Chapter 7: 7

BANG!
"AHHHHH" Natalie screams while being suddenly awoken by the loud crash. Taking deep breaths, she starts to calm down as her eyes adjust to the darkness. 'Did someone knock on my door? Who would come by at this hour.... Wait. This isn't my house. I'm out camping away from everyone. So what was that loud bang?' While being slightly awake, she starts to listen for anything that could giver her a clue. All she can hear is the leaves rustling, the light sound of the pond water moving up against the banks, a muted whining, and the crickets chirping off as if they own the place. Wait, muted whining. As Nat's brain wakes up and realizes the outlier, she can more clearly hear the whining sounds of distress nearby. Quickly scrambling out of her sleeping bag, she puts on her boots, grabs her flashlight, and heads out of the tent.
Stepping out of the warm tent, she shivers slightly in the cold mountain air. Grabbing her pack, Natalie slowly starts to head toward the sounds of distress. Because of how muted they are, she had to move slowly and methodically so that she wouldn't either loose the sound amongst her own, or scare whatever was hurt into becoming quiet. She was so focused on moving quietly, that she almost walked right into her warning line. Walking over it, she started moving tree to tree, slowly making her way closer.
As she got closer, she started to hear little yips going off, and they seemed to be near to the original sound she was following. 'Could this be another set of wolves? Are they out hunting and are cornering their prey? But then why would there be one whining? And why would the yips be so quiet and small?' Natalie racked her brain for what she could be coming up to. If it really was a bunch of wolves hunting, the best thing she could do would be to get out of there and back to her camp as fast as she can. If she doesn't disturb them, they won't disturb her. However, a nagging voice in the back of her head keeps telling her to push on forwards, to investigate what is truly going on. As she gets to the next tree, all of her questions become answered almost immediately.
Ahead of her and down a small hill covered with a fine layer of snow, sits an small opening in the forest, the Moon illuminating the scene in front of her vividly through the treetops. With the full moon just a couple days prior, the light levels were extraordinary. Laying in the pseudo clearing in front of her lay a giant fir tree. That tree falling must have been what woke her up, especially considering how green its branches still were. In the area around the middle of the gigantic tree, was the origination of the sounds she had heard from her camp.
A large grey wolf, especially for what appeared to be a female wolf, laid down beside it. It seemed that when the tree fell, it must have landed on one of her legs, trapping her underneath its weight. There were a few things that helped Natalie figure out that it was female, either the pitch of the voice, or the contours of her muzzle. The one that nailed it home however, was the five small pups working on moving whatever they could away from her trapped leg, doing their best to free who appeared to either be their mother or at least a close older wolf. The fact that there was no other wolves around was what made Natalie worried, as that would mean that these five pups probably relied on the sole older wolf to do all of the hunting, and to make sure they were fed. A crushed leg on a wolf was usually a death sentence, even more so when the one injured is the sole hunter.

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Conflict raged inside of Natalie, as she was torn on what to do. The proper thing to do was to leave them alone. Wolves are larger predators, and would have no problem eating anything they can get if they are hungry and desperate enough. If she decided to go in and help, she would be risking her own life to help her potentially would be killer. On the other hand, the right thing to do would be to help them out. Sitting idly by, knowing full well that doing nothing would sentence the young lives of those wolf pups to end early, never having even gone on their first hunt.
As the debate raged on inside of Natalie's heart, she failed to notice that she unconsciously was leaning in further and further to try and get a better idea of the situation. All of a sudden, her foot slipped! Alternating between sliding and rolling, she descended the hill towards the tree at an alarming rate. Trying to find purchase on anything to slow her descent towards the small family of predators, Nat flailed her arms and legs with reckless abandon. Near the bottom, she felt both of her legs brace on a tree. Catching her breath quick, she looked up from the tree that caught her towards the group of wolves now just twenty meters in front of her.
The wolf pups had stopped struggling with the packed dirt around her leg to all collectively take up a formation around her, their hackles raised. They were growling as ferociously as they could, as if they just wanted to scare her off to save the older wolf. As for their elder, she had stopped whining and did nothing but stare towards Natalie. As their eyes locked, time seemed to slow. As the seconds ticked by, Natalie felt like the wolf was staring through her, right into her very soul. After a short time passed, the female wolf let out a single, but strained, bark.
Hearing this bark, Natalie's eyes moved quickly and watched in surprise as the pups stopped growling, and started moving off to the sides, almost all at once. Taking this in, she looked up to the adult wolf with a look of confusion. It almost looked like she was smiling. When the female wolf noticed that Nat was looking back at her, she turned her head to look at her trapped leg, then looked back at Nat and nodded. Taking that as a request for help, Natalie then finally made up her mind. She would do her best to help these wolves, and then got up from the tree she stopped on, and slowly started walking over towards the fallen tree.
Huge thanks to Jake for supporting me and my writing!

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