Brutus

"She came to me in the day.

I remember it vividly. Her white pelt melted into the sun above. I thought she was a spirit gifted from the sky above. Perhaps, still, she is a gift.

We didn't interact the first time I saw her. She was across the gorge; a straight shot where I was standing post.

Nimble, almost fragile I figured she just existed in my head. Long waning days did that to me—made me weary. When dawn came, I turned in as my pack mates arose. A hardship for one of the only pack males, but I don't blame my mother for that.

It was only after I saw her a few more times that I then started to speculate she might be real. However, she stayed across the gorge and watched, and I watched her.

My lack of investigation must have given her confidence to approach me.

Surprised, and perhaps against my better judgment, I let her stay near the den entrance. I suppose I could say I was lonely, looking for company.

She said her name was Manaia. Actually, that was all she said the first time. I didn't say anything, and maybe that's what deterred her. She didn't leave, however. She watched, just closer this time.

She had come just as close every night thereafter. She talked more, oh stars above did she ever talk more. At first she asked about me, my name and what my pack was, but after my lack of responsiveness she divulged into her own life.

Her stories were grandiose to say the least. Long winded like the spring moors. I didn't mind, the sun fell faster the more she spoke.

Manaia is a nomad. A wolf without a home, but not without a family. She spoke of her distant travels with her close family and other wolves they adopted on the way. They walked during the day and slept at night. Strange for a pack of wolves.

But she is strange, and maybe it was because of her upbringing.

Then she told me in a hushed voice, she was touched by the stars. Well, most of her pack were. She said she could see the wolves of her pack's lineage and interact with them. Sometimes they held prophetic tales, and this was the reason they traveled.

This was guarded information; information that could excommunicate her from her community. I never did understand why she told me.

However, this was the catalyst for me to open up. I told her my name, Brutus, and my life story up until I met her.

I think I was already slipping, but this was just the feather that took the bird. I fell hard. I was in love with someone not from my pack—a pack of females, mostly.

She could have integrated, like most of the others, but I could tell this isn't what she wanted. I also didn't want to leave. This, of course, drove a wedge between us. It only depended when she informed me of her pack's plans for moving.

Distraught, I was torn in two places. My love for my pack and my love for Manaia.

Maybe it was divine fate that my mother, the pack alpha, woke me one night to inform me of my banishment.

She used excuses that I was getting too big, too looming, for the other females in the pack. I wasn't fit for the pack, and it would be best to leave.

I think she knew. My mother must have seen Manaia, and she knew the tides would change for her son.

I didn't argue. I never did, I just said goodbye to my mother and sisters, and then I left. I left the only pack I'd ever known to search for my star kissed lover." - Brutus Brooding Tales