Get of Skidi

Story: Pawnee tales speak of a pack of wolves that occupy the forest and mountains of the central Rockies, led by a great black timber wolf that migrated down from the land of the Crow Peoples by the E-chee-dick-karsh-ah-shay, or Yellowstone River. His sire was a mighty beast called Black Sky Dancer, who took the wisest wolf-witch of the forest as his mate. She was known as Night Star Blanket, and upon becoming heavy with pups she travelled far to find a morning glory plant on the plains and prairies. Upon consuming the petals and seeds, she became drunk and clouded with visions of her pups and saw a black wolf with a golden cape that would come from her litter. He would be far larger and more voracious than the rest of his brothers and sisters, and if left in the woods with the rest of the pack would disturb the balance of the entire forest.

When she returned to the banks of the river to rejoin the pack of Black Sky Dancer, she was almost ready to birth. But the journey for a vision took more out of the witch than she expected and of the litter of seven, all but two were birthed still. There was a small golden puppy with black on its face and a black puppy with a cape of gold. She explained to her mate how the black pup would become a hungrier creature than even him, and that his appetite would consume the entire pack. The Alpha wanted to eat the pup with the afterbirth then and there, but he was stopped by the witch, who was still a mother of the pup. He was given the name Night Comes to the Forest as a sign of his ill arrival and raised, though coldly, until he saw his eighth month and was turned over to the ravens and crows of the tall pines for the rest of his adolescence.

The black birds took the small pup under their watching eyes and lead him north as the winter cold came in, to were the frost and snow ate the ground and killed all around it. It was a hard life, but circling above the frozen carcasses of weaker beasts they led him to food until he could hunt and kill the small hare that lived in snow burrows to return their kindness. He would hunt the hare and eat his fill, and then the birds would finish the hunt, leaving what remained for the scavengers. Though there were little that the birds wouldn't eat, the bitter conditions made it so any leftovers that were left behind were finished before they saw the morning sun. It was when the snows started to melt and the winter passes that the young wolf noticed he had been followed the entire time. While he and the ravens had finished the carcasses and left, a small white wolf would creep from the trees and gobble the bones and scraps to make it through the winter.

Confronting the wolf when she timidly crouched from the snowless tree line, the camouflage of her white fur now ineffective in the melting spring. She explained that she too had been exiled from her pack, a supposed curse on the pattern of her fur as well, and had been living on what they had left behind for the entire winter. Seeing a similarity in their stories, he shared the next rabbit that he pulled from the burrows and gave her the first full meal she had in a long time. Night named the wolf White Mountain Snow Maiden, and they began to care for each other as a pack. It was she who suggested they move south when the mountains became empty with prey.

Exploring into a great forest, Snow Maiden found a den under a great cliffside on the edge of a river. The water was fat with fish and the fowl of the area were birthing many eggs which the pack saved in the cool dirt of the den. They had picked up many wolves on the journey south, victims of the cold and snow that sealed the two wolves in the high mountains. And for each one that joined them, Night knew he would have to bring more and more food in. The males who came from the mountain submitted to the large and aggressive wolf, and he sent them out to smell for prey. The Forest Prowlers stalked the woodlands for all matter of varmint and small creatures to bring back, but Night knew they would need more.

As ravenous as the tales of his birth, he made his way into the woods and fought every beast that came before him. Man knew to stay far away from the golden black wolf that slaughtered every thing in its path. Only the birds seemed safe from his fangs as they came to feast on the meat chunks he left behind. A master of his domain, Night Comes to the Forest brought the story of his people into the annals of the central Rockies in a trail of blood and carrion birds.