When the fox stole the little red riding hood from the wolf, the wolf was decidedly furious. See, the wolf had a sort of a rivalry with the fox- an unspoken rivalry but a rivalry still, and they had both made mental notes never to touch each other’s things, and the breaking of this rule alone was enough to inspire the wolf to pack up his things and put on his leather jacket and venture into the fox’s territory.
The fox’s territory was twenty hundred meters away from his own, and this meant that he had to pass through either the marigold infested meadow of his childhood or the dank forest of his adolescence. The meadow was known to be the home of several dozen colonies of pixies, as well as a well-hidden tunnel leading to the fairies palace four kilometers away. In the middle of the meadow was a cabin inhabited by a witch who had such a grudge held against the wolf that she had not spoken to him for over seven years. The dank forest, meanwhile, was exactly that- though it rarely rained, the leaves of the trees seemed to always be coated in dewdrops, and the air overall was decidedly humid. It mostly housed colonies of misplaced waterfowl and broken down rusty trucks, with a demon or magic stag or two spread out between the edges and the heart.
Naturally, the wolf chose the forest, but not before putting on rain boots and ripping a large stalk out of the ground to use as an umbrella. As he walked through at a leisurely pace, humming the Ramones song ‘oh oh I love her so’, his mind did backflips with anxiety. The fox was not likely to eat the little red riding hood, he thought to himself as he stepped over a mass of roots. No, the fox was more likely to do something much more despicable, but what? Surely he couldn’t… the wolf shook his head, attempting to get the thoughts to fall out of his ears, but ended up bumping into a blackbear crossing his path.
“Watch it,” said the black bear. He pointed to his arm, wrapped in an aquamarine sling with about two signatures across it.  The wolf considered apologizing, and almost did, but then an idea came to his head.
“Say, blackbear,” said the wolf, “you wouldn’t happen to have seen the fox pass by here, have you?” Almost instinctively, an expression of scoffing flittered onto the blackbear’s face.
“Not on my watch. I hate that fox with my life, did you know?” said the blackbear. “These are my woods, since yesterday, and if he runs through here I’ll kill him. Why do you want to know?” Something glimmered in the wolf’s eyes.
“I was heading to the wedding of the Fairy Prince and the Maiden of Gold, and the fox had my wedding gifts,” said the wolf. The black bear scratched his forehead.
“Is that wedding so soon? I didn’t even know. Let me come with you. If the fox gives you any trouble, I’ll beat him up.” And so the black bear joined the wolf. As they continued on their way, the black bear went on about this new video game he was playing that involved moving a frog across a highway and a lake. The wolf didn’t care much, but he pretended to be interested so as to get his mind off the little red riding hood. As he took each step, he began to feel a sort of heat building up between the soles of his feet and the rain boots, and his tongue began to feel foreign in his mouth, like something had taken out his own tongue when he wasn’t looking and replaced it with another.
Eventually, the aching wolf and the black bear arrived at the fox’s hideout, or to the entrance, at least. The fox lived in a house that was mostly buried underground, so all that was visible was the roof and the chimney and the tiny circular window that acted as both a door and a sunroof. The wolf flung open the window and leapt in, motioning to the displeased black bear to stay outside. As the wolf fell, he felt his chest being torn open, so he held his hands over his heart in order to soothe himself. It didn’t do much. He landed on a mass of sheepskins from Ikea. Looking around, the wolf saw a set table and a fire in the hearth. A record was spinning around on a record player, but no sound was coming out. When the wolf got up to inspect the record, he found that it was an electric lights orchestra album, which made him slightly happy. It seemed that the fox had good taste. He took the record off the player, put it in the album cover, and then placed the album cover in his pack.
As he crept around the room, he noticed a rather large amount of papers in the waste basket, which to closer inspection all seemed to be written in some sort of unreadable shorthand. Where could the fox be? He wondered. More importantly, where could the little red riding hood be? His question was answered by some muffled talking coming from a door at the end of one of the halls, which caused him to freeze up and listen as a bit of his heart fell out. The wolf wished he had heard crying, because now he didn’t want to go in at all. He didn’t want to see the little red riding hood. His every fiber was screaming for her, but he didn’t want to see her.
The black bear toppled down onto some mats behind him. The wolf turned and told him to be quiet. The black bear nodded and stood up, trailing behind the wolf as he forced himself to enter the hallway. They sneaked down in complete silence, but when the wolf felt the feeling of the cool brass doorknob on his palm, he froze once again, and did not unfreeze until the black bear tapped his shoulder. Behind the door, they discovered, was the wolf’s worst fear.
The little red riding hood was sitting on the ledge of a window. There was a rose clutched in her hand, and another behind her ear. Her lips showed traces of chocolate mousse and raspberry crème. And the fox, tapping away on a piano, was singing that he loved the little red riding hood, that he loved her, and that she made his spirit soar, stopping only to glare at the wolf in his presence.
