"Your grandfather was a wonderful wolf. He worked day and night, making sure everything was running smoothly." Meadow told her two pups, Dawn and Shadow, another story about her father.

"If he's this, 'wonderful wolf', then why does everyone keep saying he was arrogant and crazy and narrow minded and insane and-" Shadow asked, but Meadow cut her off, "Who is telling you that?"

"Everyone!" Shadow exclaimed.

"I wouldn't believe them, Shadow. The stories Meadow tells us are much better than the ones they tell us!" Dawn said.

"You don't know that!" Shadow replied.

"He just had his own ways." Meadow said over her pups voices. Suddenly, a chilly breeze swept through the dark, musty cave that parted ways with the main cave. 

"That's odd." Meadow muttered. She stood up from the nest and cautiously walked out of the tunnel that lead to the main cave. Two of the older pups were tossing snow to each other.

"Ha! Got you, Boulder!" Ice shouted. Boulder's muzzle was drenched in numbing snow.

"Stop you two! That snow is sending cold winds down to the nursery! You can play tomorrow!" Meadow ordered.

"You're not the boss of us." Ice retorted.

"Any wolf older than you in this pack has the right to give you orders!" Meadow said. Her mate, the Alpha, came down from his rocky ledge and stood over the little icy blue pup.

"I would have expected better from you Ice. After all, you are going to be my third in command." Alpha said in a calm tone. Ice gulped and shoveled the drifting snow with his paws out of the cave. Moonlight shone down from the starry skies and made the blanket of white sparkle.

Shadow and Dawn crept around their mother's legs. "Can we paw the snow off Boulder?" Dawn asked in her squeaky pup voice.

"No, we're going back into the nursery. I have something else to tell you." Meadow answered softly. Shadow hesitated and stared out of the cave. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, but Meadow swept her away with her tail like a broom sweeping dust into a pan.

"Before your grandfather..eh..disappeared, he told me something. Warned me of something, and i must warn you of it too." Meadow said after the three got settled once again.

"What?" Dawn yawned. Shadow cuffed her ear to get her to stay awake.

Meadow's voice and tone grew dark, "Do NOT ever go out of the cave at night alone."

"Why? It's so pretty!" Shadow asked.

"Something terrible will happen. Take for example....Billy!" Meadow quickly thought of a random name. "He went out of the cave at night once. And he came back in three days time, but he was not the same. He stumbled as he walked, and when h talked saliva gurgled from his throat, enabling him to actually speak. His eyes were dull and something was just not right in the head." Meadow's eyes seemed to be gazing at something other than her pups, as if a memory was playing through her mind.

"What was wrong with him?" Dawn cowered behind her sister, while Shadow seemed interested in this story wolf.

"Nobody knows, but what we do know is why. It was because he went out alone at night. Do you want that to happen to you?" Meadow asked. Dawn vigorously shook her head. Shadow murmured no.

Meadow sighed, "Good, why would you?" The golden she wolf gently packed bedding over her tired pups, and tip toed out of the nursery. Other wolves in the pack were heading to bed as well, but Meadow wanted to do something she had been doing every night. She padded to the wide open entrance to the main cave and sat down. She positioned herself to get comfortable, and looked out upon the skies. The night her father disappeared for good, there was not another star that had joined the others. Legend says that when good wolves die, they climb the sky and look down upon their families from the stars. The Wolves of the Horizon still very much believed these old tales of wolves who live in the sky, and graze the earth with their gaze. Meadow sighed and looked down at her paws. Every night she looked for her father, for fifteen years now. And ever night her doubt of him returning grew greater and greater.