"To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul."

-- Aldo Leopold

It was a beautiful night in the northern part of Europe. The sky was vast and open with bands of stars consuming the blackness and the moon had been hung almost off center, but still full.

Shouts and cries started to interrupt the peace of the night as the sleepy northern village woke up in a blur. Torches lit, men raced from their houses to arm themselves with pitchforks and other gardening tools, incase the animal that was near the animals came down to the village.

Horses were saddled and mounted. Panicked by the fires, they were hard to control, spinning and ducking as their riders desperately tried to manage the reckless animals.

"A great big timber wolf that was almost the size of a horse and white as the moon," one man claimed as he rode his horse forward in front of the five other hunters who were going to join the search for this great wolf.

"Ye aren't serious," another man spoke up in disbelief.

The leader nodded as he turned his horse so he was no longer facing the other hunters. He was a handsome man, barely out of his teens with thick blonde hair and watery blue eyes. He cantered his horse forward through the thick woods with an arrogant sense of confidence.

A flash of white was seen at the top of the ridge of the snow covered mountains. The wolfs coat was glistening silver white in the full moonlight. Eyes the colour of liquid topaz she watched the group of six men on horses with a curious, but intelligent. Then she realized that they were after her. Quickly, she dashed from her place on the rock and started heading north, further into her pack's territory.

"There's the beast!" the men shouted as they pushed their horses into a gallop towards the flash of white fur.

The animal was lithe and agile as she weaved her body through the thick undergrowth of the forest. Safety was on the other side of a meadow. Once she was able to cross it, she would take the shortcut tunnel through the mountains. The burly men and the horses couldn't even try to follow because the tunnel was too dense to allow such large creatures through.

The leader leaned forward in his saddle, signaling the horse underneath him to push faster. The animal stretched out into a full tilt gallop, its strides eating up the earth easily. The wolf was fast, but couldn't outrun the fastest horse in the village.

The leader sat up more, setting up his bow, letting his horse have its head. He closed one eye, aiming the tip of the wooden arrow at the wolf's shoulder and let the arrow fly. Then he smiled in triumph as the arrow shot towards the wolf and into her shoulder.

A cry sounded from the wolf's throat as she fell in the meadow. The cries rang out as another arrow marked her body until she gave one long shudder and was finally silent.

"You did it Alfred!" one of the hunters praised as he rode his horse up against the leaders. "The pest is dead now."

Alfred was beaming under the praise. "It was nothing."

"Ye are amazing." another man congratulated.

During the hunter's celebration, the weather was starting to change. The clear star strewn sky was being over crowded with thick black clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance and lightning cracked. Rain started to fall slowly at first and then came down in sheets.

"We had better get back." Alfred said as he started to turn his exhausted horse around.

"Hold on," the youngest hunter insisted. "What's that white thing over there?"

"What white thing?" Alfred demanded as he looked in the direction that the boy was pointing. "I don't see anything, you must be hallucinating, Edward."

"Wait," said someone who nudged his horse further into the field, "I see it."

A great white animal was trotting through the field as quietly as a whisper. Its fur was ghost white and it was almost the size of a pony. It came up to the body of the fallen wolf and started sniffing its fur, breathing in the scent of the dead animal.

Alarmed, Alfred readied his bow again, aiming for the great wolf's heart. Before he could let the arrow go, the animal spoke, its voice ominous.

"You can't kill something that's already dead," the wolf growled as he lifted his proud head to gaze at the hunters with empty white eyes.

Alfred and the rest of the hunters froze. Their horses huffed nervously, but stayed stock still even though their skin was quivering with the want to flee.

The wolf took a step towards them and stopped, swiftly sitting on his haunches. "Have you not seen what you've done?" it demanded. "This creature has done nothing to you, or your pups, but you come and hunt it down as if it were a pest."

Alfred opened his mouth to argue with the creature, but no sound would come out.

"This was my daughter," it growled, more infuriated. "I died to save wolf kind and here you are killing us when we've done nothing."

"Who are you?" the youngest, Edward, finally asked.

The wolf fixed his gaze on him, his blind eyes flaring with unspoken fire, "I am Sorin, the wolf god of the North."

"Sorry?" Edward asked, since childhood still gave him the imagination to believe that the wolf was actually there while the older men sat on their horses dumbfounded.

"It's too late for that." the wolf barked its teeth flashing, "For killing my daughter you deserve to bear the worst. You and the rest of your descendants!"

The words echoed through the field as the weather worsened. The horses dumped their riders in terror and fled in the direction of the village, leaving their terrified riders in the meadow with the wolf god.

"What's happening to me?" Alfred demanded as he started to writhe on the ground in pain, followed by his fellow hunters.

Sorin stood up and walked up to his face. "The rest of your village men are also going to suffer for the insolence you have done. For your ignorance toward other creatures beside yourself I am cursing you. Forever you will be treated differently, feared. You will never fit in with average humans and, on every full moon, the moonlight will betray you for what you really are, wolves."

Alfred choked and spluttered out his final words as a human, "How can we break the curse?"

Sorin laughed. "You'll spend the rest of your life asking that question. When my daughter decides that you've paid your dues."

From where he lay, Alfred watched Sorin turn without another look and crossed the meadow, disappearing with a crack of lightning.

Morning came with the sound of blue birds chirping cheerfully as they played in the shallow puddles of water that spotted the meadow. Whirring and buzzing of insects filled the over sensitive ears of the hunters.

"What happened?" Edward asked as he stretched on the ground before climbing up onto his feet.

Alfred sat up, letting the dizziness leave before he tried to focus on his surroundings. The corpse of the white wolf was gone, disintegrated into the earth. No longer was there proof of the night before, except for the puddles and their wet clothes that told of the storm that had happened, but storms happened almost every night in spring.

"It must have been a dream," one of the hunters concluded as he got up as well. "Might as well head back, eh?"

Alfred nodded as he too climbed to his feet.

The next month went by in a relatively normal fashion. The night of the death of the wolf had been entirely forgotten. It was now classified as a bad dream, or that it never even happed.

That was until, the next full moon came. It was a chilly night, so cold that people breathed in little white puffs. Snow even started to fall from the sky, soft little round flakes.

Alfred was sitting in front of the window at his desk. His wife, Marguerite was bustling around the small kitchen, humming to herself as a little blonde haired child followed her around, holding tightly onto her skirt.

A shiver ran through Alfred's body as the full moon's light shifted and started streaming through the window. His bones began to snap, like old elastic bands. They were not hurting but he felt uncomfortable as they started to rearrange themselves into a different order. His hearing heightened and he suddenly could smell everything, even the freshness of the falling snow outside.

The last sound he heard was Marguerite screaming. She grabbed a broom and started thrashing it towards the wolf that was now in her kitchen. The child stood paralyzed by the sink, crying.

A ruckus echoed throughout the whole village as wolves upon wolves ran into the moonlight. The curse had been real.