Sköll (Vargr) - Younger Days

The first thing I remember was looking into warm brown eyes. I held onto that curious gaze, trying to summon my first words to what I thought would be my beloved caretaker, until a pink flash had me drenched in drool.

As a newly hatched tabula rasa, I didn’t know where I was. Looking around, I saw a tall, chain link fence surrounding me on all sides. Several bowls sat near one of the corners, most of them empty save for a few partially filled with water. Dirt crumbled under my claws and I looked up to see a bright blue sky above my head.

Despite this barren cage, there was activity all around me. Tags jingled against their collars, paws thudded against the ground, and the air was filled with barks, yips, and whines. The creature in front of me continued to lick my face, dampening my fur. I tried to connect with it and stumbled through my first telepathic words. When that didn’t work, I tried to mimic the sounds I heard around me, but my barks sounded more like melodic trills. My cage-mates took great interest in my songs, silently tilting their heads back and forth as I tried anything to get them to talk back to me.

Suddenly, all of the creatures around me turned their attention and noise toward the gated side of the fence. A new creature approached the other side of the barrier, one with considerably less fur and walking on two legs, like me. A human! I pushed my way through the crowd, wincing as clawed paws stomped on my tail. I called out to him, using words without speaking, and that finally got me the response I was looking for.

“Well, I’ll be. It hatched!” The human chuckled as he deftly made his way into the cage without letting anyone through the gate behind him. He cradled a large bag in his arms. With that bag he filled the empty bowls with what looked to be brown pebbles, which the creatures around me ate with vigor. Once empty, the man folded up the bag and walked back through the gate. I shouted at him as he started to close the door behind him.

/Wait! Aren’t I supposed to come with you?/ The brown pebbles smelled strange, certainly not edible to me. I didn’t want to eat the strange food, or eat anything at all. Instead of a grumbling belly, I felt an aching in my head. I needed to read something!

“Oh, no, animals don’t live in the house. You’re staying out here with the other dogs,” the man said as he re-locked the gate. “You hatched earlier than I expected. It’ll be a while before I can get you a book or something.” I stared after him as he walked away.

I didn’t really understand what a dog was, but I knew I wasn’t like the others around me. They walked on four legs and had long, floppy ears. They came in a lot of colors: black, brown, blond, even spotted. Most important of all, none of them glowed. On the other hand, I was grey with small patches all over my body that let off a faint white glow. I didn’t have much fur on my tail, either. And I didn’t have those ridiculous ears!

But as days turned into weeks, I started to think that life in the dog cage was normal for creatures like me. I was always kept in that enclosure day and night, rain or shine. I would huddle with the dogs for warmth as we slept at night and play-wrestle with them during the day. Eventually, I began to smell like them, too. Even though we could not talk to each other, I learned how to read their emotions and communicate using my tail and teeth. Some of the larger ones would bully me into submission, holding me down with my neck held in their jaws. There was a hierarchy in the group, and as one of the smallest I was near the bottom of the pecking order.

The human would sometimes take some of the dogs away for a few days and they would return exhausted, but always seemed thrilled to leave the next time. I pestered the human about these strange disappearances every moment I could. He eventually told me he took these dogs on hunting trips and that if I was lucky, I too could learn and join them. I didn’t really care for the idea of hunting, but I really wanted out of that cage.

Finally, he turned up with a book! A paper-backed beauty, with inked letters and that glorious parchment smell. I curled up with it in the corner and kept it away from the other dogs, fearing they may tear its delicate pages. I guess reading is instinctual to creatures like me, because the dogs certainly didn’t teach me what sounds go with what letters. I spent all day and night absorbing the book’s contents, using the lights on my tail as a reading light when the sun went down.

The book was some kind of encyclopedia of various mythical creatures that humans believed in during ancient times. Many of these creatures were monstrous in nature and would hunt people or their livestock. One creature from the Norse mythology chapter especially captured my attention - vargr. A great, powerful wolf whose children chased the sun and the moon. I wanted to be like those wolves, to chase the sun out to the horizon. Where did it go when it disappeared behind the buildings around me every day?

The human later gave me a tome on dog breeds, but I didn’t find it very interesting. I would read and re-read my mythology book every day, trying to glean as much information as I could about vargrs. The dogs I shared a home with seemed a little smaller after each night of reading, until I realized I was actually getting bigger! My form was changing, and I was no longer the runt of the litter. Some of my fur changed to rich colors of deep brown. My claws and teeth also lengthened and sharpened.

I thought that maybe this was the change the human was looking for! I was now big and strong enough to help him on his hunting trips, which meant leaving the cage and getting to see more of the world!

I waited for ages, but each day he only came to the cage to feed the dogs and never let any of them out. It was agonizing. Before I changed, I wasn’t strong enough to climb up and over the sides of the cage. Now, my claws were too big to slot between the chain links, so I still couldn’t climb out of the cage. The lock hung on the outside and I couldn’t fit my fingers through the fence gap to try and break it. Using my shoulder as a battering ram only made my muscles sore.

The next time one of those dogs tried to bully me, I put him in his place. I used their own move against them and pinned him down, my foot holding his body in place and my jaws wrapped around his throat. I didn’t bite down hard, just enough to hold him in a tight grip. It felt /great/ to finally be the top dog, to hold the power. He whined and yelped and wiggled but was no match for my strength. None of them bothered me after that. I couldn’t growl, but a sneer showing off my sharp teeth was enough of a warning to keep them away.

Before I knew it, the human was leading me out of the cage, just as I had watched him do so with the dogs many, many times. Usually he took multiple dogs out at a time, but he led just me into the back of his truck. I was so excited! I sat in the truck bed, wind rustling my fur as we drove through a maze of streets. All of the sights and smells were amazing! I watched the scenery change as we drove out in the countryside, leaving the skyscrapers to disappear behind the horizon.

After driving for over an hour, he suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. I didn’t see any animals out here beyond some birds flying high overhead. Whatever we were hunting, it had to be fairly small, as the gently rolling hills around us only held grasses and small shrubs. The human left the key in the ignition and walked over to open the trunk door.

“Wait here,” he instructed. I dutifully hopped out of his truck and sat in the dirt next to the road. Then, he got back in his truck… and drove away. I watched the vehicle until I couldn’t see it anymore, and then I was alone.

Maybe he went to get food or forgot something at home? I tried to get a head start on my hunt, but he never told me what he used the dogs to hunt for, and I couldn’t ask him because he had me sit in the back of the truck on the way here.

So I did what I was told. And I waited.

And waited.