I really don't know
what to think. A trusted friend and mentor, Jian, just died from the B.I.G.
humans. I remember the conversation before.

       "Kyana, listen. You must join forces
with Lunama! It is the only way to fight the humans."

       "No! We can fight them ourselves! We
do not need another pack to help us with a puny enemy!"

       Alas, I fear that I am wrong. The humans
brought with them long sticks that they held to their faces. The sticks make a
loud noise and then a packmate dies. I will now respect Jian's last wish, and
join with Moon Pack.

I just hope that I am making the right
choice.

i was sleeping when the fire started. I felt heat come up from my floor, and I panicked. I opened my door a crack, scared. "Mom?" I asked. "Dad?" 

I looked down the stairs and saw, in a glance, two men engulfed in a red- blue flame. Then, they were gone. But the fire was still there. I had to run. Being kind of an idiot, and never having seen fire before, I ran through it and burnt off a leg, an ear, and part of my underbelly. 

But my parents never answered. I waited just outside of the house for them to come to me, for them to leap out of the burning building.

I stayed like that for hours, and wept the whole time.

In the morning, my best friend Little Crow came to my house, all excited for a playdate. He saw me lying on the ground and called the first person he could think of- his aunt. They brought me too a hospital with strange animal doctors in white coats and I blacked out. 

I woke to a kindly crow's face. "Hello Morbid" she said. "You'll live with me now. I suppose you should call me mother, as much as a crow can be mother to a cyborg wolf. I looked at my leg, and saw a metal leg. I passed out again.

She was taken a long time after, and I fled into the forest and awokened the animals to the presence of BIG in all that we are. I have united them, and soon WE WILL STRIKE!!!! 

I woke up in a sweat. It's funny how I can be dreaming about what could have gone horribly wrong the day before and then change dreams...

But somehow, these dreams seem different. Almost as if-I were those animals. And that wolf-my heart stopped.

What was wrong with me?

The dreams continued...  

Mauve

five years ago 

The breeze is fresh in my hair and it feels good after my sisters Genevieve and Marie locked me in the attic for the fith time this month. I am fishing with my dad, though he is the one actually doing the fishing, and I am drawing in the sand. Then we hear the screams.

"Daddy," I say, "look at all that smoke. Should we go see what is going on?"

"Yes," he says looking worried. "Yes we should." 

We hurry back to our house and see it going up in flames and slowly the screams die out. My dad puts his head in his hands and starts to cry. I stare blankly at the fire. Suddenly some people arrive and put the fire out. There are lots of people trying to talk to us and my dad starts to talk to them and figure things out.

It gets darker and the people leave.

"We should go to bed, Mauve," my dad says and starts walking to a little shed we own that was not in the fire. I follow him. We make the best of our little hut and go to sleep.

I get up and my dad is not there. On a table there is a note saying

Dear Mauve,

I know this sounds silly but I have left you. I know you can make it in this world on your own. Part of me still wants to think your lovley mother and sisters are still alive so I have gone to look for them.

Love,

Your father 

What? Lovley mother and sisters? What about lovley Mauve? He left me in the only time I needed him. 

The house is burning...

I have never met the people who lived there, but I hear tears.

Our house burned...

Who is doing this?

Ronan--- I search for the letter R in the list of children who have lived here. L, N, M, O, P, Q, R! At last! I open it up and look for my name. Ross Ingelson- no, Rosie Cummerbund- no, Roger Nenning- no, no, no! After a hundred more no's, I find something. Ronan Iouris! Yes! I look into the manila folder with my name on it and......there's nothing there. "Drat B.I.G!" I say in anger. Just then, the headmaster comes back into her office. She stares at me in shock for a few seconds. Then, "THIEF!" she screams, and lunges at me. I'm lucky she has such bad aim. She smashes into her desk, sending papers, books, and a Oriental lamp crashing to the floor. I run out the door, down the staircase, and through a door. On the other side of the doorway, I crash into a wooden table. Apparently, I had entered the dining room. I run on the top of the table, stepping into eggs and bacon. I charge into the front hall and out the door of Manning Orphanage. "Gee, B.I.G. sure doesn't want me to know my past!" I say once I'm a good distance away.

It was a month after I had exepted the job at big, and no one seams to suspect enything, mostly becose Ive made no atempts to steal the power of wing. yes I know what it is, Im not an idiot. Lucky for me, I normaly work with my frend Page, ho Is actuly working for big! she know's my skeams and that I dont do much with them. maby she thinks I still act and think like the chiled that I am. that she is.

Page and I were sudeing the strange obgect ( I cant beleave she hasent discovered what it is yet!) when I hered a strange noise. thesoundofnaturethesoundoflifecomewithmetothecodeofrite. "PHEONIX   PHEONIX Helo are you in there?" Page was franticly waving here hands in front of my fase. " ya, Im fine. gess I zoned out or haaaaaaa sumthing." whate, did I hyperventalate? There was a stinging sensation clinging to my throut. It almost made me want to barf! " Pheonix, are you O.K? I have known you for awile now and wenever you do that you get sick olmost directly after. are you going to get sick?" From the look on her face she oviosly didnt want me geting sick on the lab iquiptment. " If you like I can cover for you If you nead to go home?" I had to idmet, I was fealing quite strange. I actuly wanted to take up Page's ofer when I hered it even more clear. "song of nature song of life folow me to code of rite" It all made sense now! "Page, thank you I think I may have coun sumthing other than frogs. ( it was a joke becose wen we were litle, I daired her to go into the stream and try to kach a frog, but wen she came back out she didnt have any frogs, but she cout herself a cold, and a strong set of misquito bites.) 

When I got home I did just as my mom wold have told me to do wen I was litle, I went strate to bed. the pach of skin that was burning was expanding but it was in jabing pricks insted of a isolated bloch. just then I felt like sumone had droped a dicktunarie on my chest than I blacked out.

I was floting.  I was floting in nothing. then there was sumthing. it was code. and I knew how to read it. lucky for me I finished it before I began to fall. I hit the ground next to my bed hard than sprang up, ran into the bath room, then emptied my somick

for the short moments I saw it this is what it looked like.

dig below the stone tree.