Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 56

I spent a lot of time trying to track down the owner of this week's picture prompt. Many people have used it for many things. I keep coming back to the name Luis Serrano, but there is no website that links this name to this picture (just a google plus page with this image on it), and there are several artists with this name, but none with work similar. Shame, I like to always accredit correctly.

Despite this story relating to a particular fairytale, I saw more in the wolf's eye: I saw emotion, and a depth many of us might not consider at a glance. And this is the tale it inspired.


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Cycle of the Wolf

 

He was watching her – keenly. She didn’t notice him - she never did. And he didn’t want her to; if she did all might be lost. He sighed.

He’d keep doing what he was doing: he’d keep following her, tracking her, staying close. And she wouldn’t know, not really. She might sense him – she occasionally turned round and paused, looking behind her as though she had heard something – but she never spotted him. Thank goodness.

What would she do if she saw him? Scream probably, and run back to the village to people and warn them. And then they’d come with pitchforks and torches and he’d have to run for his life. And he didn’t want to do that, he just wanted to stay near her and know she was safe. He didn’t want what happened to him, happening to her.

He could live with his reincarnation. He could handle not being able to speak to her, to take care of her, to be the father he once was, but he couldn’t live with being banished, or worse, strung up and gutted. He’d done it enough times when he’d lived.

The memory now made him shudder. Had they all been like him? Victims? Had they all once been vital men cut down in their prime by a beast, only to end up being that beast? Was it some kind of cycle? Had the beast that had taken him known him in life? Would he eventually take someone he knew?

He could feel his essence changing. He could feel his desires changing. So far he had been able to survive on the small animals he preyed on, but each time he witnessed a gathering of men he salivated and his urge to try and take one down rose.

So he focused on her in her beautiful red-hooded cape that her grandmother had made for her. It kept her visible in the forest and helped ward off the beasts – beasts like him. 

For the moment she was enough. His drive to protect her enabled him to suppress and chastise the cravings. It kept him occupied day to day and helped offset the aching in his heart of no longer being able to hold her and talk to her, and bask in her delight.

And he would keep his distance and remain in the shadows. He dared not think about how trailing her would be construed by others – others like he used to be.