When The Wolf Spoke :Prologue

An organic star ship pulsated with life, its re-entry through the thin veil of the planet’s atmosphere, ignited white hot. It’s tendrils writhed, groaning loudly as if the ship itself was in deep pain. It’s outer layer covered with thick mucus, the once wet surface sizzling under the high intensity. It shot down like a comet towards a magnificent terrestrial planet, joining the other raining array of color. This existence is a sacred cosmic dance, a dance with splendor and chaos shrouding it’s empty core. From the darkness— it’s destruction, begins creation anew: rebirth of recycled energy, where realms of consciousness and planes of reality converge into a single fragile harmony. It’s fragments warping time, and by the vastness of space, linger within bodies of burning gas scattered across the infinite night sky, seen from the surface of a beautifully rich planet called Gaia. As Mortals would one day call it Earth.. This was a particular time before humanity fully claimed dominion over ancient soil. A sacred balance existing between nature and unseen forces.

Tonight, beneath a shower of stars—A singular thread from Urðr entwines two beings from opposite ends of the cosmos. Among the radiant streaks, the star ship shines bright— before crashing only a few feet away from the last standing tribe of the Eldr-blóð, during a brutal Siberian winter. There, pulsing and writhing from the impact, its large tentacles twitch sporadically, a giant pod of unearthly flesh steaming against the glittering snow.

From a short distance away, a young woman—tall and slender, long braided raven hair, her body adorned with the wolf pelts of her fallen tribe—bore witness to what she believed to be a sign from Hlýrnir. The sky had burned too brightly for coincidence in her time of need. Awestruck, the woman followed the remnants of light towards the fallen star’s resting place. Among the Volkolak people, lights that fell from the night sky were never a random event—they were divine gifts from the heavens, omens cast down by powers older than flesh. It was the very miracle the young woman desperately sought for. She approached the star ship, her instincts—those of the wolf—flared hot and protective in her veins. A soft gasp escaped her lips, her amber eyes widened as she gazed upon the unholy sight. A massive fleshy pod, twitching and breathing as if it were alive, fresh slime oozing from its surface replacing what had hissed and sizzled its way down into the snow. It’s slime inking from its pores and wrinkled flesh— her hackles rose, suppressing a gag from the smell of burnt flesh. The smell bringing her back to the moment before the raging fire. Then to the moment after, hours ago when she fled with the rest of her pack to safety further up their mountain home. She wiped a tear away, steeling herself to the current moment. This wasn’t the time to think about the dead, so she pushed the thought down. She didn’t have time to grieve her Màma, Faðir, Sapo or anyone. “Focus on yourself, Manya” a voice called out to her. She shut her eyes, only for a second to blink away memories.

She gasped again in surprise when her eyes opened to see the repulsive wrinkles of flesh begin to squirm, her mind now raced with sick fascination. Her tail flicked in a short wired tension. Curiosity has the strangest way of overpowering one’s better judgment, for her especially was ingrained in her very nature. Her large furry ears flattened against her skull. She stepped forward, lifting a hand toward the steaming, oozing surface——it began to split open. She froze. The wolf within her screamed to flee, but instead she faced the unknown with every nerve in a frenzy. The wolf- woman lifted her nose a little, taking in the anything that may indicate what she was dealing with. A strong scent of burnt flesh and a faint trace of decaying organic matter, like a plant she had yet to identify. Huh? Was this a star she heard so much about? A blessing from the heavens? What was this monstrosity that laid before Manya..

Crack. Crack. Shhhhh.

The pod torn, spread open like a maw through strains of thin flesh, exposing a blank core which bled into reality. Darkness spilled outward—not empty, but measuring. Creeping like branches of a mighty Oak tree. A strong presence stood within that infinite abyss. There was a Heaviness that shot a sharp tingle up her spine, forcing her to straighten into a halt. Her dense bushy tail poof out slightly as it slowed to a stop. She should have ran that night, but despite every ancient instinct, she remained—facing a fear she never knew could possess her.Something moved. Eerily lurking within. What stepped forth, born by living breath of the stars themselves, was an ethereal being, peering.. The shadows warp, bent and shivered, illuminating impossible cosmic light that Manya could not comprehend. Deep within the blackness lurked ancient intent of uncanny emerald eyes— slowly in a glowing hypnotic stare, it open. She stood mesmerized, and unaware of a creeping miasma at her bare feet, gliding against the shimmering snow, dancing and swirling up her legs. Her ears flick and twisted to every faint susurrus of sound and voice. Only then, did its pair of fangs appear with a deliberate curl that fashioned into a Cheshire smile. In that moment, wyrd was set in stone.

