A hysteric laugh rang out in the woodcutter's cottage.
It had been going on a while already, but Red, she didn't understand it was her laughing, she didn't even understand the sound was laughing. She didn't care.
She stopped laughing, not by deciding to stop it, but the sound faded away and silence fell. Red lay there, on the floor, her hair tangled up with that bloody mess, cloak soaking in blood, and she didn't care.
She waited for Her.
With all those wounds, with the blood loss, she knew that she couldn't survive. Not even if someone came in on the very moment and would do their best to help her, no. She could feel how blood ran from those big veins in her neck, penetrated by the wolf's claws. She could feel the warmth spreading under her and the coldness creeping to her body, and she waited for Death, not knowing that She would never come.

It may have been one hour or one day, Red didn't know for she had lost her sense of time. As odd as it was, she felt better, even though she knew that it shouldn't be possible.
She sat up slowly, feeling really dizzy. She tried the wounds in her neck, the blood had dried up and barred the blood from running outside her body. After a while Red felt that she might try to stand up, and even though she fell down she tried again and again until she stood on her wobbly feet.
She stumbled out of the house, the only though in her head being the need to go home. She fell down several times, now and then it took a while before she could get up again, but finally she saw the first houses of the village. She kept on walking.
One of the women in the town was going to the well and saw Red. She screamed and dropped the bucket she had been carrying and ran away, apparently not recognizing Red. Red didn't try to call after her, but instead kept on walking towards her home.
She reached her house and opened the door, not saying a word to inform her mother that she had returned. Instead she slammed the door shut, thusly informing that someone had entered the house.
Her mother came out of the kitchen, seeming a bit annoyed by someone slamming the door shut and not even bothering to say hello, but her face fell when she saw Red. For a few seconds she just stared at her daughter, unable to say anything, then: »Oh my Gods.»
She knelt in front of Red, took her blood-stained face between her hands.
»What... Who did this?» she asked.
»A wolf», Red answered shortly, her voice was dry and hoarse and she tried to clear her throat, only making it hurt. She winced.
Her mother looked stern as she said: »Well, first we have to get you clean, then we'll send men to hunt down the wolf-»
»It's dead», Red interrupted her mother and started to cough and tears sprang up to her eyes because coughing hurt her.
Red's mother looked puzzled, but then shook her head and walked to the kitchen with Red and started to heat water for a bath for Red.

The End.