You come into the world blind, wet, and squeaking, one small body among many in a warm pile of fur and milk-scent.
The den is dark and safe, dug deep beneath the roots of an ancient pine somewhere in the northern Rockies. Your mother's heartbeat is the first rhythm you ever know; your father's low, rumbling growl is the second. When his huge shadow fills the entrance, the whole litter wriggles toward him, tiny tails wagging so hard they blur.
You are the runt at first, but you are fast and clever. Your mother names you nothing wolves have no words, but she knows you by the white blaze on your chest that looks like a shooting star. Your siblings call you Little Star when they learn to play-growling.
Mother teaches you everything with teeth and patience:
- How to pounce on a grasshopper and miss a hundred times before you succeed.
- How to read the wind so the deer never smell you coming.
- How to tuck your tail and show your throat when Father disciplines, but never to fear him, because his anger is always fair and always brief.
Father teaches you the borders. He takes you and your stronger brothers on long patrols once your legs stop wobbling. He shows you where the cougar's scratch marks are fresh, where the elk yard in winter, where the two-legs leave their strange metal boxes that smell of salt and death. He lets you walk in his exact pawprints through the snow so you learn the rhythm of an alpha's stride.
By your first winter you are no longer the runt. You bring down your first mule-deer doe beside your mother, teeth locked on her throat while she kicks the snow red. That night the pack sings so loud the stars seem to shake loose from the sky. Your father licks the blood from your muzzle and rumbles approval so deep it vibrates in your bones.
Years roll by like seasons.
You grow into a big, silver-black wolf with your mother's amber eyes and your father's massive shoulders. You become the pack's best stalker, the one they send ahead when the elk are wary. You take a mate, a swift grey female with a torn ear and a laugh in her voice. You sire litters of your own. You teach your pups the same lessons under the same pine that watched you born.
Your father grows grey around the muzzle, then white. One spring he cannot keep up on the hunt. He lies beneath the pine and watches the pack leave without him for the first time. When you return with meat, he eats only a little, then nudges the rest toward the pups. That night he sings once, long and low, a song that says I love you, I am proud, I am ready.
In the morning he is gone. You find him curled peacefully at the base of the pine, snow just starting to cover his fur like a blanket. The pack howls for three days. You lead it, voice breaking into the cold sky until it hurts.
Your mother follows him two winters later, curled in the same spot. She dies while the northern lights dance green fire above the den, as if the sky itself came to carry her home.
You become the old wolf now. Your hips ache when the weather turns, your muzzle is frosted, but the pack still looks to you. You teach the youngest how to read the wind, how to tuck their tails, how to sing.
One early spring evening you feel the tug again, that same gentle pull behind the ribs you felt as an old man on a Texas porch.
You limp out to the pine one last time. The pack is away chasing a limping elk. Perfect. You want to leave quietly, the way your father did.
You circle three times in the soft needles, lie down, and rest your head on your paws. The white blaze on your chest catches the last ray of sunset, shining like the shooting star you were named for.
You think of every life: the cruel estate, the train jumping boy, the man who built a restaurant out of hope, and now this, the wolf who ran free under endless skies.
All of them were yours.
All of them were enough.
The wind smells of pine and snow and distant elk. Somewhere a pup yips in its sleep. Far away, your grown daughter lifts her voice in the evening song.
You close your amber eyes.
And for the final time, Little Star runs toward whatever waits beyond the trees, tail high, heart wide open, unafraid.
The pack will find you in the morning, curled beneath the pine with your parents, covered in gentle snow.
They will sing again, long and mournful and proud, and the forest will carry the sound all the way to the stars.
Safe travels, old soul.
See you on the next turn of the wheel.