Lone Wolf

times. Then the pup ran a distance and turned his head to look slyly back at her. He suddenly hurled himself toward the grizzly, leaping into her arms. She was so stunned, she fell backward. He climbed up her chest and began licking her chin, then her nose.
    The bear's chest rumbled with chuffs of delight. The more she chuffed, the more Faolan licked her nose. The bear felt her eyes fill with tears. For days this wolf pup had nursed but had hardly seemed to look at her. But now, now when he had finally stopped nursing for just a moment and she had played with him, he played back. He understood. She picked him up again gently and held him away from her face.
    They peered once again into each other's eyes. He wiggled a bit and made the milk! milk! bark. She cradled  him, and he clamped on to her teat. But this time there was a difference. He opened his eyes as he nursed and looked right at her. It was as if there were a current flowing between them. Faolan consumed the milk, and the grizzly drank in the luminous green light of his eyes. She felt a deep surge of love.

CHAPTER FOUR
    ***
    THUNDERHEART

    THEY MADE A CURIOUS TWOSOME -- the great lumbering grizzly with the sun reflecting off the silvery tips of her brown fur, and the small pup, his coat a brighter silver, scampering sometimes ahead of her, sometimes at her side, sometimes behind as they foraged for the spring bulbs that were just pushing their sprouts through the ground. One would grunt and the other would yip or hurl out snappish barks. Yet somehow they had found a way to begin communicating. Faolan had begun to swing his head exactly like a bear cub would when saying no.
    More and more the grizzly realized that rearing a pup was not all that different from rearing a cub. She marveled at the similarities between the two. Yet it frightened her how small Faolan was in comparison to bear  cubs. Small and defenseless. However, the pup was very fast, much faster than a bear cub, and could cover ground with great bursts of speed. The grizzly thought Faolan's speed might compensate for what he lacked in size. But there was the problem of his splayed front paw, which he favored. A wolf, just like a bear, needed full use of all its paws.
    Faolan now had begun to lag behind and was making small whimpering I'm tired sounds. The grizzly turned around and glared at him. Faolan whimpered and squatted in a hummock of soft grass, wagging his head and growling. "No, no, no!" he said, then blew a great spray of air through his nostrils as if to proclaim too hot!
    He walked slowly forward as if he could hardly drag himself to the grizzly's side, and nudged against her to try to clamber onto her back. There was a huge muscle over the grizzly's shoulders that powered her forelimbs, and Faolan loved to climb aboard and ride high on it. Bear cubs were too large to ride at this stage, but not the wolf pup. Even in the den, Faolan liked curling up on that furry mountain when he wasn't nursing.
    Having mothered three sets of cubs, the grizzly had heard all the complaints before. And it really didn't matter if they were bears or wolves, the young got tired, they  got cranky, they wanted to go back to the den and nurse -- easy food. But one day the grizzly's milk would dry up, and the pup would have to learn about other sources of food. It was particularly important for Faolan because he was so small. Is he small for his age? Perhaps this is the size of all wolf pups? the grizzly wondered. Nonetheless, it made her nervous.
    It surprised the grizzly that she had grown so attached to the little one. But that spark she had detected when he had first fetched up on her foot and opened his eyes seemed to kindle throughout his tiny body. He was quick, smart, very strong willed, and now the fires from the spark sometimes had to be tamed. How could such a tiny little thing contain such fierceness?
    The grizzly lumbered up to Faolan and butted him with her boxy nose. He tumbled backward, squealing in mock pain.
    "Get up," she grunted.
    "No! No!"
    "No" was most definitely Faolan's favorite word. "No" and "More milk." It sounded slightly different when he said it than when bear cubs uttered these same words. His voice was higher, not as deep as a cub's. The grizzly wondered if this was because his chest was so much smaller than a bear's. It was so narrow, so fragile. His growls were  also shallower than a bear cub's. However, the accompanying gestures were very similar to those of a cub.