Yeti

IT LAYS DEAD BEFORE ME, ITS SKULL CRACKED. The tree bore no injury. Grasping the kill by the neck, I move toward the mountain. Little drops of red fall upon the white, leaving a spotted trail alongside my prints. Not enough to entice a wolf. I will cook calmly and with patience, the hunger is still slight.

The branches I gathered are cool and dry. They will crackle well in the heat of the flames. My leg has become old. It has aged more rapidly than the rest of me. The pain grows stronger, and it is harder to rise after every sleep.

The noise of the wind has softened. I would be set upon by a pack if they knew how little I now hear. But they still fear me. The dead have thought their young to heed their fears. Proving its legitimacy in death. In time these lessons will fade and fail me, too. I once thought only strays are truly brave, a bravery of ignorance – short lived in insolation. Now, alone so long, I know aggression and desperation to be synonymous.

The black swarms the skies earlier now as the seasons drift on. I twist tree at speed in the pit of old ash and bone. Orange sparks escape the heat and flee to my chest. I pat them down, and ease their stress.

I can’t trust the pictures anymore. Places I know, or once knew, have moved. Trails lead to strangeness.  I stay close to the hallow stone. Long journeys following scent are no more. Stains left by mates have dried and left no trace. There is no one else.

The orange has yielded into a steady flow of flame. The heat is ready to change the hare’s lifeless body into food. I pierce it with a heavy stick and mount it over the waiting fire. The smell replenishes a feeling, a faded picture. I follow it in my sleep.

–

I awake to a fragrant scent. Laying still, thinking it a trick of sleep, I wait for it to subside. Unrelenting, the smell, unfamiliar and loud, is one of my kind for certain, and they are close.

The choice to follow the trace was equal parts trepidatious and compelling. White coats the quiet land and the rising wind will soon stifle all scent. Pictures have failed me, or I have them. I will journey blind, but hope lies at its end – not here. Strays die in isolation.

Venturing out into the woods brings anxiousness, as expected, but accompanying this is a sorrowful sense of loss. The place I rest, the abstract delusion of safety, fades, like past pictures, into feelings, alone.

In the distance I see a pack of eight. Thankfully, I am still beyond their line of sight. The wind is soft and aimless, my musk obscured. The scent I trace leads past the wolves. Taking the long way around is too large a risk in losing the scent.

Their fear of me, or who I was once, should be enough to pass without problem. Roaring, I announce my presence. The young scatter about, fleeing to no real distance, more so in play than in terror. The leader rises. Standing firm, I bellow once more before moving in.

Wolves move with a quiet fury. Devoid of malice, their numbers and hunger alone are the weights of their decision. A youth, eager to know and impress, circles my foot. Brushing him away with an undeterred walk beacons the family to size up their chances. One nips at my shin. Kicking out, it whelps in injury, limping back in retreat. The leader shows teeth, assured of my unease and the result of his test. There will be red before silence returns. The pack moves in. Violence is often clouded, but the certainty of its imminency slows and clears my thought. I am calm.

I allow one to gnaw at my bad leg, waiting for the advance of the leader. Pushing another off with my left arm, I grab the neck of the biter with the other, careful not to break him yet, imploring action from the rest. The cub trashes about as I lift him, and hurl him toward the patient alpha. It yelps as it falls and the snarl of its mother echoes in my ear. I feel rage and voice it with such force my eyes go dark. I hear them come. I act toward the leaping growls and crush the body I catch in mid-air. Feet fumble, fall and flee deep into the white. Their leader is dead.

Walking well into the latest hours of the day, the sky darkens. The red of the dead, now cloaked in the night. A brutal wind has come about. I must stay where I sit, unsheltered, huddled by a tall oak tree. The scent is gone.

–

I remain seated in the dawn’s light, lost and willing myself to feel beyond the moment. The waking noises of the forest sooth my dismay, allowing me to rise.  Looking for the straggling birds, still undeterred by the coming season, I wince through the pain of standing. Birdsong breaks the wind’s pounding howl. Their company is dazzling. Pictures come and fade.

It’s been years since I’ve seen another like me. The last mauled my shoulder. Winter causes disharmony with its relentless periods of hunger. He was right to do as he did. I intruded upon his territory. It was a known danger, a calculated risk. But I was more of a coward, and so stronger, then, in the face of death. He acted quickly, seeing the fear in my eye and mistaking it for bravery. I knew his body, his force, his weakness by the scratch he left me. I struck a sharpened stone into the right of his neck. Removing it, he fell, and warm red flowed. I wondered briefly why I felt adverse to tasting his meat and then went.

I returned periodically, and pitied his bones. I entered the hallowed rock he sheltered within, lay out his remains and sat quietly. I slept well there.

My breath ascends and disperses before me as I follow a downward slant of white. I savour the present, for I have feed well. I thank the wolf for that. The hard wind begins to stutter. I feel hopeful that the scent of another will return, knowing I will not be able to rise again once grounded.

–

Confused by the pictures crossing my thoughts, I am uncertain of their truth. Imagined pictures creep in between facts and dilute my certainty of direction and intentions. The scent could have been imagined, too. Sickness breeds failings of the senses. My mother died wandering toward a fictitious flame of her own creation. She sought expectations beyond what should be sought. The weary live longer, the ones who accept their fate.

The scent has returned, strong. I am limping like the cub I hurt, and feel a justice has been served. There is no energy left to quicken my pace. The lack of sleep is lulling me into a sense of indifference.

The scent is now overpowering. The unmoving subject lies in wait. I see a piece of sky amid the white. I am imagining, then, like mother. I must be close to the brink of false assurance, as she was. I ascend upon the sky and feel a substance I could never describe. It tears open and presents a hallowed shelter. A body sits, unaffected  by my arrival. It is cold, stiff, cross legged and dead. It has little hair and a child like physique. Its heart beats no longer. It’s leaf coloured eyes are open. I peer into them. The huddled boy has a soft night-tinted body, textured like the entrance I cut into. The moment is one of clarity. I see another. I see myself. We sit together, rising no more, as the last of the birds fly overhead.