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of yourself, you’ll be coming back this way for your family
and this journal. While I’d love to be here when you return,
I can already hear the quiet patter of careful feet—another
Wolf who drew my name. Poor, poor beast.

***

Through blank silences, twilights stuffed with plastic
light, beyond nights falling grey and dead—I climbed. It
was not art or dream or darkness that brought me out from
the pit of the world. It was blood.
I had been focused to primal dimensions, I had whet upon
appetites that caused space itself to open its swirling maw,
devouring stars, gnawing at the bones of creation. I was the
moment of the kill, the last light before death. And I was
coming for him—the Eater of Idols.
Fire and shadow spoke me back to life, and I stood before
the thing that had once, through treachery, cast me down.
My enemy had been injured, its blood spilled. I had been
conjured back to life through the magic of its dying. But I
would not spoil my victory with even the slightest taste of
advantage. My teeth tore open the flesh of my arm, and I
fed the flagging beast a thick stream of my blood. The son
of the White Queen fell upon the ground, devouring my
offering where it fell, reveling in the strength I had allowed
it to recapture.
I smiled when the demon rose up before me—renewed,
confident, doomed.
My family raged from the churning waters nearby. My
father roared for me to take him up, his hunger burning
maniacal and bloody. With a single look, I quieted him. He
knew immediately—this fight was mine and mine alone.
By my bare hands, I would unwrap this creature’s bones,
feast on its darkness, feel the gristle of its soul snap and pop
between my teeth.

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