The twins held tight to their mother's shaggy mane, comforted by the rocking motions of her long strides through the forest brush. The fuzzy cub turned his head, his skeletal muzzle nearly knocking into his sister's, who was gazing back at him with her glowing, pin-prick eyes. They always felt safe and happy when close to mother, though grew terribly anxious during rare times of separation. They had been growing steadily through the years, but were still small just children in comparison to their towering, lanky guardian.
The fearsome, bestial creature swiped at a nearby maple tree, her stupendous strength knocking off a whole section of bark, revealing the sapwood. She reached back, and brought her younglings forward to lap at the slowly oozing patch of sugary sap. Their long, black tongues eagerly sough out the sweet treat, their little claws digging into the phloem every so often to keep the resin flowing.
The pair fed like this for some time, until their mother's pointed ears swiveled towards a faint noise. Though it was distant, the skilled huntress knew what the unmistakable sounds heralded. She clutched her precious young tight to her hoary breast, and whispered down to them in a lost, ancient tongue, "Hold close, something special awaits."
With that, the long-limbed creature sprinted off, holding her spawn tight with one arm while racing forward at a frenzied pace. Her downy children instinctively gripped tight to the wendigo's strands of chest fur, the hot hammering of their mother's heart filling the pair's sensitive hearing. "What? What is it? I'm scared," her young son quietly mewled, while the mother galloped forward, ignoring his protests. The sister quietly reached forward a dark-furred paw, holding at her brother's shoulder comfortingly as they wildly shook about.
Suddenly, the monstrous humanoid stopped, crouching low and quietly stepping forward on three limbs, the fourth tightly clutching her progeny. The little wendigos had an upside-down perspective from their mother's chest, but watch the surroundings and their mother's strange behavior with curious attention. The two wendlets were at an important developmental stage in their bestial life-cycle, and were impressionable and fast-learning.
"Watch," their mother's voice was like a faint whisper, almost lost in the cold wind. The faintest, flickering glow of light ahead slowly came into view, scaring the two wendigo cubs upon their first sight of a roaring campfire. The she-beast used her long, rangy limbs to quietly sneak up on her target. The hungry mother was taking quiet, careful steps to avoid crunching any large twigs while her slow stalking progressed. Her cubs were perfectly silent, senses peeled as they watched everything with rapt attention.
The unfamiliar sight of humans caused the pair of wendlets to clutch up fearfully to their mother's breast, as she reassuringly squeezed them with her folded arm. The two knew to fear wendigos other than their mother, and did not know these pink strangers from any other danger of the forest. The stalking beast-woman bent lower and lower as she approached closer, coming up behind the camping pair of seated humans.
Every muscle poised in rising tension, the wendigo mother carefully set her babes down upon the forest floor with a precise and quiet motion. Once they were settled down on the brush, the shaggy beast-woman crouched down tight, coiling her toned muscles for a stupendous pounce. The humans ahead seemed utterly clueless to the dangerous presence nearby, their chatting voices ringing out loudly.
Maggie turned to her girlfriend with a smile, enjoying the romantic isolation of their camping trip. Nell still wasn't totally out the closet with all her family members, which made the solitude of their outing all the more special. They could be totally free and loose out here, a rare privilege at their gossip-prone small, Midwestern hometown of origin. The taller Maggie stretched an arm out and cuddled up close to Nell's side. The pops and crackles of the fire were mesmerizing, inspiring Maggie into saying, "Hey, I just wanna say... this whole trip has been so inspiring to me. Getting to spend some real time with you, I... I realize how much time I've been wasting playing these games. Nell, I love you. We have to open up about all this, I'm pretty sure everyone knows anyway."
Nell was pensive, as usual, but eventually the accented woman murmured, "I don't know, it's not like that. Abuela, she just plays pretend. These aren't games for me, Mag, it's serious for my family. It's about their reputation at the church." Maggie was silent, giving the other woman time to express herself, as she squeezed Nell tighter into a tighter embrace. Finally, Nell found the nerve to continue, "It's just, well... You're right, of course, but--Uuaaahh!" The powerful blow from behind and tackling momentum utterly confounded both women as they were bowled over dangerously close to the nearby fire. Worse, a compressing presence had them both pinned to the ground, face-down.
As she slowly regained her senses, Nell realized she was being wrestled down by a large, furry creature above. Shrieking in panic, she thought it was a bear. The scared woman reached for her holstered pistol, though she was too firmly pressed into the dirt to manage it. The fraught encounter grew stranger, as mewling, unintelligible voices came from far behind.
The wendigo cubs had grown both scared and curious, and had followed their mother into the human camp. The black-furred, glowing-eye boy cried out, "What are these? What's any of this? They look like us." He was making sweeping gestures about him with his small paw, pointing to the garish tent, roaring fire, cooler, and other strange, modern amenities surrounding him, as well as the two campers pinned under his crouched, bestial mother. The young creature's sister stood by his side, holding her brother close, her flickering, unnatural eyes looking surprised as well.
"Watch, close. These are special, not like deer. We need these ones, humans, when we can get them. They make us bigger, smarter, better. Not like deer, watch," as she spoke her gruff, barking words, the wendigo mother began stripping one of her captured human victims. The beastly huntress used her sharp claws to flense the small woman's parka and pants from her body, unwrapping the screaming camper like prying bark from a tree. Once the determined parent had her first prey item fully disrobed, the grisly feeding process began.
