After Ten Years Of Chopping Wood Novels & Stories

It had been one year, and our love story had become legend. I stood on the deck of our lake house watching Killian chop firewood with unnecessary enthusiasm, his shirt discarded despite the October chill. The man who commanded billion-dollar deals in Manhattan boardrooms attacked split logs like they were hostile takeover attempts. “You know we have a perfectly good gas fireplace,” I called out. “Where's the satisfaction in that?” He buried the axe in another piece of oak. “Besides, I like the work.”

I glanced at Samantha, who was finally silent. "Well, that's not how to start a fire." The mother moved closer to me, telling me how the chopped woods should be arranged. I grabbed quickly and started the fire. Just then, the kids returned with a big bowl containing fishes. I recalled the days I gave up my birth right and wanted nothing to do with my father's money, I still had a pretty easy life. I never had to chop wood for a fire or struggle to get by. Now that I'm actually in the woods, I had to admit - it was really peaceful here. I'm not sure I can survive here, I haven't even showered or changed clothes since last night.

A few seconds later when I manage to calm down and swallow what I already had in my mouth, my father continues. "If you don't like this, try harder. Look at Rodrick, his wolf came out when he was ten years old. Ten years old. You're fourteen and you still can't shift, don't you realize how embarrassing that is?" he complains, shoving another piece of meat into my mouth. I have blood all over me now and can't stop my tears but I have no choice but to keep chewing and swallowing.

"It happened when we were young, I think it happened, maybe a year or two after our parents abandoned us. . ." The fall air was crisp and clean as two young fox siblings walked through the forest. The younger was barely able to keep up with his sister. "Are you doing alright?" Kate called back to her brother, who stumbled through a pile of leaves. His tiny head bopped up and then down before he nodded. "Where are we going?" He asked as he pushed through the leaves. "We're going to the falls," Kate said. "Why?" He asked his curiosity taking over. Kate smiled and said, "Because you turn ten years old tonight, it'll be your first shift and the falls are safer to be rather than the hollow."

Ten years is a strange measure of time when you have spent your youth measuring the world in heartbeats and crises. For the first thirty years of my life, every day had been a question of survival—first my own, in the Thornback woods, and then the continent’s. Time had been a frantic, breathless sprint against the Rot, against the Alphas, against the human armada. But the last ten years had been a slow, deep exhale. I was sixty-two years old.

“You can't cut the wood like that, Mark. See how I do it." Mark grumbled. He had been helping his uncle cut wood for half an hour for this year's winter supply, but the results were always not good in his uncle's eyes. The results of his woodcuts always get criticism from his uncle. "I've done it right. Last year I cut all the wood without my mother's help." “Well, then your mother didn't teach you properly. Fiona, are you sure you taught Mark how to chop wood? The length is not symmetrical.” “Who cares about symmetry? The important thing is that we don't get cold in winter."

Lorena POV While thinking deeply about Fenrir's question, I remembered when I was ten years old and both my parents were still alive. Our neighbors too and my best friend at that time had a family gathering. It was more like a family game night and the last fun I ever had in my entire life. After my mother and my best friend's mother finished preparing the meals we were supposed to eat, we sat at our feeble chairs and shaky tables. It was old and made from broken furniture gotten from the werewolf carpentry home. It was hard to get it, but my father snuggled it from them and made furniture out of it. It took him a month before he could gather all materials for the table and chair and it took

Not in the ways that mattered. Ten years had passed since I had woken up in that abandoned greenhouse, delirious and confused with a fog in my head that took weeks to go away. A decade went by, and I had lived an entire lifetime in that span; I had suffered, survived, and worked hard as hell to rebuild what had been taken.

I whisper and make a scratch on the back of the wooden frame. Nine marks stared back at me. Nine birthdays without them. Nine years of living like a prisoner. Nine years of fearing one day Fiona might just succeed in her attempts to kill me. Nine years of watching my uncle alphaing a pack that doesn’t belong to him. Nine years… I am seventeen now. Nearly an adult, but thanks to my uncle, I had no money, no education, no anything. I was trapped here, probably forever.

Ten years later Anne's P.O.V Time really flies when you are having fun. That is what we have been doing for the past ten years. Alexia is at the legal age and still my happy little girl. She and her brother Darren get along fine. I have heard that kids with an age difference between them fight like cats and dogs, but these two are playing nice. Might begin changing now with Darren reaching his teen years and Alexia exiting them. Who knows, we will have to wait and see what happens.