A little  *rushed* follow up of Loui's story.

I might extend this & tweak it at some point.

🔷️A Boy Who Lived With Wolves
And the Fox who saw it
✒️Story🔹️♀️
✒️Style🔹️Nurture/Adaptation/Environmental
•Red Fox
🔵
Read this 1st if you haven't!
A Child Who Lived With Wolves / Path of the Wolf
🔵
3 years ago a little girl wondered off from her stressed parent. This little girl caused a lot of headaches for her parent for she did this regularly, & she would act as if she was the biggest & toughest one around.

This time however she wondered off on a forest trail she should never have been taken too. She ran off following a ground squirrel, once she chased it to its home she sat there and waited while her parent ran off, knowing full well their child was gone.

She eventually gave up waiting & wondered off, but not back, she was intent to go out and conquer! However, when she ran out of food in a pouch she was given, and the bugs she found weren't proofing to be enough, she picked a fight with the wrong animal and with her weak state she was roughed up pretty good by it.

Slowly starving, she was found by a tiny firecracker, a female Fox. She had lost her kits to illness and was looking for something to grow maternally attached to and raise. When ever the little girl was picked on Mama Fox would explode, going beyond normal lengths to protect the one she became attached to. She was both a poor & perfect example and Mother for the little girl.

Nursing from the Red Fox had an effect on the little girl, over a year's time she grew into a full grown adult Red Fox herself. Mimicking her new cool mother to be just like her helped the transition. A day came when the once Human girl left her new home to be on her own.

She made herself a den to return to, struck out and grabbed hold of a stretch of land for herself, and even had a litter of young. When they got old enough they left and she went in search of a mate once more, the following year, her 2nd litter is born....
🦊
Searching for food 1 stormy day she is almost hit by a car that goes off the road and down the side of a mountain. She went to look off the side and saw it come to a stop. As she went to walk on she heard crying, at 1st she wanted to go check it out, but she recalled why she was there.

A few holes reside along the road belonging to a few borrowing critters & she needed food for her young. A few hours later a 2nd car passes her, this one doesn't freak out as she walked by it.

Next day she rests up a tree as the sun dried the land, her kits in the den below were fed and were fast asleep. She had forgotten about the crash & the crying and got the food she needed. She is unaware of what's happening elsewhere, a similar story to her own, except that one was found right away.

1 day, while drinking from a stream she hears howling, but one of the howls was off. Something about it was, familiar...she found her self going to the wolf den to Investigate what it was, and she see Loui, a human boy living with wolfs. This, brought back memorys long dormant, she recalls being like him & being raised by a Fox, and being raised by a Human who seemed like a horrible person.

She felt good being away from the poor excuse of a parent and is happy that the boy before her is in a happy family. She is startled at one point thinking she was about to be attacked, but it was Hrolf climbing the tree. She was confused, then jumped to the conclusion this person could be Loui's father. But as quickly as she thought that she got a better look at him and noticed she saw him a few times before. But it was still possible, so, she decides to keep an eye on Loui & Hrolf.

The Fox she has become tells her to get as far away from the wolfs as possible but she has become a caring mother over the past 2 years an she has become concerned about Loui with this guy around. So she returns every so often.

Seeing Loui imitate the wolfs, she is once more reminded of her fox-en-ing childhood, the nice vixen who adopted her. She wishes to go see her again, but she stopped seeing her and smelling her since last winter.

Loui is left alone with the pups & ushers them into the den. She moves closer to watch but he comes out & walks away from the den! She gets worried about Loui & the pups and gets ready to move in when Loui is approached by the Wolf Watcher Hrolf. She listened in on their talk. She is concerned by Hrolf's words, is the boy's family really alright? Were they going to come get him? He's going through the same changes she did, he's becoming a wolf, they won't want him will they?

Then Hrolf's lie, the changes were a little known truth. She thinks about her time with her Fox mother. She began changing 1st before she began to copy her mother's actions. Her body changing forced her to adapt to a different way of things. Loui imitated then began changing, so which was it? Their talk ends & Loui runs off to the pups who've come out to look for him. But they will talk again later that night.

After night falls Loui takes the pups into the den. She decides to go raid the done pile for food but finds none, she runs off to hide & waits to see Loui take off again. Once he does she makes a quick run into the den to check the pups to see how deeply they were sleeping, then she runs off to listen in. She watches Hrolf examine Loui and tells him more lies that neither are aware of.

