• One day, a young man stormed through the woods.
    Burning himself inside out, he grasped for tree branches that he could barely see, unconscious of his hope that they were strong enough to carry the burden of his hatred that he could not survive with any longer.

    The trees, putting in as much effort as they could to do his bidding, found that they simply could not be shaped by the hatred. The branches the young man forced aside either snapped, or swung right back into the place they had always remained. The forest became thick and the branches stiff as the trees tried to tell him to calm down. He became lost in a tangle of frustration. Soon the young man found himself trapped by his jacket on the very bushes and branches that he was trying so hard to warp and mold into a false paradise, dreamed up by his hatred to keep him distracted from what he really needed. He burned through his hatred with the most piercing scream that he could muster.

    A few feet away, a deer watched horrified as a mysterious being thrashed and hacked at the foliage while getting attacked and eaten by some unseen predator. The being let out the most wretched sound of tremendous pain that the deer had ever heard. A sound that could only mean certain death. The deer bolted.

    With his eyes staring bewildered at the treetops, the young man sensed a striking yet completely still presence watching him. He looked down and saw a wolf, battered and scratched as if it had just finished taking down large, feisty prey. He became paralysed with the anticipation of what the wolf might do next.


    The wolf stood motionless, watching the creature's every move. The creature seemed greatly wounded, yet there was no sign of it on his body. It was a type of creature she had seen before. A type of creature which can render animals dead and motionless on the ground just by crouching in a certain position and staring at them from a long distance away.
    The wolf knew she had no chance against such power. She put her ears back, bowed her head, and walked on past the young man, her steps showing no sign of a stagger despite her scarred legs. She would have to travel further now to find prey.
    There was no going back to the pack that had betrayed her.

    The young man shivered with relief. His hatred now gone, he felt heavy with exhaustion. He began to cry as the memories of all that he had said flooded back to him. It seemed now like gibberish that was trying to formulate eloquent phrases so it could gut and disembowel the man he had always called his best friend.

    He carefully disentangled himself from the bushes and stood up. Feeling empty, he looked back at the path his hatred made. Seeing the broken and bent branches, he felt remorse without fully understanding why. He began walking back to the village. He wanted desperately to apologize to his friend but he wasn't sure how he could do it. He figured he should have enough time as he walked through the forest to think about it. If it went well, he could even follow it up with the story of how he had almost been eaten by a wolf.

    The day was getting late, and the sky was shining with the golden light of dusk. The trees distilled the air of all the toxins discharged from the chaos and went to sleep.