Life Among the Pastures

Dear Valeria

    There was a group of circus clowns that came over each room in the hospital today to comfort the kids. There were two kids that shared the same room with me--one was a little boy that suffered boy hemorrhage and I heard he fell from the window of his family's fifth-floor apartment. The other one was a little girl who suffered third-degree burns from a fire. Every night in the hospital, the kids cried in agony as their wounds kept reminding them that they're still in pain. When the circus clown came in, the kids completely forgot about their wounds as if the presence of the circus clown healed their wounds temporarily. The break of laughter was a breath of fresh air and levitated my mood just a tad bit.

I was so mesmerized by how the kids were able to forget so easily just by a silly clown. Although they were inflicted with pain, it didn't rob their pure, angelic innocence. They were still "kids" after all; their heads only filled with butterflies and unicorns that pranced along their imagination. Sometimes, when the clowns didn't come over, their mothers would visit and read them a book--one was about Snow White and the other was about Beauty and the Beast. As I laid there, shriveled up to the bone as I could feel time cannibalizing my spirit each day, I listened to the mothers read to them and couldn't help break a smile. Having kids isn't that bad after all, I thought.

Lily, at the end, never came to visit and I find myself enjoying the presence of the two ladies. Both ladies exchanged a few words of reflection;  their child's survival was a second chance for them to become better parents. That's when I thought of Lily as her future was in somebody else's sky, a lover I do not know. I wanted to say I was happy for her, to tell you the truth, I would be lying to myself at this point. She will bore beautiful children and live happily ever after in their own world, a world in which I was never the main character of their story.

I wanted to dream of the wolves again, just like that time when we slept at the barn that day. For some reason, I sat up, as if it was my natural reflex, and locked eyes with a wolf outside the window. Half of its fury body was camouflaged in the tall grass as every subtle movement delayed rays of northern lights behind it. That's when I knew you weren't crazy, Valeria.

"Follow me." it said, but I only heard my voice in my head. Without second thinking, I grabbed my guitar case and hopped out the window to follow the northern lights left behind by the wolf, as I darted behind the wolf. The cutting sound of the grass disturbed the silence and silenced the singing crickets of the night. The wolf got farther and farther while leaving behind streaks of northern lights in the air that I followed. Through the trees  and the tall grass, the northern lights gave way in the darkness. Finally I stopped to catch breath at a tall cliff as if I ran to the end of the earth. I found myself panting and coughing from the grass dew that caught in my system when I ran.
Standing before the colossal jewel in the sky was the wolf. Shards of moonlight pebbled through the woods, giving spotlight to the both of us. The gray wolf was peppered with streaks of black and steaming from the sole of his foot were ray of lights just like in my dream.

"Sit next to me, son." he said.

I sat next to the wolf, my foot dangling off the cliff and swayed back and forth by the breeze.

"You finally came," he continued. "It's been a while since somebody could talk to wolves."

"Somebody else could talk to you?"

He shook his head.

"I was the last person that could talk to the wolf...and that was 400 years ago."

"300 years ago?"

"Before I was a wolf, I dreamed of wolves as well. I was on a crew ship that was sailing to the Americas from England. When I was little, I was captured by the English men and assimilated myself with the English culture and spoke their native tongue, completely forgetting who I was. They sailed me on the voyage to the Americas so I could communicate with the native tribes. Through some bribery, the tribes fell for it and we raided them all, slaughtering children, women, and men."

He kept quiet for a minute to let the silence past by.

"I never knew my identity and the only thing that was left of me was the broken bone necklace that I had ever since I was young. I even asked my master why I had the bon necklace around my neck and he simply shrugged it off and said he gave it to me as a gift. It didn't occur to me that he was lying until we raided one tribe. After much looting and burning of tepees, a chief in his white cloak with a crown of eagle feathers laid in the trail of blood he left behind. Once I got closer, something dawned on me--his face reflected the person I saw in the mirror. Somehow, he looked much like me, but didn't. Then I saw the broken bone necklace wrapped around his neck and both of our necklaces fit perfectly.

"Everyone else continued to raid and slaughter women and children while I ran away, running as far as I can and into the depths of the woods. Spent the rest hearing myself wept for days in the woods. When you could hear yourself cry and nothing else, you will find that you are  the loneliest man in the world. That's how I felt for days until there were running dents in my cheeks from the constant pouring of tears. After days, a wolf found me crouching under a tree. And he spoke to me and introduced me to his wolf pack. There was a mother who was pregnant, and for some reason, I found myself walking to the mother wolf and entering the womb of the wolf. I was enveloped in total darkness at that point until I saw a circle of light at the end of the tunnel.

I found myself crawling to the light until it blinded me. That was when I realized that I was incarnated into a wolf. Over the years, the wolves began to die and I found myself still alive for hundreds of years. I was confused as to why I was still alive. Perhaps this was God's punishment to suffer the fate as a wolf in my new life since I have committed the act of betrayal and injustice to the people that shared my blood. So after many moons, I howled but was never heard. I am forced to wander this land in loneliness for the past hundred of years. Then I realized that it was my job to protect the land from the ever advancing pasture of cows, for they are conquering this land by storm."
The cows, I repeated to myself. Slowly, the rays of light steaming from his paws began to illuminate brighter.

"Promise me to protect this land!" he said. "You must keep the balance between the world of cows and wolves. You shall not let the cows take over this land and you must stop them from ever doing so."

"What happens if they do?" I then asked.

"Then the balance of land will be disrupted. It's simple. Whenever there's prey, there are predators. Whenever there is a moon, there is a sun. Whenever there is darkness, there is light. By the coexistence of both worlds, it will cancel each other out to retain balance in the land. If disrupted, it will affect your world immensely. Time is running out."

He lifted his paw and gave a pensive stare to the rays of lights disintegrating into the air while the eyes mirrored the dancing lights. His paws became slowly deformed as it slowly became dissolved into light, exhaling into the sky.

"Promise me." he said. "You must take my place, for you are the only hope to restore balance. Once you arrive at your death, you will be awakened in the body of a wolf."
"Then, what about you?"

"I will be set free to see my brothers, for my time has come to an end."

And then, his entire body disintegrated into rays of light that swirled by the breeze as it carried it to the sky, becoming one with the northern lights that watched over the mountains, the trees, and the pastures. An outline of a face began to form with eyes, nose, and a mouth. The contours were made with lines of green, blue, red, and yellow of a man with a feathery headband as two sets of braided hair tailed behind him. In the northern lights, formed distant figures of people in Cherokee hats and naked bodies. All of them held spears as they slowly ushered the man away, who used to be a wolf.
After, the northern lights receded color as it slowly blended with the night sky and everything became silent. My mind was throbbing in unease as I adjusted myself and pulled out my guitar. Then I began strumming as if I was singing at a funeral while sending him away.

Oh baby baby, it's a wild world, I sang.