The languid wolf limped atop the hillside with what looked to be a pound and a half of bloody flesh clenched between his jaws. Behind the wolf there followed a pattern of pain—drawing a path in the snow, littered with blood, sweat, and tears—which could very well reflect a fairytale, although the moonlight felt much too cold for a warm and happy ending.
From behind a cosmic pasture of cotton spun clouds, the moon bloomed into view.
The wolf gingerly glanced to his left, then his right, sat his suppertime surprise on the stump of a freshly cut pine beside him. Shoved his snout shaped trumpet into the boundless shine above, and with dandelion wishes from his own frozen breath, sent out, what he thought was, a wake up call that woke up the sirens of myths from thousands of years ago.
But then the moon, the damn thing, it howled back.
For an eternal moment, the feral beast stood rigid and frozen.
His hair as stiff as though he had just returned home from a once in a lifetime, all expenses paid trip to the taxidermist.
His eyes channeled radioactive universal frequency.
His breath spoke out loud to the invisible serenity.
His lame body ached in every nook and cranny in the depths of his tired soul.
Without so much as a consistent bladder anymore, he pissed in the snow, barely even noticing it, and perhaps, marking his one last territory, or quite possibly, disembarking on a different sort of fairytale altogether.
Yes, the other side of death waited patiently, and so did the moribund wolf.
And as for the moon, neither did it move.
Instead, it sat in its most comfy spot among the starry landscape of clouds, like a sunny side up egg soon to be cracked open by Orion’s buttery sword.
Somewhere up there, Monet was getting ready to dip his whole wheat toast in Heaven's silken yolk.
Gradual and brisk, the moonlit silence slowly offered condolence to the exhausted wolf. And while he, like his ancestors before, had spent his life having one sided conversations with the lit up moon without fail. He had not once upon a time, not even as a cub, expected the validation of a reply.
If the moon were to ever speak out loud, it was only heard in the echo from the cavern of his heart, in the amber that flows with a shiver up the spine, or behind the depths of a blue stained eye. But never ever was it heard in something as silly as the ears.
When wolves were the ones in charge of getting the message out loud and clear, nothing else was.
Among feral beasts, as among man, the moon has forever been expected to be mute.
But what if it wasn’t?
What if? And this is a howl of a what if.
But what if, the moon had been biding its time all of these eternities, patiently waiting in the darkest of nights until the right time came for its confusing howl to be heard?
And what if?
The wolf was focusing with too much intensity on trying to fully understand what could have finally untwisted the moonlight’s tongue—that it barely recognized the youthful howl off in the distance, a shrilled and squeaky shriek that spoke up from about a foot and a half below his puzzled thoughts.
“Well, well, well,” said the bloody pound and a half of flesh, now a beating little heart, thumping and thriving with the breath of life.
“Now that you’ve learned your lesson for now, could you please see me back safely to the womb from which I was took?"
And though, starving, exhausted and left perplexed, and despite the fact that his conscious was as clear of guilt as a dirty and shattered mirror.
The old, sleepy wolf gave in.
He hobbled his way up a hillside of hope, lumbered over the white picket fences of fairytale dreams, and squirmed his way around every last checkpoint of judgement in between.
He then, meandered back through the foggy hillside, stumbling upon the quaint and quiet sleepy little village, sneaking—for a second time that lullaby lit night—through the delicate blue moonlit depths of a wide open nursery window.
And the next morning, a boy named love was born...
Happy Birthday kid.
To the moon and back.
Love,
Dad
Opmerkingen