Once upon a time, a little girl could not go to sleep at night; she had a perpetual headache. The headache was barely perceptible but constant; sometimes the little girl thought her head would eventually split open with the force, so faithful a minor agony.

Late one night, the ache roused, the tones high. The little girl gritted her teeth. This is it. I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die before I could ever leave. Her head would split, she thought, before she could split open the shell between her and the unknown world.

Snaking slowly about her cranium, the ache traveled, patiently until, finally, out of her ear crawled a lilliputian wolf, damp and warm and grinning.

Yipping and snapping, it crawled under the bedsheets and her thin ivory nightie, a ball of fur and teeth rolling to rest against a mountain of girl.

The little girl smiled. She knew who, exactly, was this tiny silver wolf. Its paws, soft, a secret, twitched as the beast chased something quick in its sleep. Sharp teeth, too, a sharp kiss, there, there on her thigh, now a mountain rising under bedsheets.

Comforted, the little girl fell into deep slumber and dreamt of the summer-skinned creatures that dwelled in the forest on the edge of her family's village.

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