“Oh no! Get it off!” Pri shouted, jumping all over the place. Yon caught Pri by the leg.

“Arrrgghhhh!”

“Pri! Calm down!”

“What’s gonna happen to Lupe?” I asked the Chroma garde spirits.

“Don’t know! I don’t think thissss hasss happened before!”

“Nothin’ good, i’ll tell you that!”

“Shut it! You want him to panic?”

“Don’t worry darling, i’m sure Lupe’s gonna be just fine.”

“But you’re not!” Bea opened her mouth to say something, but then decided against it.

Brushing past Bea, I picked Lupe up and off the stump, and put him on the forest floor. He nothing seemed to have changed, just jumping around playfully. Normal Lupe.

“Huh. I don’t think anything happened to him.”

“Well that’s definitely lucky.”

“See? Lupe is just fine.”

“Just in case, we’ll all take good care of him, and watch if sssomething unusual happensss.”

“Thanks guys.” I sighed in relief.

Lupe climbed onto Bea’s head again. “Now, I think that’s enough for today, why don’t we all get some rest. I can watch over Lupe.”

There were murmurs of “sure” and “good idea” as everybody except for Bea went to the campfire, and lay down on the grass.

I couldn’t really fall asleep since I started wondering about my dad.

“I haven’t been home in a while, and dad’s probably worrying right now. Wonder how he’s doing. Wonder how Hermit’s doing. Maybe I could scratch a letter on one of those gigantic leaves and have Opa deliver it? Meh, my dad’s a shoemaker, what kind of danger could he be in? What, unhappy customer? Actually that’s possible. And Hermit can paint, he can defend himself better than I can. I bet business is booming for the vendors without me on their back! Hope Lupe’s gonna be fine thou-”

“Huh? AAAAAHHH! Guys! Lupe’s acting up!”

We all ran to where Bea was, eyes glued on Lupe. The wolf I assumed was Lupe was getting bigger by the second. His tail was growing, his legs were growing, his everything was growing!

Pri hopped in circles around Lupe. “Whoa. Let me get this straight. Is he… AGING!?!”

Pri was right. Lupe was aging, and we couldn’t do anything about it! Although, it didn’t seem like Lupe was unhappy, or uncomfortable. Just normal, happy extremely fast aging. From the look of it, he was arriving in his teens, if wolves even measured that way. His the top portion of his once light fur were going for a darker shade. He was passing the age of human zits now. The colour of his fur didn’t change much, but his body structure and skeleton were getting bigger. And then, his eyes started glowing. White. And i’m pretty sure this isn’t part of a normal aging process.

Lupe charged at me. I don’t know if he was angry, or was going insane, or was being possessed by those glowing white light bulbs he had for eyes, but I was terrified. So terrified, that I couldn’t move. Even when I knew that potential death was coming in the form of a fully grown, possessed wolf, I just could not move a muscle. It’s also possible that those light-bulbs were also so possessing me at the time and decided to freeze me, while turning Lupe against me.

Regardless of that, Lupe made contact with my flabby torso.