Snow falls, stretching vast and far. Many great forests drown in numbers. A white ocean wasteland crashing upon the dune alpine mountain. The last remaining spruce bare their frozen needles. Flowers, bushes, and frozen lakes and rivers turn pale at the sight of impending grays among the white swirling blizzard. A giant whale toppling heaven reaching clouds against the ground.
Mountain squirrels squirm for high ground. Egrets and minuscule birds chirp their final warnings only to be blown away by roaring winds. Branches break and scatter on the wet loam. Soils that have been moist for nearly a century will finally become one with the frozen wasteland. Among the animals who heard the birds is a black wolf, emerging out of his den in the roots of cold spruce.
It stretches damp fur and yawns out its brief breath of warmth. The sun is white, and light in these hours can never warm a slate. Hm? It wonders on the colorless horizon blending in the darkness of a giant creature. Swishing its flippers to hover on the snowy wasteland. It’s swimming in the great mountain.
A mountain that reaches beyond the heavens and eclipses the sun on every first light.
The black wolf howls, hoping for another to howl back. But alas, how long must he have slept for him to be the only one. Four long years of being lost in the alps since he was a pup, only a year after, it finds its kin frozen in the snow. He slumbered, and now two years later, he awaits his last sight of flakes.
OWOOOO//
Another wolf’s howl?
OWOOOO// OWOOOO//
More responds, breaching through dense winds for the black wolf to locate where it’s coming from. Impotent left eye and right frontal leg impairs his ability to run through the thick coursing roots and broken branches. Nevertheless, he limps and leaps across a ravine-like a true black wolf of the great mountain. The first moment after calming his mists coming out from his nose is the sight of a white wolf pack.
A sight of another wolf after days of lone hunting and slumber. The black wolf perks his ears and sharpens his blue eyes. He stretches out his broken paw and rests on the snow. His other legs are on the mountain’s loam. Unseeable snowflakes showers before exchanging glances. These may be the flakes the black wolf has awaited to witness. These white wolves…are blood-hungry ferals.
Bloodied frozen fur around their deadly mandibles. Their black claws seeping into the snow–Hunters of the Whiteout. But instead of fleeing back into the mountain’s unruly and stoic footing, the black wolf cautiously takes steps forward. A mixture of fear in his eyes yet saturated with a smile of rustic fangs.
Five wolves with their fur puffed and bulked up surround the black wolf. They crave for the flesh of everything living in the Whiteout, especially towards their own kin. “Killing him will be mine.” A wolf growls,
But one bark, and another howl among the disagreement. “One will be alpha today” growls a wolf, her fur imparting gently against the rough winds as she scratches the snow. An act of courtship that the black wolf recognizes. The male wolves surrounding him suddenly lower their heads while glaring up with their bloodshot irises. “The alphess is mine.”
Another act that the black wolf recognizes. To which he too does the same, but instead of showing off his mandibles, he closes his eyes, unnaturally arching his back and belly against the snow before bellowing out a howl at the heavens. A handsome howl where the alphess smiles and the winds breezing in the blizzard.
Their instincts kick the white wolves to leap for the flesh. While the black one controls his boiling battle-ready blood to drift his fur as soft as the snow, but turn his claws as cold as ice.
One of the white wolves falls and yelps before the black one. The black one’s pointed bullet claw in the wolf’s neck. Tradition tells in his memory, that for every alpha you defeated, hunger for another’s flesh, thirst for their blood of pride. The 4 white alphas stand motionless as the paling blood and freezing kin will be forever encased in ice. Why? They must be wondering.
The act of disrespect causes one of the white to strike from the black one’s behind and grabs his neck in its mouth. The tradition of battle tells another memory, pups in their necks of another must surrender. Giving up the pride that values more for the wolves. But for the black one, pride is what kills a pup. In a sudden instant, a white flash of light blinds their eyes. Yet only the white wolf who had the black one’s neck stands frozen, encased in ice.
Life matters more in the calamity of darkness
The black one cannot explain his spark to live on and watch flakes grow into snowflakes.
“Fool!” A white wolf utters, “He did not listen.”
