Not a living thing on the prairie notices her last breath leave her. The grass ripples, heat twists the air above the dirt, flies lift and settle.
A mile away or a hundred, thunder calls.
Lightning cracks the bones of the sky and thunder rolls out like marrow.
The Hunt rides.
The Hunt, like the great sky, is always, was always riding. And tonight, on this stretch of prairie, it was always riding for her.
The first sign: no mere clouds dark the horizon. Shadows in the high: wolf-grey, hound-black, muzzle, maw, jaw and claw, and tails touch the vault.
Paw-beat seismic, drums of no earth-bodies these. Drums a-thrum of something running the ridge-line skyline, seam between worlds.
The hounds come first, as in the deep always, pouring from wounded clouds like a tide of blood, breaking crashing wave of blood, scent of iron, scent of blood, teeth-glint bright in lightning-strike, such old, such ancient terror finds the spine.
Were they dogs once?
Some.
Not all.
Born of wind-bitten hills, or first-thunder, or the instant prey-hearts see their end won't be out-paced and yet keep pace, make chase. Born some of mortal creatures dying breaths— teeth still clenched around purpose.
No matter births or deaths with the endless, high, joyful, terrible Hunt to bind them. No matter in the forever-now deep always of the running Hunt.
They circle her, noses low against the shape of her.
Here now comes the rider— shifting, antler-crowned or wing-helmed cut from sea-sky dark and flash-eyed laughing shrieking fury-cries. God to men somewhere but here of pack, of Hunt to play his part.
A mountain breaks, the Hunt bays. The howl, full-throat bark moves the rider's arm and rod-spear, sceptre-sword raises, scrapes the vault and, sparking down, the lightning in a scorched instant takes a broken thing and leaves a black crater in the grass.
The great sky opens for her like a road.
She rises.
I did not bend.
I starved waiting on the porch.
I kept my vow.
I was pack when pack was me only.
I held fast in a cellar, once, small fingers steadied in my hackles.
Towering unbroken now, wind-breath and star-eyed, far-sight she sees.
Wagon. Wheels turn, uncaring.
Scraps. The busy town turns away.
Lifetime on the porch in cruel hope.
In the belly of the twister. The truest she could be.
A dusty, thirsty death among the flies.
She shakes a nose-jowls-ears-ruff-chest-belly-haunches-tail-shake and it falls away from her.
She is lighter.
Wilder.
Pure.
The hounds' greeting is a surge: storm-bodied, havoc-scented breath and lightning for blood. The pack of it pounds in her chest and her muscles coil ready.
The rider turns.
The Hunt wheels as one.
The sky tears open and she runs.
She is chasing a mammoth,
She still knows wolf-song and sings it by a fire,
She is choosing the shared fire, shared meat, the shared walk
forty thousand years ago
and never stops believing in the rightness of it.
She runs with hounds made of storm and fury and the deep always now between lightning and thunder.
She runs across skies unseen by mortal eyes.
She runs, and time cannot catch her.
She is, was always, pack and runs forever in the high wild places of the Hunt, where pack leaves no hound behind.
The plains are still in the heat.
The grass settles back into its slow, mortal sway.
At dawn, a hawk circles once, then moves on.
The day remembers nothing.
But in the deep-high vaults where weather is memory and man cannot follow, a new hound rides the storm.
Wind-at-heel on the lonely road you'll hear them crack the bones of the sky and, marrow-throated, thunder-howl the wolf-song your fear remembers and then you will know the Wild Hunt is upon you.
