EDIT: Story below because files suck.

SEMI-REALISTIC WOLF STORY

This past weekend I decided to revamp a short story I had written a bit of years ago. I used to wolf RP a lot, and Cirocco was one of my favorite characters. Abrasive, obnoxious, pretty careless, really just sort of a loveable ass, but since she wandered from place to place it was rare for her to make true friends or to express her deepest feelings. This is when the son she abandoned comes looking for her.

I would love critique on this if anyone is willing to give it :)

---

“Togo, I’m not your mother.”

An eighteen-month old wolf stared into the comely face that raised him. These four words would change the course of his life.

Of this he was certain: that his mother was alive. Finding her would be a more uncertain task, but a task he had no qualms in pursuing until the day he died. Equipped with the knowledge bestowed upon him and with his wits and his determination, he set out to find the she-wolf named Cirocco…

And so his quest began.


...

“Cirocco?”

The she-wolf he was speaking to brushed him aside in turning without as much as a cursory glance. “Yeah, that’s me,” came the careless reply. She was unexpectedly small, a good head shorter than him, with a stocky build and a characteristic swagger in her step that hinted of a certain arrogance.

It was apparent she had no mind to stop for a chat. He watched after her as she walked away from the circle of wolves she had been entertaining. This was the mother he had never known, then—this apathetic she-wolf. What had he been expecting, a welcome home party? She wouldn’t have known him immediately on sight; he was smarter than to think that. Even so, here was the mother he'd been searching for, and now she was walking away. He had limited time at his disposal.

“Widget sends her greetings,” he called over her back.

Cirocco whipped around. “What did you say?” Her voice, leaden with disbelief, carried easily over the surrounding throng. Suddenly all conversation died. Peeping ears and eyes swiveled toward the couple. She didn’t seem to notice, and stalked forward several steps. "Say that name again."

“Widget,” he repeated calmly. “She’s well. She says to visit the clan sometime.”

His words were met with a dangerous silence. Amber eyes scrutinized him with a mixture of surprise and suspicion, though she paused as if measuring his credibility. No one spoke; no one moved. Who was this wolf? Was a fight to break out between Cirocco and this strange stray? Even the air itself seemed to hold its breath while waiting for her to react. Well, at least I have her full attention now, he thought, ... along with everyone else’s. Moments that felt like hours passed.

She decided to play her cards against him, and her eyes narrowed to slits without warning. “I don’t know who sent you, kid,” spat his mother venomously, “but I suggest you shut up before you get yourself hurt.” She failed to mention how, but the threat was clear. With a loud snort she came forward and walked past him again, and the gathering of wolves parted respectfully in her wake, agog.

This time he would not let her walk away. Togo leapt up and moved to stand before her in three fluid bounds. As he shoved forward, the crowd skittered back like squirrels, chattering excitedly amongst themselves.

Paying no mind to the rest, he confidently blocked her path, tail afloat and legs braced apart. I will not be ignored, he thought. “Eleven moons ago, you bore a litter of pups under the Kane Clan, three of which died. Is that not the truth?”

A confrontation with this level of intrusion was too much, and her infamous temper flared up once again. Fiery amber eyes bore directly into his. Edgewise wolves shrunk away from the sight of her flashed gums, excitement forgotten; a cub’s whimper could be heard under the boom of her growl. “That’s none of your concern.”

Oh, but it is, dear mother. “Is that not the truth?” he repeated simply.

Her sense of security threatened, a bout of wild-eyed madness overcame the female; the hairs along her spine bristled into a wave of jagged spikes. For such a simple question, one would not expect the violence of her response. Saliva flew from her mouth as she roared at him. “You know nothing about me!” Now twice her normal size, Cirocco was fit to burst with rage. The folds of her lips parted in an ugly show of displeasure, a vicious snarl tearing from the depths of her chest. She leaned on her toes. “Who the hell do you think you are to tell me who I am?!” she cried. Then she fell forward, slavering jaws lined with rows of snapping teeth intent on finding his throat.

