When Luna finished, I thought, How very much like her.
After she’d left, she had gone looking for wolves that had gotten separated from the rest of the pack, as a wedding anniversary gift. Normally something like that wasn’t easy to find, but apparently she had been confident that she would be able to. It was probably some special sense of hers as a Divine Beastfolk. And as a matter of fact, she had found wolves right away.
However, she had come too late. The mother and two pups had just been attacked by another monster. Luna saved them, but...
“In the end,” Luna explained, “the mom wolf was fatally injured, and she died...”
“Oh,” I replied.
“And then, I was afraid that the pups would be attacked by another monster, so I thought I’d bring them back with me... But they don’t want to come...”
“I see.”
I listened to every word she said without rejecting it, and she told me what had happened, little by little.
“Even when I tell them that their mom is dead, they don’t understand at all... They won’t leave. So I gave her a burial, and then tried to bring them home, but they still won’t leave.”
“Huh.”
“And, if they stay here, they’ll die... So...”
So she had spent the entire time protecting them.
“I’m proud of you, Luna.”
Luna shook her head and looked down, a pained expression on her face. “If I came here earlier, I would’ve been able to protect them.”
“But if their mother had been here, she might have attacked you, you know.”
“I would’ve held her down without killing her.”
That might have been true. But, it also might not have. Mothers were incredibly powerful when they fought for their children, and besides, it didn’t seem to me that Luna would be able to control her strength against something hostile to her. If anything, I thought it was a mercy that the mother had been killed first by another monster, so that Luna hadn’t had to dirty her own hands.
“So, what are you going to do now?” I asked.
“When they wake up, I’m gonna try to convince them again.”
“Can they understand what you say?”
“I don’t know.”
They probably can’t. Apparently, some monsters were intelligent, but as far as I could tell, these wolves weren’t the sort you could hold a conversation with. Above all, they had only just been born. There was no conceivable way they would be able to understand language.
What should I do?
It would have been easy to order Luna to give up on them. However, it wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong. On the contrary, by any normal perspective, she was thinking as hard as she could and trying to do something for the wolves—it was enough to make me want to praise her for it.
I looked at the two sleeping wolf pups. “What kind of monster are they?”
“Bloody Wolves... When they grow up, they’re really strong.”
“Oh, really?”
If Luna was saying it, it was probably true. At least, I hadn’t heard the word “strong” from her when the Emperor Boar or the other magic beasts had shown up. But if they’re strong monsters, then won’t they eventually become a threat, considering their dead mother? Besides myself, that could be bad for Reina. Maybe I should kill them now, before it comes to that...
“Ah,” Luna said.
“Hmm?” As I was thinking, the Bloody Wolf pups began to stir. They were waking up from their sleep.
“They’re awake.”
“Yeah, they’re awake...”
Luna spoke happily, while I sounded somewhat uncertain.
The two wolves exchanged looks, then rubbed their noses together and entwined their bodies with each other, behaving very much like babies. There was nothing threatening about them. Then, they swiveled their heads, looking around for something, before suddenly breaking into a run toward a spot on the ground a short distance away.
“Ah...”
“Luna? What is it?”
“That’s where I buried their mom.”
“...Oh.”
The two wolf pups scraped at the ground with their noses while making sorrowful noises. Being newborns, they didn’t have the strength to dig into the ground, and they just made the same movements over and over. I felt some sympathy for them as I watched this. The fact that they were monsters didn’t matter. These babies, realizing that they would never see the parent that had given birth to them ever again, just seemed so pitiful to me.
“Can you take proper care of them, Luna?” I asked.
“Yeah...”
“All right, then let’s wait until they finish saying their goodbyes, and we’ll bring them back with us.”
“Yeah!”
After that, Luna and I sat down there and patiently waited for the wolf pups to understand their farewell to their mother.
✦ ✦ ✦
“So this is where you were.”
“Oh, Elga.”
Around the time the sun took on a crimson tint, Elga pushed his way through the forest trees and came up to us from behind.
“So you found her first, Arata?” he said.
“Yeah... Sorry for not getting in touch with you.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. It definitely doesn’t look like you can move around right now.” As he spoke in a playful tone, he shifted his gaze to my lap where Luna and the two wolf pups, who had tired themselves out crying, were sleeping soundly. “Well, I’ll ask you about everything later. My bad about Luna being a bother.”
“I don’t think she’s been a bother at all.” I gently stroked Luna’s soft hair, and she stirred slightly. After that, I did the same thing to the wolf pups, who were sleeping next to her and hugging each other, and they reacted in exactly the same way. It was like they were siblings, or a mother and her children.
“Anyway, what should I do now?” Elga asked.
“I’m glad you’re quick. You won’t refuse to take them?”
“If I do refuse, there’s no telling what she and Livia will do to me later.”
“Aha ha ha, Livia’s got you wrapped around her finger.”
“Laugh while you still can. Sooner or later you’ll end up like me.”
Elga plopped down next to me. Then, while watching the sleeping Luna, he let out an exasperated sigh.
“She sure has a stupid look on her face when she sleeps.”
“Apparently she hardly slept at all last night, so let her stay like this a little longer.”
“Sure, whatever. Even Livia never gets angry at her.” Elga gave a truly manly laugh, then added, “She’ll take it out on me instead.”
Elga always spoke bluntly, but he was just as good at looking after others as Reina. From that perspective, it seemed to me that the two of them were actually quite similar, and I felt a bit amused.
“What are you laughing about?” Elga asked.
“Oh, nothing, I was just thinking that you sure are a good guy.”
“Hah, I don’t really want to hear that coming from another guy. Although, I guess I’d want to hear it even less from a woman, or else I’d have to watch my back.”
“She really loves you, doesn’t she?”
“That look on your face is pissing me off.”
Even to an outsider, Elga and Livia struck me as a wonderful couple. Their relationship made me think that I wanted to have a family of my own like theirs one day.
Luna grunted. “Mm-hmm...”
“Ah, it looks like the sleepyhead is waking up,” Elga said.
“Yeah, you’re right. Also, the wolf pups with her are stirring too,” I said.
It wouldn’t have been especially difficult for me to carry Luna and the pups by myself. However, Luna was protectively hugging them tightly, and I had merely thought that it would be sad to tear them apart. But now that Elga was here, it was a different story. Unlike earlier, Luna absentmindedly stared at Elga with faintly opened, sleepy eyes, then spread out her arms.
“Mm-hmm...”
“You want me to carry you? Sheesh, all right.” Elga took her in his arms, and she clung to him.
The wolf pups seemed just as drowsy, so I carried them. I didn’t know whether this was something unique to babies, but I was struck by the vitality and the will to survive that I sensed in the warmth of their small bodies.
“All right, let’s go back before it gets dark,” Elga said.
“Yeah. We’ll bring them to the Divine Beastfolk village, and you can take care of everything after that.”
“Sheesh, fine.” Elga sounded somewhat irritated, but I could tell that he didn’t feel that way in the slightest.
And so, while we would have usually dashed through the forest at tremendous speed, now we ever so carefully returned.