This is a fable i wrote when I was a sophomore in high school.  I don't really remember what exactly led to the creation of this story, but if you can understand the moral of this fable than you will understand.

Fable of the Three Wolves

Once in a forest, a league and a half away, lay a wolf mother birthing her pups.  As the last of the three came bursting out in a blaze of pain and pride, the mother breathed her last breath.

          The poor pups were hungry, and whined in protest.  Just then a kindly hiker happened by.  Seeing the dead wolf and the hungry cubs, and realizing there was no pack, the hiker took the cubs and carried them to the forest ranger’s.

          One wolf was given to a zoo.  Confined and imprisoned, the first at least had his own kind around.  The second was soon reintroduced into the wild, within a new pack.  Her life was free and happy, until she was maimed by a cruel hunter and abandoned by her pack.  The third wolf was taken into the home of the hiker and was tamed, much to her sorrow.

          After a year and a day of being civilized, the third wolf had had enough and ran into the wilderness.  But a civilized wolf knows nothing of survival.  Days of wandering finally led her to the second wolf.  Not recognizing her, the third wolf was frightened until realizing the other’s lameness.  Two useless wolves, one lame and one tame, they decided to continue on together.  They grew close, almost like sisters they thought.  And always on the edge of their minds, just out of reach, was the feeling of knowing each other previously.

          About that time, the first wolf felt the pains of imprisonment in the zoo.  The wolves of the zoo had never truly let him into their path, sensing somehow his difference.  Always on his guard and always fighting, the first wolf decided to escape.  And so, with planning and luck, the first did.

          As fate as his subconscious guide, the exhausted first wolf passed out near the other two.  Recognizing him as somehow kin, they decided to recruit him into their makeshift pack.  The surrounded him and waited.

          He awoke suspicious and wary.  But the female wolves were obviously no threat, and he had spent too much time alone - he wanted a pack.

          Things were not perfect though.  The male wolf felt left out of the female’s closeness, so he approached the second and began talking with her.  And then the third felt left out.

          So in the dark of the night, she snuck off to try to return to the hiker’s home.  When she arrived though, the doors and windows were shut and barred.  So the third wolf laid on the steps of the house waiting for her former master to return.  When he finally did, he did not recognize her.  Hurt and embarrassed the wolf loped back into the deep wood, head hung in despair.

          With nowhere else to go, she returned to her pack.  The others never realized that she had ever left, yet still things changed even more so than before.  But they remained together.  For they were a true pack, and a pack is forever.  That is the nature of wolves.