Disclaimer: I do not own Wolf's Rain!
PART SIX:
When Blue woke up the following morning, she opened her eyes and sat up, rubbing them slightly. She looked around, realized where exactly she was, and remembered how she had gotten there. 'The girl!' she thought and looked to where the girl had been laying last night with her injury…
Except, the girl was gone! Startled, and just a little bit worried, Blue looked around the cave some before concluding that the girl was nowhere to be found. She couldn't even find Toboe. 'Oh no! Not Toboe too!' she thought. Beginning to get even more worried, Blue approached the sleeping Kiba. She started shaking Kiba by the shoulder saying, "Kiba! Wake up! The girl! She's gone! And Toboe too!"
Kiba was awake instantly. "What?"
"It's the girl. She not here!"
"Blue, what are you—
Kiba looked over where he had seen the girl last night before falling asleep on the cold cave floor. She yellow-haired girl was not there, just as Blue had said. Kiba's eyes narrowed in concern.
Blue asked him, "What should we do? She could be dying and—
"She's not dead. She was alive last night. The full moon healed her shoulder."
"At least that's cleared up. But where is she now? And where's Toboe?"
"Good question. I'll go look for them."
"But Kiba, you don't know anything about this forest!"
"I'll be fine. I've been through worse."
Blue stared after Kiba, who left the cave and re-entered the early morning forest.
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I thought that I had been quiet when I left the cave. I left my cave in search of some food, and maybe a new place to stay, where these other wolves wouldn't find me… They wouldn't miss one such as me anyway. I am nothing to them. The gray one showed me that…
'No wait! That's not true! They wanted to help you!' A little voice inside my head screamed at me, 'the black one supported you when you were injured, and the one named Kiba showed you the power of the full moon.'
'And what about the gray one, Kiba had called him Tsume? He was---
'Rude? Mad? Crazy? Right... That's why he saved you.' The voice said sarcastically.
'No! He hates me and I hate him! So why would he want to help me?'
"Hey, you! Wait up!" A young voice brought me back to reality.
I turned to see the young rust-colored wolf jumping through the knee-deep snow to reach me. Perhaps I had not been as quiet as I thought…
"Wait!" he called again, "Where are you going?"
"Away."
The young wolf almost crashed into me, but he stopped and almost fell head first into the snow. He asked, "Why?"
"Because I am meant to be alone."
"No you're not! That's not true. Wolves are supposed to stay together."
"But not me."
Toboe didn't know what to say to express him-self right then, so he just remained silent staring at the red wolf in front of him. The red wolf, stared leisurely back at him for a few moments before turning away and saying, "Good-bye. Tell your friends---
"No! Wait! You can't go! I--- I mean, we—want you to stay with us!"
I stopped right in mid step. What the young wolf had said startled me.
'Why would they want me to stay with them?'
'Because they want you to join them on their quest.' The voice said.
'Quest?'
"But-- why?" I said aloud.
"Because you're one of us. You can come with us—to paradise…" The young one said softly.
"Paradise?" I asked, turning to face him, "What is paradise?"
The young wolf just stared at me in surprise and shock. "You've never heard of paradise? How could you not know about paradise?"
"I'm sorry, I--- forget I even asked." I replied. I turned and began to walk away again. This time, the rust-colored wolf didn't try to stop me. I don't know why… I… sort of felt I wanted to stay with them…
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Kiba continued to follow Toboe's scent, and paw-prints, through the forest. He was getting closer. He could feel it, and smell it too. Soon, in the distance, Kiba could a small stark change in the color of the snow. It was a brown dot. 'Toboe?' Kiba thought and raced toward the dot. As he came closer by the second, the dot evolved into the shape of a wolf, and it was rust-colored. 'That's Toboe all right.' Kiba thought again.
Pretty soon, Kiba was close enough to see that Toboe had sensed his arrival. Toboe's ears were perked up and he was staring at where Kiba was coming from as he ran ever closer. Kiba howled lightly in greeting to let Toboe know that it was only him, because it looked like Toboe was about ready to run away in fear. As Kiba got closer to Toboe, he stopped running and trotted up to the young wolf.
"Kiba! She's gone, and she went that way—Kiba? Kiba? We should have asked her to come with us to paradise---Kiba?"
"Yes. I know! But maybe she wouldn't want to."
"But she asked me what paradise was when I mentioned it to her! She was curious to know, Kiba."
Kiba's eyes narrowed in thought. 'Why would she not know what paradise is?' he thought as Toboe kept calling his name, seeing that Kiba was not all there at the moment. His mind was elsewhere.
"Kiba? Kiba, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, Toboe. C'mon. Let's go back to the others at the cave. Maybe she'll come back to say good-bye."
"But she already said—
"She said what?"
"She already said good-bye…"
Kiba's face almost fell at that moment. 'Why would that girl just leave and say good-bye only to Toboe?'
"Let's go." He said aloud, and they both turned back towards the direction of the cave.
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"She what!" This was Hige's reaction to Toboe's account of the girl's departure.
"But where will she go? Isn't this her cave?" Blue asked.
"She said she was going away." Toboe replied sadly.
Hige wasn't satisfied with this answer, even if it was the only answer Toboe could give. "But why? Right after we helped her, she just decides to leave! Just like that!"
"Damn, stupid girl." Kiba heard Tsume mutter from his place by the cave entrance. Kiba then watched as Tsume rose up from where he was sitting and leave the cave.
"Where are you going, Tsume?" he called. The other three stopped talking and watched Tsume walk away as well.
"We've got to eat, don't we?" Tsume responded without looking back as he faded in between the surrounding trees. The fact was, what Tsume just told them was the partial truth. He was going to get some food. And if he could, he would find and talk to this stupid girl, whether she wanted to see him or not. She was just going to have to deal with that.
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Author's rantings: (cut from the last chapter by the author's own mistake) I hope you don't mind the length of these two chapters. They are just little ones meant for plot development. I hope you like them. Maybe you can see the changes in our mysterious red wolf that are beginning to take place. If not, let me know, and I'll work on that. Once again, I apologize for the length of this chapter! Please don't be mad!