The dangers of the Whiteout is real
Now the white wolves question themselves whether to kill the black wolf or leave him alone. One of the white alphess decides to run for the mountain. A hare notices the running danger and it quickly hides in the frozen bushes’ needles. Before the white alphess can dig her teeth into the hare, one of the white alphas charges his head against the alphess’s side. The two square a fight, one emerging victorious after forcing the alphess to surrender.
The blizzard swirls deadly. White pups hide under their mother's fur as the other alphas stand growling at the black one.
Time is of the essence
"With no eye, and a broken foot. I am an abomination” the black lone wolf stated to the white wolves as he stood proud and claimed his victory. His active eyes cannoned the pack and the darkness looming behind them.
"A blind and a limped wolf! You may be strong but you won’t be alive to be back for your pack!" The white wolves concurred to one another, speaking foul words that could never be heard clearly by the black wolf. The snow has drowned their voices. Only the black wolf’s voice prevails the noise and eases an alphess’s heart.
“I have no pack! I am alone and seek not a refuge, but a safe haven!”
“Lies!” An alphess growls, “You just want to become the main father of the pack. The alpha among the alphas! That’s what you all males want!”
“I don’t need you to submit for me, nor do I want you to follow me. What I say is true and act is genuine.” The black wolf gestures his head to look at the towering spire of the great mountain. A spire that pierced through the blizzard’s clouds. “Safe haven awaits above the land, safe from the Whiteout.”
A white alpha replies, “So what!? We only want to kill, hunt, and feed. Our generations will grow if we keep doing this! There is enough food for all the hunters in the whiteout. Besides, the Bhealyun can just flatten that mountain like any other land!”
“The spire is the sword of the land. It pierced the gods’ land long before they could release the Bhealyun. The whale does not know what to do with it as the clouds cannot reach the land above.”
“The land above? What nonsense are you babbling?”
“I have been to those lands. An island above the spire. It is like a flower sculpted by the land’s entities, ever-blooming high beyond any God’s reach. If you stay where you are in the snow then your pups will hunger. The spire welcomes all life who wish to retreat before the whiteout many grow and live an ever bountiful harvest by the entities themselves.”
“The entities…how have I long forgotten that word.” The alphess to which the black one is interested takes a step closer to him. “You seem to have knowledge of the old.”
“My ancestors have told me these tales.”
“And I’m sure you have more to tell”
A white alpha barks, “Alphess! Where do you think you are standing!”
“I stand where I can nurture my life and future pups! That is, together with this black one”
The brief spark of hope to live that the black one had felt earlier. He realizes the feelings of the alphess.
Some of the alphess and male wolves step out of the snow and onto the mountain’s muddy wet pale loam. “Where we must hunt must be in a bountiful land. Hunting for months on empty snow will only kill us.” one wolf beckons to their alphas, “It is time to find the light.”
“We lived most of our lives with the Bhaelyun! Us white wolves live in the snow!”
“But I’m sure that our furs will gloss brighter than snow with the light. Besides, my generation and my pups do not live in your generation with the Bhaelyun. We can just go and leave you behind.”
“You are not going.” The alpha growls,
Blizzard shifting the skies black. But the mountain’s boundaries fight off the storm and create distinct soils between natural loam and snow. Two of the male alphas eventually surrender with their heads down to join the black one. But the last one stands alone in the storm.
A pup emerges out of her mother’s fur and barks at the white alpha.
“Your daughter. Are you leaving us behind?” An alphess asks,
The alpha stands still, silent in the blizzard. “I will not go.” His head high and bloodied eyes burning ember red. He turns his back on his daughter and walks for the echoes of the Bhaelyun’s. The alpha runs, sprints, and leaps into the darkness until the snow blurs his fur black.
A year later after the Whiteout, the black one’s fur was shaded to a lighter value. In the warming light of sunrise, his fur turns white and the blood of their hunt is as rich as the colors of plump strawberries. He looks down at the blank white land and onto the distant far mountains where the clouds have gathered in darkness. He senses the presence of the Bhaelyun, and a faint lingering one of the once white wolf now black and alone.
How happy must the black one feel, although he never is. He knows the pain all too well, he knows the memories all too much. All because he is an ancestral wolf.
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