Dreams of fur

Somewhere in the deep forests of the Carpathian Mountains, lived a very old, very large and very vicious wolf.

He was so old that legends about him had inspired Charles Perrault for his tale: "the little red riding hood".

He was so large that even the bears would flee through the forest when they smelled his terrible stench.

He was so vicious that when he had decided to have a bear for supper, said majestic animal could run all he wanted because in the end the wolf would always catch him.

If this wasn't enough, the big bad wolf hadn't always been a wolf.

Long before the time this story begins, this particular wolf had been a man, a nobleman actually, a noble nobleman, not the kind that steals from his subjects.

A hero that had stopped the Ottoman invasion of Europe, a fair and just ruler loved by his people and loved by his lords. But this man, in his crusade for his land, for his kingdom, for the whole Christianity, had been to give up many, many things.

Among those things were the woman he loved and his eternal soul. The sacrifices he had done, had made him a tyrant, a despotic monster, preying on the weak and the innocent. So, after being cursed by God, he had been cursed again to live in the pelt of an animal, this dire wolf.

Radu Vladislav didn't know all this when this very old, very large and very vicious wolf appeared in the sight of his hunting rifle. Radu Vladislav was a poacher, he wasn't evil or greedy but he had a family to feed and he knew a man in Brasov, who knew a man in Bucharest who knew a rich American who was ready to pay a lot of money for a wolf pelt as beautiful as this one. So Radu Vladislav shot the wolf and thus ended the life of this creature of legend.