child with my nose, before briskly running away with my brother as the sounds of sirens slowly filled the streets behind us.

"Timmy, what is it? Mummy is busy shop – oh! Timmy, where did you get these fruit?"

"The doggy brought them, mummy."

------

We were running faster now, to try and escape the sirens of the police force.

Again and again, we leapt, higher and higher to the different levels of the city.

"Jakken – " I began irritably, pausing on top of a relatively high building.

"No one happened to see you as a human when you took the fruit, did they?" My voice was dangerously level.

"Umm… maybe?" Jakken replied, while giving me a look, crossing his arms over his chest and grinning sheepishly.

"You're hopeless, Jakken. Completely hopeless." I shook my head and closed my dark brown eyes, listening to the sounds of the police cars closing in.

"I know, brother." He replied with a small grin, and then added, "But why would they care about a bunch of old fruit being stolen?"

"Who knows what's going on with the Nobles and their minion armies and police forces…" I muttered.

We were silent for a moment, both lost in our own thoughts.

"You know, Tiben… there wasn't anything left in this city that smelled like the flower." Jakken spoke softly.

"I know."

"…So should we go? I mean, that lab was shut down a long time ago, at least two years or so. The scent of our petal was almost dried up in there. And there weren't any clues on the computers. …Well, what was left of them anyway."

"I know." I opened my eyes again, and began to leap away to a distant opening, a ragged hole that had been torn away, where the snow from an outside storm blew furiously in.

Jakken followed me silently.

-------

"All right! Take that! Hah hah!" Jakken punched his human fist in the air as a sign of victory after landing safely on the snow-covered ground outside the city.

I smiled, shaking my head in embarrassment at my brother's behavior.

Jakken's victory dance was cut short at the sight of bullets spraying the snow at his feet. His eyes grew sharp again, staring at the humans in the hole where Jakken and I had leapt off.

"…And stay out! Lousy thieves! Good luck getting back into this city again!" A soldier shouted from the brim.

Jakken grinned at the man's words, knowing that neither of us had the intention of ever returning to this place. He then walked up to me, his shoes crunching in the snow.

"Shall we?" He indicated the long stretch of land in front of us, the snow-covered ground mixing into the sky at the horizon that was far in front of us.

'Its never-ending, isn't it?' I thought to myself inwardly, 'Will our search never end? Dad…? Mom…?' I stared at the sky, the snowflakes floating lazily down and melting quickly on my warm fur.

I brought my gaze back down from the clouds and began to run, passing Jakken, who quickly joined in my stride beside me. We were in tune, as we always would be. We would search the ends of the Earth if need be. We were going to find the place that Mom and Dad had lost sight of.

That one place, called…

------

Blue was silent after seeing the two pups walk away. She couldn't help them. It was out of the question, she had enough trouble looking after Pop, let alone two young pups. Pops was… Blue sighed. She didn't know how to describe how she felt now.

But she did know that taking back Pops was out of the question. She just… couldn't now. He was in enough shock already, finding this pack of wolves, and then seeing the mother and her children being attacked by the other wolves. The mother and her pups had been in their human form, and after Pops had shot the wolves attacking them, he had been shocked to see that he had saved the very creatures he had sworn to kill.

Wolves had destroyed Kyrios, the place where both Pops and Blue had lived.

Realizing she couldn't follow the young pups' path anymore after they had disappeared into the underbrush, Blue sighed and looked to the sky. Her lower lip trembled for a moment, as she realized she didn't know what to do next.

'The journey begins.' She thought to herself, 'There is no future here. I just can't wait for Paradise to come to me. I've got to get over this feeling of pain and loss. The future lies ahead. Now is the time… to begin a new journey.'

Freeze City: The first city the original Wolf's Rain characters started out in, where they all met.