Entry #45

Howl
by Nicholas Abbot


They can’t hear me.

I have always been here watching over them, sailing across their night skies, softening their fears, and racing their stars to morning.

I saw them leave the forests, grow strong in numbers. I paled, helpless, as they swarmed over the earth, scratched their little lines on it and killed, and killed, and killed.

I watched in awe as their generations spawned bearers of truth; unable to look away as they cut their prophets down, twisted their words, drew weapons of hate.

And suddenly, knowledge. A moment of glory. They tamed their capricious world.

Then they raped it.

They clawed at the ground, ripped at the green, turned bounty into poison, smoke and fire. A wasteland of destruction. The blink of an eye.

More horror. A white-hot flash. Souls, innocent and broken, soaring past me into the black.

Then, a glimmer. The tickle of their tiny feet on my glowing cheek, and words of hope sent back through the darkness.

But the darkness has won.

They have taken too much, too fast. They stare at me through a torn and bleeding sky, and still their fires burn. I can move their seas with my pull unseen; I cannot move their minds. And they are the only ones.

There is no one else out here in this great emptiness.

So tonight, little wolf, I push through the gathering clouds. I hear you howl your life-lust at me, and I howl too.

I howl.

But they can’t hear me.