My Mother Died When She Was Two
By Jay Stoeckl, MAT, OFS, April 17, 2026
Last week, I shared with you Jennifer's and my short stories on how we answered a difficult story hook.
My mother died when she was two.
Jennifer solved this by having her mother character deprived of oxygen resulting in her becoming two again in her mind.
I handled this with a kind of time machine that works with Big Ben.
Two days after last weeks letter, a few of our aspiring writers accepted my invitation to try the challenge! Wonderful!
I want to share one of them with you.
A woman named Clair took on her own, original approach. She turned the opening prompt into a scene from a Jack London novel!
So, here, five of us attempt to solve this with the mother being human, a tough go considering human females don’t conceive and give birth at such an early age. And here, Jennifer and I, surrounded by dogs, did not consider that the narrator could be a dog.
And female dogs can conceive and give birth before the age of two.
Kudos to Clair for solving this challenge in her own way.
So, we have all read Jack London. The following short story is a direct adaptation of the opening prompt as if Jack London himself took on the assignment. Here it is:
What If?
A White Fang Story
“My mother died when she was two.”
The lynx was dead. But my mother was very weak and sick. At first she caressed me and licked my wounded shoulder; but the blood she had lost had taken with it her strength, and for all of a day and a night she lay by her dead foe’s side, without movement, scarcely breathing. – Jack London
And then she quietly faded away. I nudged her and whimpered but she would not move. For days I stayed by her side, until hunger forced me to go on the hunt. Although, what I could catch and kill was not enough to sustain me for very long. No matter how many times I returned to her side, still my mother would not move. My shoulder ached as it healed; though I could scarcely reach it. I could not stay by her side because the hunger gnawing at my insides drove me further and further afield. Until one day, I came across a strange sight.
There were creatures I had never encountered before! They were sitting in a semi-circle around something I would later learn is called “fire.” They stared at me, silent. And I was unnerved. I bared my teeth in challenge, and they showed no fear, but only laughed! This was intolerable! I moved to bite them, but I was distracted by one of the creatures shuffling closer with hand extended. Within his hand was meat! I snatched the savory morsel and backed away to devour it. “Gray Beaver” I heard one of the other creatures calls this one; I would remember it.
After finishing off the meat, I noticed some new scents. These scents bore some resemblance to my mother’s, so I felt a brief flare of hope. This hope was quickly quashed however, when yet more strange creatures emerged from the forest, along with my own kind… and yet not my kind. Upon seeing me, there was a brief pause, before these not-wolves erupted in sudden fury, fully intent on tearing me apart! I tried my best to fend them off with my fangs, but there were far too many of them, and I was only a cub! Suddenly, there was Gray Beaver, kicking the not-wolves off of me. He and the other strange creatures subdued the not-wolves and leashed them. I made no objection when he also leashed me aside from a slight bristling of fur. He had given me meat and protected me from the not-wolves; without my mother I had no chance of survival. Gray Beaver had shown mastery over these not-wolves; I could not help but offer him my loyalty. He looked down on me and said, “White Fang shall be my name for you.”
While living with Gray Beaver and his family, he would strap a small pack to my back just as he did with the not-wolf pups. He and the other creatures like him would strap much bigger packs to the adult not-wolves; along with harnessing them to strange objects that slid along the ground. I would later learn these were called “sleds.” I have come to understand that this work is the price for the food and shelter given to me and the not-wolves. At night when the day’s work is over, I would slip away to the forest and howl for my mother and she would never answer.
The older not-wolves eventually learned to ignore me because I was under Gray Beaver’s protection, but the puppies had yet to learn any such lesson. They did, however, learn to only take me on as a pack out of fear of my fangs. They may have had the advantage in numbers, but I was far swifter then they. I knew the forest paths better than them, and could double back to the camp while leaving them wondering in the forest all confused. One puppy in particular, the leader of the puppy pack due to being the biggest and strongest, enjoyed tormenting me whenever he had the opportunity. At one point, I managed to ambush one of the puppies who harassed me at the edge of the forest and killed it by repeatedly rolling the puppy on its back and driving my fangs into its throat. One of the two legged creatures yelled out and threw rocks at me in retaliation. In response, I snarled at him and fled to Gray Beaver’s den. The two legged creature and his family demanded vengeance for the death of the not-wolf puppy and Gray Beaver refused, blocking the entrance to his den where I lay inside. Ultimately, they left for their own dens, vengeance unsatisfied. The masters of those not-wolf puppies that hounded my on a daily basis were careful to keep them away from me from then on.
On one unusual day, the entire camp was in chaos! Everywhere there was packing and loading up the adult not-wolves with heavy packs and harnessed to heavy laden sleds. The puppies that got underfoot were tripped over and yelled at, so I slipped into the forest in order to escape from all the chaos. I decided to go in search of my mother, as I still missed her deeply even though I no longer needed her to survive. As I followed the familiar trail to the den I was born in, I caught her scent, which was old and stale and smelled of death. When I looked upon her remains, I finally understood that she was dead, and had been for awhile. I howled my grief to the unfeeling stars, before departing the place of my birth for the last time. When I returned to the camp, I was shocked to find that there was no one there! I howled out my heartbreak once again, for now I was truly alone.
If you are enjoying our stories, consider getting the Jacob Lake Trilogy. It’s written for a younger reader (high schoolish), but every adult I’ve seen or heard from LOVED them!
Great reviews across the board.
Oh, and don’t forget, we have puppies for sale! The best!
See our available adults at: https://direwolfdogs.com/dogs-for-sale/
Jennifer Stoeckl is the co-founder of the Dire Wolf Project, founder of the DireWolf Guardians American Dirus Dog Training Program, and owner/operator of DireWolf Dogs of Vallecito. She lives in the beautiful inland northwest among the Ponderosa pine forests with her pack of American Dirus dogs.