Annabelle in the Woods #6: Annabelle Meets the Wild Children Raised by Wolves

Here is the sixth painting of the Annabelle in the woods series. I used tea, gouache and acrylic paints.

On the edge of the woods there was once an orphanage of sad and lonely children. The children’s lives were bleak and consisted of dreary days of cleaning and crying. Slowly, the children started to disappear. In the evening, they would all go to sleep together, but when they woke up, Greta’s bed would be empty, or underneath Martin's blankets there would be pillows and not a boy. Eventually, the entire orphanage was completely empty. People living nearby marveled at the tragedy and wondered about the mystery, but the children were parentless, and the orphan keepers were merciless, so no one mourned for the children individually as little human beings.

If anyone were to learn what truly happened, they would not be sad either. The children had not perished, but instead had been spirited off to a better life by a pack of loving wolves. The wolves who lived in the woods nearby heard the cries of the children and could no longer bear the idea of the horrid life the children lived. So the wolves sneaked in to the orphanage, gently plucked the children up and took them to their wolf village.

The children grew up loved by their fur covered mothers and fathers. They frolicked with their fur covered siblings. They learned how to howl, how to frolic, how to appreciate the beauty of a butterfly or wildflower and how to survive with joy in the woods. So in the end, all the orphans were adopted and raised with love by their lupine families.