Tag: wilderness

Pack moves as one shadow.
Scents write stories in the air.
Silence howls through teeth.

The air bites my nostrils, sharp and clean—a thousand stories carved into ice crystals. I taste the forest before I see it: the musk of a sleeping vole three paw-lengths beneath the snow, the sour tang of last week’s elk carcass rotting under a spruce, the sharp warning of a rival pack’s urine marking the eastern ridge. My world is written in scent, each breath a page turned. 

Snow crunches beneath my paws, a rhythm syncopated with the others. My pack moves as one shadow, our breath pluming silver in the twilight. The moon is a pale smudge behind clouds, but I do not need it. My eyes drink the dark, painting the forest in strokes of indigo and charcoal. The trees are skeletal sentries, their branches clawing at a sky heavy with silence. To you, this would be blindness. To me, it is clarity. 

A whine ripples through the pack—”Young One”, restless, her paws too loud. “Mother” answers with a low chuff, a sound that vibrates in my ribs. We do not waste words. Our voices are layered: the flick of an ear, the tilt of a muzzle, the cadence of our howls that stitch the horizon together. When we sing, the mountains sing back. Distance means nothing. 

Then—”there”. 

A thread of warmth unspools in the cold. Musk. Salt. Fear. It floods my sinuses, vivid as a scream. My mouth waters; my muscles coil. The scent is a map: “hind leg favoring the left… young moose, separated… half a mile north, where the pines thicken”. The pack feels it too. Shoulders tense. Tails lift, quivering. 

“Now”, says the wind. “Now”. 

We move like smoke. Snow muffles our steps, but the prey’s heartbeat thunders in my skull. My vision narrows to nothing but the chase. The forest blurs into streaks of shadow and movement. I taste the moose’s panic now, sour and bright, a spark against the cold. The pack fans out, a crescent moon of teeth and intent. 

“Closer.” 

The world shrinks to the heat of running blood, the sound of crunching snow, the electric tang of “almost”. My legs are fire. My pulse is a drum. 

And then— 

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