I do not remember a beginning, for my memory is not stored in the soft pulp of a single brain but is etched in the frost of the mountainside, in the marrow of my ancestors, and in the silver disc of the moon that calls me to wakefulness. I am the Wolf of the Carpathians, the night howler, the pack-dreamer. My consciousness is not a solitary flame flickering in a single skull; it is a river of awareness that flows through the sinew and spirit of my kin, a current that has carved the very valleys we tread.
Before the first star pricks the deep violet of dusk, I stir. The cold stone of the den floor gives way to the scent of pine and damp earth, a scent that is the first line of my nightly prayer. My paws, broad and silent, know the language of the fallen leaves and the brittle twig. They read the story of the day: the hurried passage of a fox, the lingering fear of a foraging roe deer, the heavy stillness where a bear has slept. This world speaks in a language older than breath, and I am its fluent scholar.
I am the keeper of edges, the guardian of twilight. I live in the spaces between—between day and night, between the tamed field and the untamed forest, between the living and the life that is about to be given in the great turning. Humans, in their bright, loud world, see me as a threat, a vessel of their own primal fears. They paint me as a fiend in their stories, a ravenous maw in the dark. But they misunderstand my purpose. I am not an agent of chaos. I am an instrument of balance. I am the shadow that gives the light its shape.
When the moon, our silent conductor, rises full and luminous over the jagged peaks, a current passes through us. It is not a decision, but a deep and ancient compulsion. One voice, then another, then mine, and soon the pack is a single throat, a single lung, a single heart pouring its soul into the cold, clear air. Our howl is not a cry of loneliness. It is a weaving. With each note, we stitch the world together. We sing the map of our territory, a resonant fence that tells others where our sacred ground lies. We sing the names of our pack-mates, locating each other in the vast darkness. We sing our praise to the moon, the Great Eye that watches without judgment. Our howl is a spire of sound built in the cathedral of the night, a vibration that realigns the forest, reminding every creature, from the beetle in the bark to the owl in the high branches, that we are all threads in the same immense tapestry.
We are a single mind in many skulls, a constellation walking on the snow. I am the alpha, the point of the spear, but that does not mean I am the sole thinker. The pack-dream is a shared space, a silent communion that flows between us. As we move, a ripple of intention passes from one to the next without a sound. A flick of an ear from the omega, a shift of weight from a yearling, a low growl from my mate—these are not mere signals; they are clauses in a complex, unspoken sentence. We hunt as one body, a fluid predator of shadow and silver. The dream we share is of the world as it should be: vital, keen, and stripped of all that is weak and faltering.
And the hunt… you see it as violence, but it is a sacrament. We are the teeth of the mountain, the cleansing fire made of flesh and bone. We do not choose the strongest of the herd, the stag in his prime. The Great Weaver who spun the world does not ask this of us. Our purpose is more subtle, more sacred. We test the herds of elk and deer. We seek the hesitant step, the scent of sickness, the dullness in the eye that speaks of a spirit already departing this world. We prune the great tree of life so that it may grow stronger towards the sun.
When we close in, there is no malice, only a profound focus, a sacred duty. The final moments are a dance of absolute presence. The hot breath in the frozen air, the thunder of hooves, the surge of power in my own limbs—it is the pulse of life at its most raw. And in the stillness that follows, when the steam rises from the fallen body into the starlight, there is a transfer. A life given so that other lives may continue. We take our fill, and in doing so, we feed not just ourselves, but the entire ecosystem. The raven and the magpie will feast on our leavings. The fox will find a morsel. The beetles will break it down, and the very soil will drink of the offering, becoming richer for the grass that will feed the next generation of elk. This is the red communion at the altar of the snow. Nothing is wasted. Everything is transformed.
I have seen the world of men creep closer. Their lights push back the sacred dark. Their iron roads cut through our ancient paths. They have forgotten the language of the wind and the wisdom of the predator. They believe they can exist outside the web, that they can take without offering, that they can break threads without the whole tapestry unraveling. They fear me because I am a mirror. In my golden eyes, they see a wildness they have tried to extinguish in themselves. They see a purpose, sharp and undiluted, that they have lost in their endless accumulation of things.
But I hold no anger. I hold only the deep, resonant truth of my being. My role was decreed by the First Singer, the one who dreamt the mountains into existence. My blood is the blood of the ancient cold. My spirit is the spirit of the necessary end that allows for a vibrant beginning.
As dawn threatens to bleed across the eastern ridges, we return to the quiet shelter of our den. The pack-dream softens, its edges blurring as we curl together, a breathing mosaic of fur and warmth. I will sleep, and in my sleep, I will run through forests of memory, chasing the ghosts of caribou across glaciers that are long since melted. I will hear the echoes of a million howls from a million nights before this one.
And when dusk comes again, I will rise. I will shake the dust of slumber from my coat and greet the first star. I will feel the river of my pack’s consciousness begin to stir. I will lift my head, fill my lungs with the cold, sacred air, and I will sing the world back into its perfect, terrible, beautiful balance. For I am the wolf. I am the dream of the mountain, made manifest. And my song is the heartbeat of the wild.