~Note!~
I have decided to switch the story to third person. Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, but it just doesn't feel natural to write this story in first person. All other drafts I've written were third, and it feels weird in first. And I won't be able to execute certain feelings and perspectives through first. Thank you for understanding!

Leopard woke swiftly, his pelt tingling. Each fur and nerve was supercharged with new energy. An energy he didn't have before.

Leopard breathed deeply, as if he has been underwater for days. His lungs were sore from the lack of air. As he breathed more, he felt life crackling in him.

He looked around. He was in a den made from a hollowed out tree. It was easily a few strides across in diameter, and you could see the sky poking between two branches at the top. The exit faced towards the camp clearing. The smell of fresh herbs wafted, and Leopard noticed a neat pile of them in the corner.

He heard crying from outside the den. Sol, Mist, and an old brown she wolf sat outside. Mist was racked with sobs, and Sol tried to comfort her as he talked to the she-wolf. She shook her head in despair.

Why were they so sad? There was nothing wrong, at least nothing wrong Leopard could recall. Then he remembered his brief time in the starry pelt, and bleeding from under the rock. Of course. He had died and came back.

They must have brought me back to camp when I was dead! He thought.

He screwed his head around to see his neck as best as he could. He felt and smelled dried blood on his fluffy scruff, but there was little pain. Considering he had just felt absolutely no pain before, this was probably a good sign. When he parted his copper fur, there was only a blood-crusted bite mark. Strange.

"My poor, poor pup!" Mist wailed. Another batch of sobs escaped her. Sol looked like his heart had been cut out, but he was trying to stay strong.

Leopard whimpered. His mother never sounded so sad. He was almost scared.

"He was a good pup. I am positive he is protected by the great wolves in the starry pelt. He will live forever, running with the wolves of elder times." The brown wolf creaked, her voice quiet.

"But he will never live!" Mist screamed, gnashing her teeth and growling at the wolf. Her hackles rose, and her eyes were wild. "Starry pelt, forever life! He only tasted life! He will never join a hunt, run with the wind, or howl with his pack! He will never know the true joys of living! His life was unfairly ripped from him! I hope the creature who took his tiny, gentle life is ripped apart by crows and burned alive!"

This was one of the foulest of curses, saved only for the vilest of creatures. Crows were considered to be the most dishonorable animals; scavenging scraps off of larger predators' catches. To have the last pieces of flesh torn off by a crow was terribly uncivil, and to be pecked to death was even worse. And as for fire, one of the most feared and respected elements was fire. Wolves had hated fire from the first strike of lightning that hit the Earth, scorching away the trees and forest. Some say death by fire would send you not to the Adversary or the Starry Pelt, but some forgotten, lifeless memory, filled with nothing but suffocating ashes.

For Mist to make this statement came from pure hatred of of her beloved pup's murderer.

"Mist, I understand your sorrow. In my youthful years I had dear pups who were stolen from me by hawks. But you must be calm; your other pups need you." The brown she wolf said.

"Birds need to have meat for their chicks! This was the bite of murder! Pure murder! The animal had no intent on taking my poor leopard to some Kryyg spawn! It left my pup to die under a rock!"

Kyyrg was the old wolf curse for an enemy animal, such as a fox or a snake. Tricky animals that stole to get what they wanted. Some would say spirits from the adversary built animals from mold to create Kyyrg.

Leopard wished his mother would stop. It was driving him crazy with guilt! He should have never agreed to go with Fire on that adventure. If he had just stuck in camp, like a good pup, he wouldn't have caused her and Sol this misery.

Sol wasn't comforting her anymore. He stared at the ground blankly as drops from his eyes turned the soil dark.

Leopard watched weakly as Mist threw curses and the old wolf tried to calm her, growing more and more feeble with each sentence. She too was starting to cry.

As another tear slipped from his father's eyes, Leopard couldn't take it anymore. He stepped out into the moonlight, shaking. His bones were sore and crisp.

"Please stop, mother." He padded a few feet before her, scared to come any closer. "I don't want to hear you yell." His voice was weak and scratchy but rung clear.

Mist stared at her once-dead pup. He was alive, asking her to be quiet.

Shock filled all the wolves' faces. Passing by wolves stopped and stared; eyes so constricted a white ring showed behind their iris.

Leopard trembled from the shock. So many eyes were on him, and his own mother looked at him like a dead crow had stood up and flew right before her eyes. Horror, it was.

Leopard's tiny legs collapsed, and he fell right on his bum. Oak broke the silence and came to his aid. "Dear pup, are you alive?" He nodded, not looking her in the eye.

"Let's get you in." She said as she tentatively grabbed his scruff and carried him in.

She set Leopard on the pelt he had been resting on and his parents followed quickly. "I don't understand . . ." Mist whispered.

"Yes . . . Quite peculiar." The old wolf said, her voice sounding like withered leaves in the wind. "Do you know how this happened, dear pup?"

"How what happened?" Leopard said, rubbing his eyes with a black paw.

"You were dead, dear. Dead as a stone. Your heart was extremely faintly beating, and you mumbled about colors and dreams when we found you. Strange, the only color there was black and gray.

