Wolves Run and the Red Flower

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by dfeyder

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The Story Teller

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Corn has sat up and is scratching at her wounds the color melting form her fur as she does. Jessica nearly stomps into the room and pushes her over “By Goodness’ child you will be the death of yourself like that.”
“It hurts...” Corn explains
“…and what will Onion say when I have to tell him his father was eaten by a cat and mother by a bird.” Furiously Jessica picks up a fist full of flowers and drops them into a cup of water then dips in some fruit skins. “if you won’t sleep on your own I will just have to make you.”
“this is just like back when I was a dumpling isn’t it?.”
“You were easy to deal with when you were small like a pinecone.”
“How are the children?”
“Relatively mild, Pepper has Daggers for me I feel and Salt might be the reincarnation of her father, and yes, they found my study. Mint sniffed it out.” Jessica hands over the potion. “Drink this. Unless you’re a dragon you will be asleep before you reach the bottom of the cup.”
“Thank you.” Corn takes the brow and sips at it. “so long as I’m acting like a yearling again, do you remember that story about flowers?”
Jessica lifts her head and rolls her eyes back thinking “Wolves Run. I had to write that one down ages ago. I nearly forgot it.”
“My brother loved that story as did I back when...” Corn starts to look tranquil.
“Then I will tell it one more time.”
`** *
It’s like the sun will never rise again. The sky is blackened by a cloud of despair left behind by greedy men. I have ran for days nonstop over this wasteland of ice. Not once have I seen the blue skies that my mother would speak of, not once have I seen green grass. For twenty sessions there has been only blackness and ice. Myself like my sisters and brothers run across ‘the one world’ looking desperately for heaven.
“What is heaven?” I think it is a grassy noel filled to the apex with flowers of myriad colors that I have never seen, were the moon glows bright and food runs on all fours, and I am the object of women’s affection. But this is only fantasy, there is no heaven.
“If you believe that then why do you hurry so?” Because what else is there to live for? I can smell a sweet sent somewhere in the distance. It’s no rabbit, I’ve smelt rabbits before, it not a girl… or maybe it is?! I’ve not seen another wolf since leaving my home.
I come across a place that is strange, the ruins of a Huma land. There they are. the men that thought themselves greater than the gods, turned to stone by their vanity. Earth gave men favor. Earth loved man more than ‘her’ other children. ‘She’ made them tall and strong, gave them ‘the Red Flowers,’ but they had forsaken ‘her.’ They used the ‘Red Flower’ to summon death; not to hunt, or to protect their young, only to prove that they were great.
“Were they great?” To glance upon the mammoths that heeded the call of man? I can only imagine the glory that men must have wielded. Men need not hide in caves, they thrust their eyes into the sky and caves would form before them: Forty bodies wide and a hundred tall. Men feared not cold, for the ‘Red Flower’ protects them. Beasts lined up before men and offered themselves as sacrifice to feed their hunger. Even wolves bent their knees to them.
“Wolves like me?” No not like me, the wolves that kneeled were small and meek. They struck deals with men. Men would not eat wolves, and wolves would bring men gifts. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea at the time.
I find a dead turtle. Its skin looks like stone, its feet are as wide as my body and six time’s larger. Its head is lost somewhere within its shell. “What power did men have over the turtle?” The turtle is far from man’s only love. The empty husk of a bird lies near, holding an egg in both wings.
I find that I can’t help but wonder about the world that man lived in. The power to bend the world that man has was without equal. With birds, turtles, fowl, and even with wolves on their side, what could have convinced them to fight the way they did?
The way it is told. The way men fight is not like the way dogs fight. It is not fast and it is not noble. But it is indeed sophisticated. Huma have only one claw, and they never fight with their teeth. Their one claw is nimble, but why get your paws dirty when you could call on the ‘Red flower’?
“What is the ‘Red Flower’ anyway?” It is a strange and magical thing that takes many shapes. In the early days, the ‘Red Flower’ could not be tamed. It grew everywhere. Out of control, it would choke out all life and grow so large as to kill trees leaving only blackness after eating everything it could find. Men were creative, they found ways to shape the flower and commanded it to grow only were they would choose: First with bottles where from they would set it free, then sticks, and at last within strange eggs.
Placing the red flower within an egg was amongst the last great evils men would perform. Some think that the mighty egg hatched and form it sprung a flower so large that the earth could only feed it for but a moment. But in that moment the flower grow so large and so beautiful that it took light form the sun so greedily that the sky turned black as did the ground for so far as any beast could see, then came the healing ice.
From the dying earth two alpha men stood. Dressed in the skins of their dead they charged each other letting howl an evil rage and with their last breaths called for the flower one last time. With the last of the alpha men, man’s last hunters die, and the ‘red flower’ returns to its rightful places within Earth.
I feel it is best to leave this dire place to rest. Nothing lives here today and perhaps nothing ever should again. I must continue my search for heaven. Yet another week will pass, and I shall run tireless…
…For the first time my paws find soft soil. I scrape my feet harshly to the ground. Beneath the ice and snow I find green earth and a long stemmed flower with long blue petals. I lay my snout against it and inhale the sweetest air I have ever tasted. Maybe there is a heaven after all...
I will run! I will run day and night! I will find Heaven! I WILL find greener fields! I will die on a bed of flowers. I can do nothing less. The sky in the distances burns yellow, a color I have only dreamt of till today. Heaven is in the north. I’m getting closer.
Paw prints stain the thinning snow. I smell flowers just over the mountain, just out of my reach. I dream a loving dream, I can see myself chasing beast of all types, I can see the bed of flowers that is my reword for the unending hunt, and I can almost see the woman that will be my last adventure. I can’t help but think what if my sisters and I are the last wolves on earth? Would the journey still have been worth it? Yes, it would have been, is, and now I see why, on the other side of the mountain is the beginning and the end, the flowery field on the other side is the sum of all life. We are all here for one purpose. Too start again!

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