The wendigo twins were disquieted by the wrenching screams of the two campers, the two human's mournful cries unlike anything they had heard before. Their towering mother lifted the first, smaller woman up to her bony muzzle, which was slavering in anticipation. Her maw yawned wide, revealing the black, wet interior flesh of the hungry wendigo's oral interior. Neither of the two cubs had ever seen their mother consume prey like this, and were both fascinated and unsettled by the new consumption method they witnessed.
With forceful pressure, the hungry beast-woman slammed the nude victim in between her fleshless bone jaws, muting the first human's terrified screams into muffled, indignant yelps. Once the hiker was implanted up to her shoulders into the wendigo's maw, the gluttonous beast began relaxing her gullet, choking and gagging the wriggling woman down alive. It was a shocking sight, as the wendigo had to use great force and determination to work the live woman into her throat without chewing, the sound of the terrified, human being's muffled protestations echoing throughout the forest.
Maggie and the creature's two bestial children watched as the hungry wendigo made maddeningly gradual progress with her meal, working the human down a bit at a time to avoid injuring either predator or prey. The wendigo mother went slowly, the woman's writhing outline clearly visible inside the monster's growling throat, her arms flailing about wildly in panic. One of the wendigo cubs seemed to be growing upset at the spectacle, not understanding why his mother was taking so long to kill this prey. "What is it, what is she doing?" he asked. The other child glanced over briefly to her sibling, before turning back and shrugging in confusion, watching every aspect of the predatory struggle take place.
The larger human, still trapped under their mother's paw, was shaking and crying out even more fervently now, as she was forced to watch her lover disappear into the gulping creature's shaggy midsection, until Nell was reduced to a wide set of hips and kicking legs awkwardly protruding from the wendigo's drooling mouth. The gruesome act took nearly a quarter-hour, the great beast having to coordinate her entire body to ingest the unwilling, live victim down her gullet. With surprising fluidity and dexterity, the wendigo gently rocked her head side-to-side to advance the process further, savoring the occasional yelp or flurry of movement it would elicit in her prey.
The upset cub finally grew tired of watching, and yelled out at his occupied mother in alarm, "Mother! Mother, this one is too big! I don't want to see this! I don't want to hurt them, what are they? This is wrong!" The wide eyed little wendigo scowled, "They're different, like us."
His sister calmed him down with a soothing whisper, "They're not bad, but we need to eat."
The wendigo mother looked behind her in confusion, alarmed at her progeny's reaction. She realized the little furballs were frightened, which both angered and upset the she-beast, considering that the two cubs' well-being was the reason for her to hunt down humans in the first place. In their three years of existence, these young wendigo had never seen the true nature of their supernatural species, and the requisite need to feed upon human flesh. The two young wendigo twins hadn't been exposed to any other member of their race, nor did they know of any other wendigo besides themselves. They were ignorant of the ways of their own people, and it was her fault for being too protective of them.
She grabbed her first victim's flailing legs with her free claw, quickly guiding the wriggly meal down into her elastic gut, before turning her attention back to her perturbed children. While the small, quivering woman was mercilessly crammed down the length of the hungry wendigo's gullet, the second human was now making hysteric sobs, but the wendigo was uncaring as she found relief from her post-hunt hunger. When Nell was safely tucked away in the monster's gut, the beast rolled up onto all fours over her remaining human foodstuff. She looked to her offspring and gave a grunt, "Come close, you must understand."
The two brave siblings each took careful steps closer to the campfire, until they stood at either side of their monstrous mother. The faint cries and motions of her first victim were still echoing throughout the forest, muffled by the wendigo's thick, dark-furred flesh.
With surprising gentleness, the hungry beast hunched forward and gathered her two children close, the three of them looming over the profoundly distraught remaining human. The wendigo mother spoke quietly, in a hushed, singsong lilt. "My children, these ones are why we must hide so carefully in the deep forest. We need these humans to grow. They're like us, but different, and special. Without their essence, you will wither and die. You must take what they offer, as we have been taught by our ancestors. You will be bigger, better, more powerful, with this meat inside your bellies. You are not ready yet, but one day."
The wide-eyed children looked up to their larger, bestial mother in confusion, one of them whispering, "But Mother, isn't it wrong for us to eat these ones? We don't even know where they come from. But they look just like us..." Their mother glanced between the two cubs, horrified that they held such questions on their minds. The wendigo's frantic eyes would not leave the writhing woman trapped within her belly, or the unconsumed one under her paws. She barely muttered, "It doesn't matter if it's right or wrong, it is what we must do." With that, the wendigo mother bent low, opened wide, and used her long, black tongue to guide the remaining camper into her snarling maw.
This time, the predatory mother took her time, displaying the techniques her offspring would need to one-day master, working the woman down further into her throat, feeling her shudder and flop helplessly about, struggling weakly at every moment. The wendigo parent showed them how to overcome a broad set of shoulders, the gluttonous she-beast wedging her human victim between her skeletal mandibles with great force, focusing all of her muscles to send the woman deeper without injuring the prey. As the young wendigo watched, transfixed, the terrified woman's arms and legs began to tremble violently and scrabble against her consumer's face.
This prompted the wendigo to extend her other clawed hand, managing to grip both of the woman's arms to her torso with one deft paw, tightening her grip on the victim in an effort to position her for easier swallowing. The two young wendigo cubs watched in amazement, while their voracious mother expertly displayed her honed swallowing technique before them.