Once more her time with her Fox mother and birth mother comes to mind. She pushes aside the human and focuses on the Fox, she recalls the changes to her feet, her hands, her body starting & making life up on 2 legs tricky to annoying. She then decided to go down onto all 4s & stay like that. Was nurturing also a possible cause?

When Hrolf said Loui could potentially return to being human, *Normal*, she thought about if her birth mother had took her back, would she want to be, *Normal*, again? No...

But it was after Loui takes off is when she sees & hears the dark side of Hrolf. She can feel it in the air & sees it in his eyes. Then he speaks, *he must find out how this is happening*, Loui is being used by this man! She goes after him! Scaring him & attacking him then running off with his food! As Hrolf groans, she speeds off, & returns home. She places the pouch in a small hole for later.

Her kits begin to stir, making cute little half awake noises. She goes to them and stares at them caringly. Oh how she loves them so...her eyes shift to her clothes they lay on. Remembering that they are hers, & she wonders why she's kept them? Does she secretly want to go home? For they aren't a reminder of her missing Fox mother...She shakes her head and nuzzles her young then lays down to nurse them.

As she sleeps that night, she dreams, of both mothers, of both lives, she can't focus, can't sleep, can't stand it. Till now she was just fine with things, now her old parent returns in her and she can only ever remember how angry she was. Yet why does she now yern to see her again?...

The next day after tending to her kits & the den, she returns to the wolf den. The pack ain't back yet. Loui lays there seemingly egnoring the pups and she doesn't like it. She wonders how to get him to focus on them, then decides to go in to see if he will defend them! She runs at the pups & begins to chase them around making a racket as they cry out! She stops at one point to look at Loui who is completely egnoring them, angering her!

But it is now that the pups turn the table on her & chase her around! But she is faster than them and she decides to nip Loui in the rump & RUNS for it! Loui apparently was asleep & was startled awake! She got away before he saw her. Annoyed with Loui, she leaves & goes in search of food. Not finding anything, she returns home to spend some time with her kits before leaving come night fall.

Her search comes to an end when she sniffs out eggs up a tree. She climbs up the tree and gets ready to go out on the limb, but it creaks & doesn't feel safe to climb on. So she decides to try & push it down...& down it goes! She can now go & get the Loui? Loui shows up as if by magic and goes to them. He is unsure how to get them back home, he trys to grab them, but his hands don't work like they use to.

She thinks to herself, *how stupid is he?* &, *don't take those, they're mine!*. He bites down on the nest & carrys it off. Frustrated her meal was poached, she scrambles down thinking she going to get them back! However, a rabbit was startled by Loui walking by & ran right to her! Both froze for a moment then she jumped it and killed it eazily. Not the meal she intended, but she more pleased with it.

Days later, she is far from her den & the wolf's den. She is still upset with Loui, and thinks if she stays away she can make her birth mother vanish again. Sniffing out food, she sneaks up on a mouse searching for food as well! The mouse suddenly senses her presence but is too slow to get away, she got it! But as she crushes it she hears trouble & drops the mouse and hides! Loui's wolf pack runs by. She watches them go as the mouse, realizing it's alive & free, gets up & cleans itself thinking she was gone. But she wasn't, she bites it & takes off with it.

She returns to her den after stopping for a drink at a spring. It is on a small island in the middle of a river with a strong flow. Her mom showed her how to get there safely, start far off from the rapids and jump and swim. When she 1st visited the place she was in awe of the pile of rocks and the water coming from it was the most delicious she's had. When she noticed the skeletons there on her 2nd visit she wondered why they were there.

The skull of 1 was o'viously a K9's skull, but the other one was, wrong, misshapen. They were intertwined together so telling their size was difficult, as well as to which bone belonged to which. It was like when the 2 died they died holding each other.

Now she believes she knows what was going on. 1 or both were going through the same changes she & Loui went through. The bones are just too big to be a Fox, & maybe, even a Wolf? So what was different about them? And what causes these changes? Was it the water coming up from underground? If it is, how many out there were once Human in these woods? The water alone wasn't doing it, was it?

Back in her den she looks to her kits. Could they potentially become Human? She curls up around them & wraps her tail around them & crys.

Hrolf comes to mind, his desire to understand these changes. She now questions them too. And her mind runs through her time being raised by her Fox mother again...& realizes the possible reason. Both her and Loui are changing, but the 1 thing that they did the same, was nurse from their new mothers. The water could carry something & the animals around here drink it, and it...

