White Wolf Riding

At the age of four, snow was falling when Zoya fell off the back of a cow. My father didn't notice. The herd continued forward and disappeared on the other side of the mountain. She lay in the snow, thinking she was going to die. It was a white wolf that saved her. The white wolf took her back to the cave, fed her with his own milk, and taught her to run, hunt, and howl at the moon. She grew up among wolves and thought she was a wolf. Ten years later, she saw the city under the mountain for the first time. The people in the city looked just like her - walked on two legs, wore clothes and could talk. They caught her in a net, and she roared, and thousands of wolves surged out of the darkness. She didn't know if she was a human or a wolf. She only knew that when the little girl with pigtails handed her the steamed buns, her heart beat so softly for the first time. She wants to stay. But the yellow and white things—the gold and silver she brought from the cave—were casting a shadow on this home. She wants to find her family. But she doesn't know who she should choose when blood and upbringing are on both sides. This is a story about "who am I". Between the snow-capped mountains and grasslands of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a child raised by wolves spent his life searching for answers.