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Snow whispered as it fell, a hush that seemed to swallow even the grief clinging to Manya’s chest. She sat close to the fire, its weak orange glow fighting back the endless blue of the Siberian night, flickering against the hollow cave they hunkered down in. Shadows stretched long and strange along the jagged walls, twisting smoke into faces, half-remembered by time. The small child curled in her lap, tangled raven hair mimicked the same threads of smoke she inherited from her mother. Small fingers curls in the edge of Manya’s fur cloak. Tira was only three months old, equivalent to a two year old human child. She was old enough to remember the laughter around the fire, though young enough that those memories already frayed at the edges. She sometimes asked where the voices had gone…why the drum-beats no longer echoed in the caves, why the men who smelled of wild pine, sweet metallic and wolf musk never returned. Manya never answered fully. Some truths were rapacious creatures, stalking too close to a child’s dreams. Manya’s eyes locked on the fire’s glow against the cave wall, her mind drifted to the flames that had swallowed her tribe—thought to be by human hands. The smoke coiling before disappearing into the night sky like the paws of ancestral spirits clawing for release. She remembered leading the last of her people further up their mountain home, up to the jagged Koryak peaks for safety, hearts heavy with loss. Only, months later witnessing the final slaughter—the last of her kin ripped from life by a hunter who sought not them, but her child. Since then, she had fled back down the other side of the mountain range—child in hand; leaving her territory, leaving the echoes of her tribe behind… until a blizzard had caught and forced them into this cave. The wind hushed at first, began as if a vengeful spirit howled its sorrowful song deafening with vengeful grief.

Two massive wolves lingered at the cave’s entrance, their eyes glowing faintly in the firelight, silent sentinels watching the raging flurry of snow. The child’s ears folded against her head with a barely audio-able whimper.

“Shh.. Tira, sleep.” Instead of dwelling on the grief, Manya pressed her cheek to Tira’s hair and softly hummed. Hummed the Songs of the first wolves —Eldr-beast, who had walked out of the ice in Scandinavian lands—of Gods who bound flesh and spirit together. Manya had always sang to Tira every night, to remind her of the deep rooted pride they have as a people, as a tribe. Her hums grew into quiet singing, her bushy tail swayed against the ground as if it was a metronome keeping rhythm. The words told were ancient, in a dying Ainu dialect, a deep-throat-ed rhythm that made the fire lean and sway. Tira listened, her eyes heavy with dreamy fragments of stories old and new: wolves running across frozen seas, a mother carrying her child through storms, and of emerald eyes lurking in the dark.

“Màma,” Tira whispered, voice tugged by drowsiness, “are the hunters close?”

Manya stilled. Her daughter’s fingers tightened on the cloak in response to her sudden stillness. She wanted to say no— to tell her daughter the truth— That it wasn’t humans who hunted them but a hunter. A hunter who was nothing more than a passing dream, But the koshak’s shadow stretched across worlds, patient as frost and just beyond the snow.

“No, Dochen’ka,” Manya sucked in a subtle breath, hoping not to give her daughter more than she could handle, and murmured at last, soft but firm, as if saying it could bind the truth. “…Not while I still breathe.”

The fire cracked. Outside, the snow fell heavier, blanketing the earth in silence, the wind wailing loudly as if spirits of her tribe were calling out from their graves. A sharp shrill occasionally piercing their ears, reminding Manya of her Nanna anytime she screamed in displeasure. Manya lifted her hetero-chromatic gaze to the horizon, where the stars shimmered through the flurry of snow like tiny shards of ice, delicate and beautiful. Soon she would have to take Tira away, far from their native land in Siberia, far from the ashes of their tribe—even further from the remnants of their primal ancestry. A fools promise, clinging to a hope that they could run from the cosmic colors and fervorous whispers that Manya often experienced in varies ways. Mountains from somewhere far ghosted her heart like a light brush of ink on a birch bark manuscript, calling her to where wolf-spirits still walked in secret. The name of this place, she does not know. What she was certain of was her visions have been growing stronger and ever so vivid, fragments of dreams bleeding into reality. Her waking moments caught in the cross hairs of a mental war. Visions leading her further south bound away from her once beloved home. Far, far South to massive body of crashing water. Safety. For now, she held her daughter close, her voice a steady murmur against the howl of the storm outside. At the cave’s mouth, two pair of eyes glimmered, unmoving, unblinking, shadows folding into itself—silent sentinels of the threshold, against a cold veil between current safety and the wilderness. Even in their watchfulness, they were a posted warning: the world beyond never slept, and no refuge was absolute, even if the night carried the scent of something hunting, waiting, just beyond the snow.

Manya held her daughter until small fingers unfurled from her cloak and little eyes fluttered shut. She gently lifted Tira up, gentle not to startle, as she placed her small body on a bed of soft fur pelts. She sat there for a moment until her child rolled over comfortably asleep, then with a slow stretch, she stood up carefully. Her body exhausted from travel and sick from tremors. She walked over to a small reindeer hide sack that had been propped against some stone—opened it up and searched through it. She needed to find her medicine that soothed that searing, gnawing pain—that calmed those hollowed voices bellowing in her mind’s eye. At last she found a tied loose roll of hide cut from the left over material of the sack. Various dried herbs & other small medicinal items were often stored within. Carefully, she untied it, rolling it open on a flat surface to reveal its contents. There were many sizes of different leaves and one small measly mushroom.. the last of what she was able to scrounge up when she last foraged. The usual winter storms were always extreme, but, had been particularly harsh this year. It was even harder for Manya to find what they needed to survive. What she personally needed to survive.

