Telepathy?

I have been thinking. Was I in a Twilight movie? Did I somehow end up as one of the cast?

I know for a fact that wolves communicate with gestures and sounds. So, can someone tell me how Umma suddenly scolded me through a telepathic link?

"Nūh, you'd better get here right this instant and let me clean you," she said sternly.

I had been following some of the older wolves that helped Umma take care of us, nipping at their heels and tails and simply being a nuisance.

My brothers and sisters (I don't know which of them is which yet) and I were on a great mission to map out our den.

It was large enough for four wolves to comfortably stay in at the same time.

We could understand bits and pieces of what the adults would say and all of us were very jealous of their howls. Our squeaks and grunts were nothing in comparison.

One of the younger wolves of the pack made fun of us by showing off his grown-up howl. My stupid sister tried to howl back unsuccessfully which was absolutely adorable.

When they walked, they would trip on their own feet and squeal when they got tickled. My heart could almost not handle how cute they were. Back to topic.

We each had a different voice and tone. So it was easy to identify everyone despite the distance. I could recognise that young show-off from a mile away.

Umma never howled. She only made small huffs. I never knew how she sounded until that moment when she called me to clean up.

Her voice was broken and a little hoarse but it was soothing and misty. It formed ripples in my mind as she spoke a language I never heard but understood.

I obediently went to her and let her lick me as she pleased. As she busied herself, I tried to speak to her telepathically. I could only make growls with my throat. Simply concentrating with my mind didn't work either. I tried throwing out a thought like a ball. I compressed it imagining that I was crunching up paper and shot it out.

That was a bad move. It bounced back and hit me. I let out a small, disappointed whine.

Umma felt my pain. She nuzzled my head and breathed out. The breath tickled my ears making them twitch.

And then I felt it. A low sonorous humming. A song without words.

The air vibrated as she sang to me. All of us quietened as we listened. Soon, the other wolves joined in with their own signature voices. My siblings also sat quietly in wide-eyed wonder at this sudden harmony of sounds.

As the song finished, something sparkled in the air in front of us, shimmering and floating steadily down like pixie dust. My brother tried to catch it in his mouth but it disappeared.

The magic stopped. But us younglings were still in a daze.

Umma called it the song of the Verdant forest faeries. We sat around her quietly like studious children with rapt attention. That song was like a lullaby. It was hard to memorize and I only remembered the first six tones.

We couldn't sing it. Our vocal chords were not developed for that. It just sounded like howls and screeches as we tried it.

Umma never howled because she didn't have her own voice. Her parents taught her a way to create her own artificial echo so she could communicate.

It wasn't telepathy. It was similar to ventriloquism. But we didn't need to use our vocal chords or air as a medium.

Her soft echoes stimulated our brains little by little. I felt a slight shiver in the front part of my brain. It was very faint.

Over the course of the next few days, we practiced our howls and joined in when the adults did it and remembered the various smells around us. There were so many, it was overwhelming. We also wrestled and played together to see who was the strongest (I always won so now I'm the boss).

Umma would sometimes leave the den and have some young males babysit us. They were very good at their job and I do remember some of them fighting amongst themselves to get the chance to babysit.

When she came back, she would speak to us to get us to learn how to stimulate that bit of our brains ourselves.

Learning the voice projection echo was difficult.

It was like being at a loud concert and feeling the beats of drums and the vibrations coursing through your body but then going into a silent room and trying to recreate the beats and vibrations with your own body without moving anyhow or using any external music.

This went on for almost a week. We were almost four weeks old. Soon, we would be able to take a trip outside the den.

I never knew the life of a wolf cub would be this busy.