She can't figure out the rest, why it happens, but that has to be it. Is it that the milk ment to help the young grow up, make those who drink it become the thing that nursed them? Is it nurture at that point? Behavior? All 3 of them together?

Life was simpler before this, now she's thinking far harder than she has in a long time. She wants to remain a Fox, she wants her young to remain as Foxes.

She stayed away from Loui & Hrolf for awhile now. Her brain kept thinking about how this happened, slowly piecing it together. When she ventures out she avoids them the best she can, but when she scores a nest of eggs 1 day, it was when Loui's new father went to fight whitey. She gets covered in yoke when she tried to hide in plain sight. Though Wolfs don't like Foxes, Loui's father was in no mood to deal with her & just walks by. She groans from her the yoke-y mess. After getting somewhere safe she eats & cleans up.

She stares at the bones, the skeletons at the spring. Her birth mother, the mystery of the change, this place, her mind just can't stop running around it now thanks to them. Because she ultimately fears she wants to go back and her kits could become humans too. She comes to hate this place. She is doing a far better job than her birth...that's it, the thought of showing her birth mother how good she's doing! That's it, that's why she wants to go back, she can feel it.

Finding peace in her own acknowledgment of how much better she's doing than her birth mother, she looses her hatred for it all...Her kits won't be Human. She is home here. Loui is home here. She doesn't care anymore about the mystery of her change, and returns home.

But she finds the pack on the move, Loui is with them. She becomes curious to see how he'll do on the hunt and follows them. But it goes bad, not only is Loui a little off, the moose kicks his right hip! & later, the moose looks to of killed Loui's new father! Loui was unaware of his condition & went to follow the pack. She goes to his father & looks at him.

He looks to her, she looks worried, he sees something similar to Loui in her before passing out. She nuzzles him, but he doesn't move. She leaves, thinking, he won't make it. After the hunt was over Loui went to his father & surprise, he was alive! But she still feared he was going to die.

She gets a rare treat today, after the pack takes off she gets her fill of moose & runs off with a bit to be eaten later.

For awhile she is content, her kits have begun to wonder about outside the den & she leads them around here & there. She shows them the river island, 1 day she'll take them to the springs. She takes them to scavenge what ever maybe left of the moose, not much, really nothing. And brings them home where they play in the autumn leafs together.

While alone 1 day she decided to check up on Loui, & saw the talk he had with Hrolf, the moment Hrolf realized he was wrong for using Loui. She could feel it, his regret, & ran quickly to a place she had stored a mouse she cought on the way there. She returned & gave it to Hrolf.

A day out with her kits. She could feel the tension in the air & spirited her kits to a hiding place & went in search of the feeling, she avoided it before, but with her kits out & about she had to figure out what it was. She could hear something at one point & followed it. Loui was fighting a big white wolf, protecting his father! She saw the 1st charge to the final bite strangle hold. She could see it in Loui, like his father could, Loui was now a wolf inside.

She went to them as they left & gave Loui a look. His father saw it again, a curious thing that made that Fox before him very a like to his son. After she nods to congratulate him, she leaves. She no longer needed to worry about him. She got her kits & they went home.

Autumn leafs fall as well as snow, red becomes white. She is decked out in white fur & so is her kits. Today, she plans to do something she shouldn't do, but she just has to.

She arrives at the wolf den to find Loui outside with Mia. She calls out to them & though at 1st it seemed like Mia may attack, Loui stops her. Loui goes to the White Fox.

"Hahroll, roolly." She seys, shocking Loui! He grins, tail wags, & "Hahroll." To the best of her capabilities, she tells him her name. "Willow."

The wolf pack eventually comes out to the odd sight of the 2 *talking*, & though they may want to chase the Fox off, they don't, they excepted the little Human boy into their family, they will tolerate this Fox, for him...

Willow later meets up with Hrolf during his changes into a rather werewolf-y thing & Hrolf finally understands her actions.

But these encounters at the den stop at one point, Wolfs & Foxes don't get along. Though Loui & Willow would meet up at the river island from time to time, these too stopped. She returned to her life & he did the same.

She seys goodbye to her kits come spring & shortly after begins caring for a new litter. She only saw Loui on a rare occasion afterwards & they would exchange a nod from the distance.

Willow was a Fox, & she couldn't be any happier than this.