Little Red and the Tale of her Missing Wolf Ch. 0

Once upon a time, in a small village to the north, there lived a young girl named Riza, better known as Little Red Riding Hood.  Little Red or just Red for short, since saying the whole thing gets tedious after a while.  Riza lived with her aunt Melody in a two-story house near the center of their village.  When she was just a little girl, Riza's parents were brutally killed, and the cause was thought to be wolves.  Riza had only been four at the time and had blacked out before she could have seen anything.  Why she was spared from the wolves is something the villagers to this day wish to know.  

But back to the tale at hand, Riza was sent to the only family she had in the village, her aunt Melody.  She took Riza in with open arms and while she wished immensely to grieve for her sister and brother-in-law, she knew that she would have to be strong if she was going to have any hope of taking care of their daughter.  Riza was a shy girl, often hiding behind her parents whenever a stranger so much as looked at her.  She had not gotten completely used to her Aunt when she was suddenly stuck living with her.  At first Riza cried very much, while alone and with people around her, and her poor aunt who was trying her absolute best to take care of her wasn't able to figure out a way to make the girl smile.  All hope seemed lost, when quite abruptly, a full year after her parents' deaths, the sorrowful crying ceased.  When asked about it by her aunt she simply smiled and said that she was done causing trouble for everyone and that her mommy and daddy would want her to be happy.  Even though she was sincere saying this, tears flowed down her face all the same. But she simply said that they were happy tears, because she remembered how much her parents had loved her.  Her aunt was relieved, but still wondered how a five-year-old girl was able to say something with so much wisdom attached to it.  She let it go in the end, but always looked at Riza differently from that day forth.

The day before she stopped crying, Riza had decided to run away.  It's wasn't because she hated her aunt, or anything like that, but because she wholeheartedly believed that she'd be able to find her parents if she looked hard enough.  While venturing through the woods she eventually got scared and decided that she could run away when she was older.  The bad news was that she had forgotten her way and was soon lost.  She tried calling for help, but the surrounding foliage kept her voice from reaching the village.  As night was fast approaching, Riza thought that she was going to die there alone in the forest and began to cry.  While nobody in the village could hear her, that didn't mean her voice was totally lost to the trees.  A lone wolf-cub, as silvery as the full moon was, had heard her cries and couldn't help but investigate the annoying sound.  Riza was so engrossed with feeling sorry for herself that she didn't notice the wolf-cub until he was right next to her, staring at her with yellow eyes.  She was scared at first, remembering that her parents were killed by wolves, and almost screamed in terror.  But then, something happened that would change her life forever.  The wolf-cub licked at the tears covering Riza's face, and she started to laugh because his tongue tickled her.  Riza soon forgot her fear and started talking to him, telling him that she had run away and gotten lost because she didn't remember her way home.  She told him about her life and he listened intently.  Then, he looked her straight in the eyes and Riza felt like she knew exactly what he was thinking.  She then suddenly knew the way back home, as if something inside her mind fell into place.  She knew that her parents were not going to come back, and that thought made her want to cry, but then she also knew that her parents wouldn't want her to stay sad forever.  She pulled the wolf-cub in a warm embrace and thanked him for everything he had done.  She promised to visit him again in a week, and she felt as if the wolf-cub had said "I'll be looking forward to it."

And visit him she did, not just that following week, but onward until the present day.  She and the wolf-cub slowly became family to one another, and Riza would often sneak away during holidays or her birthday to go celebrate with him.  Since she lived in the north, Riza often wore a hood to keep her head warm.  She had many different colors, and still does to this day, but the wolf had influenced her to wear the red one the most as it was his favorite out of them all.  Her aunt had wondered about the sudden preference to red (which was by far the color that made her look the cutest) and when she asked Riza she was quick to change the topic while blushing slightly.  Melody was not fooled when she told her that it was nothing more than her taking to the color red, and immediately assumed it had to be because of a boy.  While at this point Riza had become a much more open girl and got along well with the other kids in the village, she wasn't close to any of the boys enough for Melody's assumption to be true, and so she was forced to believe Riza.  

Now, Riza, at 15-years-old, is a young lady (or so she believes) and has grown up to be cheerful, positive, resourceful and to top it off very smart.  She and the now also grown up wolf had been through many adventures that drew them even closer together than anyone could have imagined.  But one day, the wolf wasn't waiting for Riza at their usual spot.  He wasn't there the next day, or the day after that.  Two months passed, but Riza still didn't give up hope, and even stayed in the forest until dawn on multiple occasions, getting into trouble with Melody each time.  But still, the wolf did not show.  With her sixteenth birthday coming approaching Riza was feeling lonely without her favorite companion by her side.  She wondered where he was and if he was alright.  She tried a number of different magical spells, charms and incantations to no avail.  She was so preoccupied with finding him that she completely failed to notice the arrival of the boy who was very severely injured and is in the care of the village doctor until he wakes up and can tell everyone what happened to him.  And this is where the tale of our Little Red Riding Hood and her missing wolf begins.