The Wolf
You’re building something no kingdom can measure.
There was, and there was not, a time when the Raven flew into a place where the trees stood thin and weary, and the ground bore the memory of fire. The wind moved strangely there, restless, as if it too had been changed.
That’s where she found the Wolf.
She was lean, grey-muzzled, eyes sharp with exhaustion and fire both. She moved like someone who had been made to stay still for too long. There was no pack in sight, only the quiet shape of her body curled beneath a skeletal pine.
“You’ve come far,” the Wolf said, not rising.
“So have you,” the Raven replied.
The Wolf don’t smile. Wolves didn’t smile. But something about her eyes softened.
“I didn’t choose to come far,” she said. “The world shifted beneath me. The Kingdom changed its rules. The rivers dried, and the paths I once knew became walls. I stayed in place, and the ground moved anyway.”
The Raven nodded. She knew something of that.
“I was part of the forest in the Kingdom once,” the Wolf continued, voice low and rough. “But when everything cracked, when the sickness came and the rhythm changed, I became… inconvenient. I was too much, and not enough. Too slow for their sprint, too loud for their silence.”
Her jaw tightened.
“I kept going. I adapted. I bore down. I learned every new rule they wrote, sometimes after they punished me for not already knowing it.”
The Raven moved closer, settling beside her. “You survived.”
“I did,” the Wolf said. “But not for them. For my pups. I’ve done all of it for them. I swallowed my voice. I buried my hunger. I reshaped myself so many times, I forgot what I used to look like.”
“Do they know what you’ve done?” the Raven asked.
“They know they are warm and fed,” the Wolf replied. “And one day, I hope they know I kept them safe without letting the world devour me.”
The Raven was quiet for a long while.
“You are angry,” she said at last.
“I am,” the Wolf replied. “And I’m tired of pretending not to be. The Kingdom taught me that anger makes me dangerous. But that’s because it wants me tired and tame. My anger is the heat that kept me moving.”
She turned her head to look at the Raven.
“Don’t mistake my scars for regret. I’m still here. I did not disappear. I did not break.”
The Raven nodded again.
“You are not just surviving,” she said softly. “You’re building something no kingdom can measure.”
The Wolf exhaled. It was not quite a sigh. More like the end of a growl that never had to be used.
The sun dipped behind the distant hills, casting the world in gold and charcoal. The Raven and the Wolf sat in silence, two creatures the system could not contain.
One with wings.
One with teeth.
Both with memory.
© 2025 Sarah Dooley. Story and images by the author. All rights reserved.