The flash of white and pink was all he saw, but then he was moving; he felt her skim past him with hot breath. In the end, his reflexes saved him. Somehow he managed to evade her ravaging teeth, and she missed—by a breadth of a hair. When he looked up, she was fixing him with a hateful glare. In her mouth lay a chunk of orange fur that she graciously spat out in the grass. Togo poised nimbly on his feet, feeling much less certain about his odds. The ferocity of her response threw off even Togo; he had not expected such sudden violence from this small wolf. Nevertheless, he stood firm before her; for without resolve, he knew she would never accept him.

Me, telling you who you are? he thought. Do I know who you are? Do you know?

He tried a different tactic. “Use your eyes, Cirocco. What do you see?” He urged her to stop and think; his efforts had no effect on her, however. Seeing nothing but red, she continued to advance with heavy steps and a growl in her throat.

“Cirocco, look at me.”

Something in his voice seemed to snap her to her wits. For the first time, his mother looked—and stopped in her tracks. She looked, and what she saw changed everything she thought she knew.

At once she turned from vicious to vulnerable. "By the stars," she whispered, voice reduced to the feeblest of breaths. "Togo?" Her son returned her stare calmly. No, that Togo's dead. She knew it, too, and the confusion set upon her countenance slowly dawned into a sobering realization, and he could almost hear the final clank of gears as she reached the truth independently. She visibly recoiled: an involuntary shiver ran through her, and with it a look of horror. Her eyes grew wide with the pallor of incredulity and—what else was that he detected? Could it have been fear?

“Am I really that sore on the eyes?” The young wolf tossed his head back and laughed. He was often told of how greatly he resembled his late father of the same name, especially by looks... and it seemed the she-wolf had discovered this for herself.

His grin faded as he looked back to be met with empty space where Cirocco had been standing moments before. He blinked in confusion and swung about to see her heading briskly for the trees, apparently recovered from her shock. It took several leaping bounds in order to catch up; he near tripped in his haste. His natural stride exceeded hers considerably; watching her feet, he soon modified his movement to parallel his mother’s, but soon he sauntered comfortably beside her with smooth steps. She ignored him. The worst seemed to have passed, but a little persistence never hurt.

He waited, but though she had to have known his presence, she gave no indication. Several minutes of this passed. She plodded onwards, deliberately but directionless. A broken sort of grimness etched lines upon her muzzle he had not before noticed. Eventually he spoke up to fill the silence. “You don’t seem particularly cheered to see me,” he offered, dropping his head to her level. Widget had warned him as much, but her hostility still intrigued him. When she said nothing, he took that as a good sign and fell quiet himself. At least she didn’t attack me again, he thought. We’re making progress.

Togo accepted this, growing used to her lack of acknowledgment. He lifted his gaze from her and looked into the canopy of trees, drifting to his own mind. At times he fell behind and had to rush to keep at her side; but for the most part he kept pace with the rhythm of her paws. In this way the stodgy she-wolf and her male convoy progressed through the solemnity, each steeped in their own vortex of thoughts. Seconds passed, minutes passed; and his sense of time came to pass as well.

At some point she stopped abruptly, and the young wolf nearly ran into her. “I left you behind for a reason,” she said. So why did you come back to me? Irritation crawled up her tone, but the fury that had before consumed her fell to the past. She still didn’t look at him. “I don’t want you.”

He was surprised. This was the first non-volatile response he had received thus far. Togo considered this nice change as he registered her words. In the past she hadn’t cared for him, and evidently she hadn’t changed her views. That had been clear enough, but why was the question that had plagued him since learning of his true origins, and he didn’t hesitate to ask. “Why? Was it—”

“—Togo?” she interrupted. “Yes. Of course.” She glanced to her son and seemed to search for something in his features … but whatever it was she sought she could not find, and the more she looked the sadder she seemed until he could not help but feel pangs of guilt for the evident anguish of this mother he had never known. Her paw-steps gradually declined until at last they slowed to a stop. She drew her eyes to the depths of the wood, but her thoughts rewound to a time he could not see. This was where the information he knew failed him, where Widget’s knowledge ended and the inferences began. But inferences were only satisfying before a point—in the end, they were only guesswork.

