The Lone Wolf

An old friend payed a visit a few nights ago. She is the Queen of Rains, the darkest and the strongest of all the clouds. The first time we met, I was a kid and she told me her name was HOPE.

And then she vanished. Perhaps she is residing at her clandestine fortress at the bottom of the largest ocean called The Pacific Ocean. Rumour has it that there is nothing pacifying about that ocean!

I howled when Hope disappeared. The Sun burnt my skin and left painful blisters. I guess He is just ostensibly avaricious for power. The clear sky left me unaided. I was too young and too naïve to understand why this happened to me.

The nights were a little less isolated. Pretty stars watched over me. They took away the pain but they never understood me. They didn’t know the Alpha in me had debilitated. My fellow wolves were perishing. The moon didn’t care why His energy failed to shower itself on me and bring me back to life. The Moon was either deplorably callous or He was in denial, I never asked.

It has been years now and my banal efforts to live in this clamorous universe have been detrimental to my sanity. I prefer existing inside my own head, and sometimes I find solace in the company of the stories my mother used to tell me when she was alive. They are complete with fabricated veracities.

I am older and worldly now. I wield my lunar powers to hunt down the beasts of the night. The cloudless days bring back the memories I have been holding on to.

I missed Hope, I cherished the rain she had brought with her. I fell in love with the smile she gave to the dying flora. I watched them in awe as the gorgeous flowers blossomed. I stared as the grass became greener. I watched the farmers rejoice. They invited me to wine and dine with them.

I looked after the farmers and their families every day. They were content for a very long time, until the inevitable happened. They started dying; both the vegetation and the farmers. The milieu of the ranches worsened. The rapacious monsters became invincible and as a lone wolf, I was powerless. The humans started killing each other. I never understood what taught them the procedures to kill themselves. The humans are indeed ingenious. I tried to stop the lunacy but soon enough their starvation drove them to turn on me. They conceived new ways to kill and cook my companions. I had trusted my farmers, but they betrayed me. They started hunting my kind to satiate their hunger. Moon save us all! There was no hope. I didn’t know their Alpha, but I knew that he was indifferent towards the human affairs. His hackneyed and flamboyant claims were just plain words.

Until she came back that night. She called me a pariah and reprimanded me for running away and hiding like a coward. She said I was a hypocrite for blaming humans. I had abandoned my own family when it needed me.

“But you were gone,” I said feebly. That is when she explained it to me what was happening in her own realm. She explained how they had been fighting for survival. She mentioned that their source of nourishment had been threatened because of the frequent invasions of the nefarious monsters. I was flabbergasted when Hope revealed to me that the humans I venerated were the monsters in question. Here I was, hunting innocent vegetarian fellow beings, thinking they were the fiends destroying the farms. Then she told me about the benevolent humans who deserve to be happy, like my farmers once were.

Hope jeopardises her life for us, for the humans. She never gives up. She brought with her the assured rains and the farmers celebrated again and sang melodies to their effigies. The destitute farmers forgot their vexations and started living in accord with my home, and with theirs. I hope their Alpha learns his lessons and I pray the Moon helps the farmers convalesce from the series of unfortunate events (I think it is a story for human children).

I am no longer a lone wolf. I live with my family and I recurrently visit the humans. I am not as welcoming to them as I once was. They forgot about our alliances and they fear us now, which is fine by us, so long as they don’t start butchering us!

Every night when the moon is full, I howl into the night sky to thank Hope. I was in such a vacuous state when she pulled me out of my obliviousness. My ancestors once heard a human named Winston Churchill say, “If you are going through hell, keep going. Never, never, never give up!”

There is always hope!