After a while of walking up the road towards his own house, about halfway there, Kre noticed a medium-sized animal trotting off along the side of the hill. It seemed to perceive him at that same moment and both parties paused for a moment, looking at each other in the dull violet light of the fading day.
“You’re one cocky wolf, aren’t you,” Kre muttered to himself.
Wolves usually avoided the Mintas farms. There was too much open grassland in the countryside around the town and not enough cover for them to easily and covertly get to the herds. Still, sometimes a wolf would wander this close in, likely when desperate for food. This one though looked fairly well kept and not at all on the verge of terminal hunger.
Kre knelt down slowly, reaching out a hand for a rock. Not feeling any at his feet, he broke eye contact for a few seconds and spotted one a little further to his right. Rock in hand he stood, cocked his arm back, and cast his eyes back out for his target.
It was difficult to say whether it was the feeling of sadness that washed over him that stilled his throw, or if it was the pleading look in the wolf’s eyes. Kre even thought that he saw the wolf gently shake its head before it started to softly walk away.
Kre’s arm stayed back even after the wolf had left his sight. It stayed readied for a throw even after the warm blanket of melancholy dissipated from his shoulders. He barely noticed that the rock had long since tumbled from his fingers.
When he started walking again, he found himself back at the crossroads without recalling making a decision to head back towards Cooter’s place. Yet, there in the back of his mind was this idea that he should talk to Cooter about the wolf. Maybe warn the old man that a wolf was out on the prowl.
It was full dark by the time he made it back to Cooter’s gate. Glancing back up at the house, he noticed that the window lights were no longer there.
Looking over the rest of the home, he noted others things out of place as well, such as the front door being slightly ajar and one of the ground floor windows was broken. There were strange noises coming from within as well.
Unsure of what was going on, but knowing that something was very wrong, Kre decided to move around the perimeter to get a better idea of what was happening.
Crouching low next to the fence, he carefully crept around Cooter’s home, peering over the wooden slats trying to see if he could spot anything inside.
Finally, through a barely perceivable light shining in one of the back windows, he spotted a shadow moving past.
Cooter was a large man, and he should have filled the window frame with his bulk, but the figure that Kre saw was much smaller. ‘Where is Cooter though,’ Kre muttered to himself. There was now a sinking feeling in the pit of Kre’s stomach. ‘I need to look in the windows and find Cooter.’ The thought drove terror into his heart, sneaking closer to a potentially very dangerous situation. But Cooter was his friend and he deserved Kre’s help if he needed it.
‘But how?’ He thought about what he had on him, but his inventory only included a basic utility knife and a piece of an apple he had partially eaten earlier with the plan to save the rest for later.
Casting his eyes around, he spotted Cooter’s chicken coop just past the other side of the house. Before he had a chance to overthink his action, Kre flung his half-apple towards the coop.
There was a loud satisfying albeit wet-sounding thwack followed almost immediately by the loud squawking of chickens. Under the cover of that noise, Kre hopped over the fence and crept up underneath one of the nearby windows.
It was several heartbeats before he thought to make his move. He figured that by now, whoever else was inside the house would be focused on the chicken coop out of the opposite windows. Reaching up slowly, he tried to push the window open, but found it locked. ‘Of course the old man locked it,’ he muttered.
Remembering the broken window in the front of the house, Kre kept low and made his way there. Reaching through the broken glass, he tripped the latch and pushed the window up, trying to keep as quiet as possible.