Here was where her poise faltered. “It was difficult,” she said at length. “…His death, I mean.” Cirocco winced. “He lie dying over the earth. I could have killed them, I could have, but I …” She struggled for words: the right words, any words, to justify the wordless emotions that tugged at her heart, the expressions he could not understand but that he could see she had not felt for a very long time. “I was in the despicable confines of a den instead, bearing children that would never know their father.” Her muzzle broke into a pained grimace. “I could have killed them, do you understand?” She looked at her feet, and her features turned dark and bitter. Nothing was said for a long time.

“Afterward, … everywhere I saw him, except he wasn't there: beside me when I tried to sleep, in the empty space between the trees, in the fields, …”

"... and in me.” Togo finished the thought for her. It made sense now.

She blinked, and her unwavering gaze turned to Togo. “The first two of your siblings were dead from the start. The third I killed myself, and after that I couldn’t stay, not when you reminded me so starkly of what I had lost. I grew sick at the very sight of my own." There was a pause. "Later I informed Widget of your whereabouts and left the clan, and that is why you and your sister have survived.”

“My sister is dead,” Togo informed her, “killed by a lynx a week after her fourth month.” Somehow, the curious pup had managed to escape the eyes of the pack, wandering from the protection of her small world and into the merciless grounds of another. A scouting party later found her scent intermingled with that of an adult lynx. That was all that was found, but was enough to tell of her gruesome fate. He himself could not remember the event clearly, but he did remember Widget’s reaction—she had refused to eat for a week and nigh ignored him save for feeding, but finally she ended her mourning, and from then on took care not to let him out of her sight. She cared as much for us as she would have her own pups, when my true mother slaughtered one of her trueborn in cold blood.

Cirocco looked at him briefly. “That is none of my concern,” she stated, though the way her muzzle tightened at corners of her mouth might have said otherwise. In avoiding his gaze she chose instead to look into the forest; but it seemed she could not bear much of what she saw there, either, for soon she averted her eyes from them both. She stared bitterly at the ground, silent and still as stone. He would never understand who she was truly, and any comfort he could offer her would only fall flat. Though he felt a strange disconnect toward this she-wolf, part of him empathized, but what could he possibly do to ease her mind? So he only stood and watched as the moments passed.

A gust of wind came bustling over the flat, blowing past them with enough force to toss their fur back. This seemed to remind her of his presence; and like that, she hardened, all traces of vulnerability swept beneath her familiarly callous exterior. She spoke slowly. “You were never of my concern,” she said, looking up, “and you never will be.”

For once, Togo was lost for words. He had nothing more to offer. After months of search, he had finally found his birth mother, and she cared naught. He knew what he had been getting himself into, but it was always different in his head. He had replayed this meeting in his head over and over, but somehow he had never gotten this far. What was there to left to say?

Part of him understood her disconnect. She had abandoned he and his siblings as newborns, after all. She had made a self-proclaimed decision to remove them from her life, and hers from theirs. She had upheld her promise. But they were her pups all the same. Her lifeblood. Weren’t mothers supposed to protect their offspring? Jarred with confusion, emotions dominated over his sense of logic. Instead she attacked them and near left them to die. Even for a daughter she had lost years ago—a mother would still feel sorrow ... wouldn’t she? Or was this monstrosity of a mother beyond even that?

Cirocco must have seen the look on his face, because she let out a sour laugh. “Sometimes it’s best that way,” she explained. “Love is weakness. Once the ones you share it with die, they don’t come back--except for their ghosts.” She went on, shrugging. “Your father had a quick death. At least I killed the bastard that did it, ran him down three days and three nights until I had him dead in my jaws ...” A snort flew from her nostrils. “... but revenge is never enough." She looked her son in the eye. "Listen to me, Togo. Never trust a wolf with your heart.”

With that, she left him standing alone in the grass.