“Føkk..” she whispered, disappointment thicken in the air. She picked the singular dried mushroom, the moonlight catching enough of its surface for a glimpse of a brilliant crimson cap, adorned with round white patches. She placed it on her tongue as she sat back on her rear, crossing her legs, and began rolling the hide up with a tight tie before placing it back into the sack. She sucked on the mushroom for a moment before chewing it between her back molars. She savored the savory nut flavor. Savored not the taste but how it’ll feel when relaxation washes over her fried nerves like every other time. Savored the firm meaty texture before she swallowed. It would take a few minutes before the affects begin to show. So she took a moment to relax on her back against the wall. Manya glanced over at the sleeping child, a soft fleeing smile lifted the corner of her lips. Manya had to survive this condition….for her. For Tira. If she couldn’t save her child, then what was the slaughter of her people all for? The rampaging fires… The koshak and the all the pain she endured when she was pregnant…No. Stop. Relax. Manya took a deep breath, calming those dangerous thoughts. She couldn’t afford screwing her medication up by having a bad trip. She took another deep breath. Slower this time. Each breath a better thought, a small reminisce of home.

“What did my Faðir say to me when I was anxious? Oh… yeah. Heh.” She chuckled softly to herself.

“The Great Loki once said, We have a saying in Asgard, “Where there are wolf’s ears, wolf’s teeth are near.” It means to be aware of your surroundings, Manya.” She mimicked his voice but couldn’t quite capture the gruffness. The same gruffness that carried the weight of a thousand lifetimes worth of battle. That particular night his tone lifted softly as he spoke, a toothy smile following suit, “Do not allow your mind to become restless, or it will end with tragedy. A calm mind is sharper than the finest blade, or rather the mightiest of claws.” He chuckled, patting my head with a gentle care despite his rough callous hand ruffling Manya’s freshly braided hair that Màma had just fix from the previous time it was out of place. The She-wolf’s voice carried across the cave in her usual mock annoyance. “Nispa! Watch the hair! Gods be damned, if her ceremony is jinxed by all that crooked Loki nonsense… I will not have childish Norse chaos around my daughter.” She never was truly angry, despite her stern tone.

Manya wiped a tear from her eye, happy tears this time. Màma was always so fierce, she thought, especially when it came to such an ornery person like her father. She thought about how her mother was so gifted when it came to plants. She always knew how to fix or mend the spirit and mind with nature’s most grounding plant or rather fungi in Manya’s case. Little Manya was anxious that night before her ceremony. Anxious about what, she couldn’t remember. All she could recall was the savory tea Màma had made her and the firm chew of a fresh red cap. “Hm..” Manya lowered herself onto the frozen ground, not bothering to get herself comfortable on the bed next to her daughter. She laid on her back, closing her eyes, feeling a gentle creeping sensation throughout her body A slow comforting warmth, a mediation, drifting her mind into something beyond herself….There it is..she took another deep breath. “Okay, Manya.. ”

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If you like what you read please continue here and read the 9th chapter on my website! Thank you for the support!

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Book blurb below👇🏽✨
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“When the wolf spoke… his voice shook the night sky.”

That voice belongs, once, to a dying world. Manya is the last of a Norse-bred Volkolak tribe driven east into Siberia, carrying in her blood the memories of a homeland and the weight of a vanished people. At her side are Storm and Shadow—two ancient dire wolves, white and black, living echoes of Sköll and Hati whose presence is the only unbroken thread to the old rites. They have chased the sky in legend; now they chase survival at Manya’s heels.

She flees fire and human cruelty, seduced and betrayed by a feline stranger from beyond the stars whose experiments scar her body and twist her child. The daughter, Tira, is born at the ragged edge of two worlds—wolf and alien, myth and mutation—and the wolves bind themselves anew to protect her. “Plumes of clouds danced and swirled as he howled into the void.” In every howl, the past answers; in every silence, the future waits.

Tira must learn the old pack’s discipline and the ruthlessness seeded into her bones. Storm teaches restraint and the slow gravity of protection; Shadow teaches the clean, terrible necessity of the strike. Between them she inherits more than guardianship—she inherits an ancestral inheritance: the last living myth, carried into a world that would rather name it monster than savior. “And when the wolf spoke.. the stars bowed.” The celestial chase is not only story but omen: as darkness gathers, the old songs begin to stir, and eclipse-shadows fall across both sky and conscience.

When the Wolf Spoke is a tale of a mother willing to sacrifice and do what is necessary for survival.. protective of a child who needs taught how to breathe life into a dying myth. It asks: when the last of a people becomes a story, who keeps the story true—and at what price?

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My story was inspired by my original poem: When the Wolf Spoke