"Your mother begged me to help you, but your heart had stopped in a few hours. It was terrible, watching you bleed to death."

Leopard looked down at the pelt he sat on. It was mostly crusty, but some parts were cold and moist. The whole pelt was dyed a dark, dark, dark red.

Mist was shaking. She couldn't do anything but stare and shake. Her pup, dead minutes before, had just woken up, as if he had taken a nap.

"Do you know how you came back?" The brown wolf asked leopard, calmer than his mother.

"I-I decided to come back. They let me come back." He muttered.

"What?" Sol asked, drawing nearer to leopard, his brown eyes wide.

"They let me come back. The wolves from the starry pelt. They said something about . . ." Leopard struggled with the word. What was it? A prophecy, young one. Something muttered in his head. He jumped a little, as it was not his own thought. But he felt the click in his head of remembrance. "a prophecy. Yes, that was it. How I needed to come back." The words slipped from him like oiled fish.

The older wolves' eyebrows furrowed, as if they thought his words were nonsense. Coming back to life? A prophecy? Such things hadn't been spoken of since the death of Copper Fur, the last double-eyed wolf.

Leopard stared into Mist's eyes, the way a child does, studying her face. This was very un-wolf like, unless one was to show dominance, but Mist was memorized by her son's eyes. They were more vibrant than ever before. Instead of a dull, grayish icy blue there was an intense fiery blue. Like someone had sent the sky in flames. And the brown wasn't the common, average wolf brown; it was deep and warm like the sands from the southern lands. An unnatural, almost human look filled his eyes.

"Perhaps I could fetch you a new pelt. A deer was caught a few days ago and I believe the skin has dried out enough." Sol offered.

Leopard nodded. "That would be good." He hoped it had white spots on it. Those looked so cool. He often wished he had spots like deer, rather than his saddle and foreleg stockings.

Your pelt bears the solstice-champion marking! Be proud of it! And with deep, magnificent colors! Such shades of coppery-red are not seen so far north often.

There was that voice again! Leopard had no idea what a solstice-campion marking was, and yet the voice rung it clearly in his head, as if he was thinking.

Leopard looked around for whoever could have said it, just incase he wasn't imagining a voice in his head. There was no one but Mist and the old she wolf. They looked like nothing had happened.

"Leopard, may I check your wound?" The old she-wolf asked.

He cringed, but nodded. It would probably hurt.

She washed off most of the blood from his neck with water-soaked moss, then sifted through his fur gently. It felt tender, but there was no real pain besides the wound and around it. It revealed to be a set of bite marks.

"Looks like fox, Mist. The jaw is narrow but long, and the marks are small but deep."

Mist's hackles rose, and her lips curled. "Kyyrg creature . . . " She muttered, growling. "Is there a scent? When I get my paws on that scum I'll rip it apart!"

Oak sniffed it. "All I can smell is blood. There is an undercoat of fox-scent, but the general fox smell. Nothing strong enough to tell who it may have been."

Mist smelled his scruff just to make sure. Her gaze furrowed into a disappointed frown.

Sol came back with a brown pelt in his teeth. It wasn't spotted, but Leopard didn't care. At least it was clean.

"The Tyek on pelt duty, Coal, was glad you're okay." Sol said, switching the dirty pelt for the clean one. Tyek was the common name for a young, training wolf. They would advance to a beta position once they passed an assessment.

Leopard laid out on the pelt, breathing the dusty, leathery scent. It was so comforting.

"Anyways, alpha Flame (I changed the name from Brisingr for copyright purposes. I'm not sure if it's okay or not for just Wattpad, but either way, I just didn't like the name. It was originally flame.) called me to take out a patrol." Sol said. "Trembling Mountain is out to destroy my peace of mind . . ." And on that happy note, he left with his head low.

Leopard yawned. "I'm getting tired . . ." He muttered. He had been tired to whole time he was awake, but he couldn't take it any longer. He would pass out in a minute or two of exhaustion. It took loads of concentration to try and understand the adult's conversation and stay awake.

"No! Stay awake! What if I loose you again Leopard?!" Mist howled, curling her tail around him. Her panicky attitude made him feel sick. What was she so worried about?

The old brown wolf shook her head. "Mist, Leopard must sleep. I don't know what he has gone through, but he's probably exhausted. He can barely keep his tiny eyes open!" She was right. His eyelids clicked together like heavy stones. "I understand there is danger. But if the Starry Pelt sent him back, I believe they wanted him to stay. Do you doubt their decisions?"

Mist looked hesitant, but she shook her head. "No."

"I'll be here all night, watching him, making sure he's breathing and giving him what he needs. You may stay here if you wish." The brown wolf said.

Mist nodded, blinking tears from her blue eyes. "Thank you for the offer Oak, but I must stay with my other pups. I trust you to look after him. But if there is anything wrong, come straight to me." She breathed out the last sentence like a threat.

Oak nodded, looking frail. "I hope you sleep well, dear."

Mist got up. "Oh, I don't think I'll be able to get a wink." She whispered quietly as to not alarm her child more. But Leopard had heard anyways.

She said her last good nights to Leopard, giving him about a thousand licks. He fell asleep on the twenty-first lick.