mizpah (n.) || the deep emotional bond between people

is the bathroom curtain torn up?"

Her heartbeat accelerated and she cursed herself for forgetting to change the curtain. She had barely finished cleaning the house to erase any evidence of the wolf pups living with her when her father pulled in. She greeted him as usual and she went to change her clothes while he went to take a quick shower.

She schooled a calm look onto her face as she left her room and arrived at the bathroom. Her father was holding the material with a confused look on his face. He looked up when she entered and she took one look at the curtain before executing an angry sigh.

"Well, I was having trouble with some mice the other night. I could hear them all over the place." She lied and internally cringed.

He blinked at her, "Mice? How could they do this?"

"I locked all the food up so they resorted to angering me." She was beginning to sweat.

"Mice did this?" He was dumbfounded, glancing down at the curtain again, "Must have been one hell of a mouse... and they sure can climb..." He trailed off.

"Yeah, you're telling me." She needed to calm her heart, she swore he could hear it.

He looked back at her, "We'll need to buy some mouse traps, then."

"Yeah."

She took a deep breath when she could finally leave the bathroom. On her way out, she could still hear her Dad muttering in disbelief about the mice. She almost felt bad for lying to him, but not as bad as she felt about her own white lie. Mice? That was the best thing she could come up with and she wanted to facepalm herself.

She set about her normal routine with ease, although the pups would cross her mind almost every minute. Her Dad cooked a late lunch for them as she cracked some jokes and puns. They told each other about their week and briefly talked about the wolves, of which she said that she hadn't seen a single wolf. She hated to worry him.

When they had went out to split wood, they took a quick break and decided to make a snowman. She wanted to make one as tall as herself and she helped her father rolled the giant snowball around the yard until they couldn't move it anymore. In the end, they had a snowman almost as tall as her Dad with stick arms, pebble eyes and mouth but no nose because they didn't have a carrot.

They never thought once about their trouble, simply living in the moment. Her father fell asleep watching his tv show and she snuck to the barn to see the pups. They were happy to see her as she fed them the meat she had prepped and hid in the fridge. She set up a water bowl for them incase they got thirsty, although she wasn't sure they would drink anything besides milk yet. She put a couple blankets in the stall she had situated for them and she played with them a few more minutes before she returned to the house.

She and her father went into town the next day and she witnessed her father ask Esther on a date. They set up their date for the following Thursday and she was excited for them. Esther's husband had died overseas during his deployment eleven years ago and she knew her father liked Esther from the day they moved into town.

Her life became a game of spending time with her father when he was home and seeing the wolf pups whenever she got the chance to sneak out. When her father wasn't home, she brought the pups back into the house. She loved being able to sleep without the nightmare to plague her, it was like the pups were her defense when her father was away. Surprisingly, the nightmare seemed to cease its existence.

She noticed that the pups began to chew more frequently. Sometimes, she would catch them gnawing on wood in the barn. They seemed to be growing every single day, and far quicker than the articles online predicted. She figured they were getting a good diet because they still looked extremely healthy.

Occasionally, they would nip at her fingers when they wanted more meat, and she noticed that they would devour larger pieces of meat so she let them have at it with whole steaks, which saved her all the more time. With the rising consumption of meat, she made more trips into town for meat. She would go on the weekend and Wednesday's, while increasing the order for meat, and Esther noticed.

She lied that she was having an appetite for only meat. Esther was skeptical but didn't protest, saying that meat was a better thing to be addicted to than drugs. She spent more time with Esther as her father did, and she could see them being a family one day. She just wasn't sure about Esther's son. She didn't really know him that well when he was in town and she kinda wished she had made the effort to know him.

Regardless, she grew more and more attached to the wolf pups, and she knew that they were growing attached to her, too. Their eyes slowly began to fade from their identical blue eyes within the third week and she noticed their fur becoming richer shades of darker grey. She often spent time reading to them, when the one pup wouldn't snatch away her book, and they would fall asleep to the sound of her voice; and sometimes she would fall asleep, too.

She felt truly special and entirely happy. She could realistically laugh and her smiles could be genuine again. Her mood was drastically different compared to when the pups weren't part of her life. A heavy weight was forgotten off her head and heart. She didn't feel the need to isolate herself and she spent more time doing activities with Avery.

They would go sled riding and ice skating, sometimes hide and seek in the woods just behind Avery's house. It was easier to say yes to Avery when she called because she knew she could leave the wolf pups for a couple of hours without worrying about them. Within a month, her entire life flipped upside down. It was almost funny how things can change so suddenly. She would never regret the day she saved her wolf pups.

On a very particular day, she had just left her house to feed the wolf pups. She had taken note of the heavy sky beyond the trees but that wasn't what had worried her. Her skin prickled in response to danger as soon as she stepped into the forest and her suspicions were confirmed when a howl broke the quaking silence.

She had froze in her step, heart thundering. It was the first time she had heard the wolves since she found her wolf pups and she didn't think that it was a good sign. She recognized a tone of urgency in the howl, as it was short and less musical. She almost dreaded a repeat of the first night she actually saw the wolves moving through the forest. Naturally, she didn't waste another moment as she all but ran to the barn and slammed the door.

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