The Moon's Daughter: Chapter 1 The Beginning

"Lady Luna, watch this," the male black wolf pup called.

The white she-wolf puppy turned her attention away from the twig she was playing with and watched the black pup as he stalked towards a ground squirrel that was digging for nuts under the two inches of snow.

The black wolf moved with incredible agility, practically jumping from the cover of snow piles and boulders to another, the squirrel not aware of the danger all the while. The pup's scrutiny was perfectly split between the ground squirrel's position and where he set his paws. When he was buta few yards from his target, he darted out of his hiding place.

But luck was not on the wolf's side and his front left paw tripped over a root of a nearby oak-tree. He lurched forward with a yelp and summersaulted straight towards a different oak-tree. The ground squirrel, at the sound of crunching snow and the yelping of a predator, darted away and back down into its hole at the base of the closest tree.

The white she-wolf Lady Luna turned her head away and tightly closed her grey-blue eyes as the black pup rolled into the tree. A few seconds later, she opened one eye and saw her companion upside-down against the tree-trunk. She quickly rushed over and asked with a giggle, "Are you alright, Asterisk?"

The black pup Asterisk was about to answer, but a pile of snow fell from a branch above and landed on him with a "slush" sound.

Luna snorted at first, but when Asterisk's black head popped out of the snow- still upside-down- with snow hanging on his fur like crystals, Luna began howling with laughter.

On the hill above the clearing where the puppies were, two adult she-wolves watched the pups with motherly affections.

"She has your laugh, Mirror," the black she-wolf remarked.

"True, but she definitely takes after Soran," replied the silver-gray one. "Her snow-white coat can be such a hassle when I take her out, though. Take your eyes off her for one second and you think she's dis-" Her body suddenly turned still and her gaze shot straight across from her.

The black she-wolf looked at Mirror with a worried look. "What is it, Mirror? What's-"

"LUNA! ASTERISK! GET AWAY FROM THERE!" Mirror cried over her friend's voice.

Asterisk had just wiggled his way out of the snow pile and the two pups had started chasing each other when they heard Mirror's cry. They both looked up at their mothers just when the sound of gunfire rang across the clearing, followed by a blood-curlding cry of pain from Asterisk.