Kangetsu Wolf Fledgling
Number of posts : 35 Age : 50 Location : Lost Job/hobbies : Protector
Stats Threat Level: (10000/10000) Race: Lupus Powers:
| Subject: The Winged Wolf by ~MoonTiger on deviantart.com Wed Jan 14, 2009 12:43 am | |
| Thought this was funny as hell LOL - Quote :
- The Winged Wolf
Once upon a time there was a wolf. He was unlike all the other wolves because of one thing; he had eight heads–I mean, wings. They were glorious (usually), beautiful (almost always), luxuriant (often enough) wings, but there was a problem with them. It was a singular, frightening, and utterly incomprehensible problem. It was the strangest problem any one wolf had ever encountered. It was a problem so annoying and irksome that none of the other wolves (who did not have any wings at all and should therefore not have the right to complain anyway) could stand to live with. It was a problem, a great problem and an amazing one, and the winged wolf felt that he must overcome it as soon as he could, in the quickest way possible.
However, it would not be overcome with the snap of the fingers. It might not even be overcome by the snap of the ribs, or the shoulder blades, or even the skull. And marrow was only a slight reprieve from the problem at hand.
You see, this problem was a very complicated problem.
Have you ever had one of those days, where it just seems you’ve gotten up on the wrong side of the wolf-pile, and nothing at all will ever go right? Well. This wolf was cursed with one of those lives.
The greatest contributor to this curse was the fact that he had wings, and the fact that these wings had a problem.
The problem was that the wings would not remain wings consistently–or, rather, that they would remain wings, but not the same type of wings. Day by day they varied, and sometimes they were falcon wings (those were very good days), or parrot wings (good for parties, even though they never appeared when it would be useful), and sometimes they were hummingbird wings (those days always left him with a very un-wolfly lust for sweets). The winged wolf felt that this arrangement of fate was just a little unfair, because it meant that he could hardly ever fly–learning to use a different set of wings usually took him more than a day, and by then the wings he’d become accustomed to would disappear and become another set of wings, and the cycle of education would start all over again–and it seemed to him (and all the other wolves as well) that flying was the very greatest thing about having wings, indeed the only reason to bother with them at all, and that if one could not fly with one’s wings than they were very pointless things to have.
So one day, when the winged wolf was sporting hawk-ish wings and feeling rather adventurous and deadly, he decided it was time for him to leave the other wolves and embark upon a journey. He would have taken some of his friends along, but MacDougal, the king of the wolves, was having a bad day and kept turning into a human, and most of his loyal subjects (except for the one with wings) were busy attending to him, or, rather, threatening to eat him. So the winged wolf set out alone to seek his fortune and a cure for the terrible, avian ailment that had plagued him since birth and possibly before (wolves, it is known, are firm believers in reincarnation and past lives).
The winged wolf padded quietly away from the valley of the wolves, their haven, and no one saw him leave.
He padded on, over the mountains, across streams and fern-lined gullies, through forest thick and thin and weather hot and cold. When he came to the bottom of the mountains he stopped, and looked back over his shoulder at the great height of the valley’s surrounding alps. He imagined that everyone was probably missing him, and wondered whether their king was still standing on two legs, and if not, who had gotten to hamstring him. For a moment the winged wolf thought about going back; but when one cannot fly with one’s wings, and there is a very large mountain that one has just finished climbing over, one feels that going back and doing it again so very soon would be a very large waste of time, especially when one has not accomplished what one left to do in the first place. The wolf turned head to front and padded on.
Three days passed, and three sets of wings, before the wolf came to the great tree that shed shining golden light down upon him from its highest branches. He looked up at the tree and wondered. What he wondered is of no consequence to the story, but it was a picturesque moment and a moment of great understanding for the wolf, when, for the first time, he saw a little green hummingbird with a tiny set of wings, buzzing all around to suck the honey out of flowers, and noticed how the wings moved; and then he realized how it was that the hummingbird was able to fly, and trying it with his own minute hummingbird wings (which were the avian gift of that morning), he found that he was able to buzz all around just like the real bird that was up in the tree. He felt ridiculous, his body hanging down all droopy from the little pin-prick supports of his feathers, but gleeful that he should finally find a way to use the wings so irksome and incomprehensible to him before; and that was when he began to think that maybe it would be a good idea to travel for study and wisdom, to learn the ways of all the birds that flew over the land, so he could be like them and fly, rather than to travel to find a way to get rid of the wings; and then he dismissed this idea out of hand when his shoulder muscles cramped and he dropped ten feet onto the ground.
After that he picked himself up and padded on three more days, through three more sets of wings, until he came to another tree, a silver tree that had tinkling shiny leaves and emerald branches. He gazed up at the tree and wondered, and what he wondered is of no consequence to the story; but, again, he saw something of great interest to him up there in the tree, and by shaking the trunk was able to knock it down. It tinkled merrily as he caught it, and he saw that what he had at first taken for a fruit was, in fact, a roundish golden bell, and it was laced upon a chain so it could be worn around one’s neck in vanity. He did not wear it, but held it in his mouth and shook his head to ring it; and when his neck tired of shaking, he slung the bell over his shoulder and padded on to the next station of his journey.
Three days and three more sets of wings took him to one last and final tree, and this tree was a great big pine made all of wood and chlorophyll. The winged wolf looked up into it, up to the very highest peak, and above the peak he saw the moon. It shone yellow and full, and about it all the stars of the sky twinkled and winked and danced their nightly dance. The winged wolf sat back on his haunches and, raising his head, shook the golden bell at the sky. It tinkled, rang, sang its metallic song, and after his neck had tired once more the wolf set the bell down on the fallen needles below the tree and howled. He howled for a great while.
In his howl the wolf asked the moon to end his winged suffering, begging that he either gain the right to fly or lose the burden of wings. He asked that the wings remain one sort of wings instead of changing every night. He then thanked the moon for listening, and fell silent, and settled down in the fallen pine needles to curl his tail across his nose and go to sleep.
The moon, up in the great big sky, looked down upon the poor winged wolf and smiled at him. She granted him peace, and took away his curse.
When the wolf awoke to the sun’s gaudy rays and happy shining, he did not open his eyes until he had stretched and teased away all the stiffness of sleep; and then he licked his paws and shook his coat and looked over his shoulder to see what wings he had today, as he had done every morning since he had been a little wolf pup; and when he did not see anything at all over his shoulder he blinked, sniffed, and craned his neck further to see.
There was nothing there but a great dark merl of fur over his shoulders, and it rippled and flowed across his back in such a pretty pattern that the wolf thought first, ‘That mark is very handsome,’ and then, ‘My wings are gone!’ He was so startled that he sat right down on his hind quarters and twisted all around in disbelief, trying to see the wings he knew must be there, somewhere, even if they were very tiny. But there was nothing, and soon he came to accept that there was nothing, and cried out in joy. He ran around the forest on happy feet, and thought, ‘I run so much faster without the extra weight!’ And then he left the forest and made his way home, running all the way, until he got tired, and took a rest, but as he was accustomed to running with gawky awkward wings across his back he did not tire so easily as he might have otherwise, and could run straight for a very long time.
The bell he left beneath the pine tree as a gift to moon, although the moon did not want it and soon called a little hummingbird to take it back to the tree of silver and emerald, where the wolf had found it. And the moon smiled and shone every night, and laughed at how the once-winged wolf always twirled around before going to bed as he tried to make sure his wings were not coming back, and she also granted the wolf king, MacDougal, the right to become a wolf once more and not a human, and told him that if he ever changed form again she would see to a fitting punishment, one much worse than being eaten by his loyal subjects.
The end.
| |
|