“That’s mine,” the wolf said. He pointed at the little red riding hood. “You took it from me.” The fox smiled, his eyes depicting a kind of frightening mischievousness.
“You left it alone,” said the fox. “It’s your fault.” The wolf became visibly angry, and stepped toward the fox, who in turn got up from his piano-chair and stepped away. “It is, remember? You told it to go to the grandmother’s house, and then you ran off, and we were in neutral territory.”
“We were not,” said the wolf.
“Yes, we were,” said the fox.
“You owe me a novel,” said the black bear. “You stole my Stephen Crane novel from me.” While the fox tried to convince the black bear that the novel was actually his in the first place, the wolf went ahead and picked up the little red riding hood. He calmly walked out of the fox’s room with her under his arm. In the living room, across the record player, a red door lay slightly open, inviting the wolf to head up some very lengthy stairs. Behind him, it seemed that the black bear had begun scuffling with the fox, and the noises only grew more violent as he neared the end of the stairs. The little red riding hood did not struggle, and the wolf did not know why, but even stranger, nothing was tearing at the wolf’s chest, and the soles of his feet felt unburned, and his tongue seemed to be his again. In fact, the wolf realized as he ended up in the basement of some cottage, the wolf felt empty.
The cottage turned out to belong to the witch, the one that hated the wolf, to be more precise. However, her seven year grudge disappeared as soon as she cast her eyes on the apathetic girl under the wolf’s arm. Brushing the dust off of her skirt, she tapped the startled wolf on the shoulder.
“Excuse you,” said the witch. “What are you doing with my granddaughter?” The wolf set the girl down on a nearby leather sofa and looked at the witch.
“I don’t know,” said the wolf.
“Well, why are you in my house?” said the witch.
“I followed some stairs in the fox’s hole,” said the wolf. “Do you have anything to drink?” The witch stared back at him, annoyed, for a few moments before leaving the room in a hurry and coming back with three glasses of water balanced on a beige tray decorated with various tiny apples. She knelt down to the little red riding hood and offered a glass to her before watching her drink up every last drop, except for the drops at the bottom of the glass unreachable to the tongue, with the thirst of a well-fed dog. The wolf accepted the drink and proceeded to pour all of it out on the carpet beneath them, which should’ve upset the witch, but strangely, it didn’t. The witch put the tray down on her coffee table.
“You look absolutely terrible,” she said. The wolf nodded. He let the little red riding hood go, to which she ran to her grandmother, embracing her in a hug- not a hug of love, not a hug of sadness or fear, but a hug of a child forced to hug her grandmother by the watchful eyes of expectant parents. “So, Wolf,” the witch said, “what are you going to do now?” The wolf couldn’t meet her eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was aching earlier.” The witch smiled a bit, but it was completely forced.
“Is that why you kidnapped my granddaughter?” she said. “Because you ached for her?”
“I don’t know,” said the wolf.
“And do you still ache? Do you wish to steal her from my arms, to marry her, to eat her, to do anything that quells the restlessness in your tired heart?” said the witch. “Well, you can’t have her. Under no circumstances. And she’ll never love you.”
“Yes I will,” said the little red riding hood. The thing that was supposed to pulse heavily in the wolf’s heart remained motionless, and his mind distanced himself from the scene. “I’ll always love you,” said the little red riding hood. The wolf looked out the cottage window- it looked like the wedding parade had already begun, by the looks of it. The sky was polluted with pixies, and the sound of tinkling bells was streaming through the crevices in the walls and the gaps in the roof.
“Hm,” said the wolf. He let himself out the back door, almost tripping over a few bunched up rugs as well as a cauldron with the bottom burned off. The air that hit him was melodious and smelled of milk and honey. As he walked through the field of sunflowers more golden than the sun but not as golden as the eyes of the Maiden of Gold, he thought of the little red riding hood, particularly of why he loved her, when he had loved her. Unfortunately, he couldn’t come up with anything, so he thought of the way his rain boots didn’t fit right and of the dream he had two weeks ago.
He joined the parade halfway on its way to the fairies palace, joining in the intent singing and merrymaking that happened to make up its atmosphere. He met the fox again during, quite coincidentally, the fourth round of the foxtrot, only to see that he had tied up the blackbear and was dancing with a leash wrapped around his wrist.
“I needed a gift,” he explained. The blackbear let out muffled words under his red handkerchief gag. “How’d it go with the girl?” asked the fox.
“Does it matter?” said the wolf. 
The wedding itself was magnificent, as the entire fairies palace, usually amethyst and highly floral, had been decorated with the finest opal streamers, candlesticks, and tableware. Everything gave off the look of virgin snow, except the bride, whose dress was cerulean blue and trailed cumulus clouds that looked like the tails of rabbits. The wolf left the celebrations early, much to the protests of the fox, and it only took two days to reach his house. He fell asleep on the couch clutching his beating heart.