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永程

The air was acrid with the scent of dead and decaying things.

Yong Cheng could not fathom why he had come. Just a while ago, this land had been flourishing. It had been quiet, but the silence lent itself to recollection; in the gloaming, men sat under the stars and contemplated by the light of the moon. He knew, down to the marrow in his bones, that once upon a time, brothers of a different kind had lived here. Wolves, bonded by pack, settled down and made homes within the nestling trees of these woods.

Now, it was desolate. The silence deafened him.

It was Spring, but ash coated the ground like freshly-fallen snow. Yong Cheng watched the sunrise from under a hanging cloud of ash; damp and wet, the ash mixed with morning mist and formed a fog that tore through his lungs with every breath. It was a frigid morning; as dawn broke past the burnt and burning trees, the sun shone down upon him, not unlike the moon. It cast a cold light, and the chill in the air permeated through his fur and into his bones. 

As the sun rose, any brightness in its rays was scattered by the mix of fog and ash. Yong Cheng stood in the frost, breath escaping his mouth in puffs of steam. In the recent past, he was sure peals of laughter had rung through these very woods. In the distant light of the morning sun, he saw faintly, a glimmer of yellow peaking through the trees. As far beyond him as his eye could see, the sun's rays were dappling other lands, and for just a moment, it had reached him. 

But as he basked in a warmth he couldn't feel, a great thundering shook the earth. Whatever burnt, charred leaves that remained on the crumbling trees fell as shooting stars to the ground. Rumbling eclipsed the small light; presently, Yong Cheng's gaze was drawn deeper into the woods, where it was dark and foreboding, but the soil was rooted to the earth, and trees granted him shelter from the falling ash. 

Earthquake! He thought, with a panic that arose from somewhere deep within him. It was an instinctual, primal fear; smaller than most, lighter and lankier, Yong Cheng knew that to be trapped meant certain hurt. More and more the terrain underfoot trembled; more and more he searched for an out, but the ear-splitting crack! of a great tree meters behind him drove home the panic. With haste, forgoing his usual fancies, the wolf threw himself into what he knew as temporary safety. Around him, the trees were shaking; ash that had settled there before now slid off charred branches in droves. Above him, the sky was shaking; he could not see the clouds, and the sun was too far away to be of any comfort. His tail whipped behind him. 

Darkness overtook him.

Yong Cheng's eyes took a little while to adjust to the gloom. Amidst the trees, even though the ground still rumbled, he felt aeons of sturdy roots that had sunken deep into the earth. The trees were blackened and struck with soot, he knew, but where the soil was still moist, far below the fire's reach, some water-seeking roots still anchored the trees to the ground. Here, he felt was closer to the lake. He hadn't been here often, but in the tingling of his soot-ridden nose, he caught a whiff of a certain freshness. It was still acrid and smokey and every sniff stung, but if he had to take a chance between the wide open space, and this, he could rest easy knowing that at least if he died, there would be no one to see him, no one to mourn him. Who knew if wolves were kind creatures?

In the rocking moments of an instant, everything had changed.

Yong Cheng began his long walk to the centre of the shrine.

He had nothing to look for, except for the shocking juxtaposition all around him. There was no use searching here; it was dead and desolate and eerily quiet. Burnt carcasses of those creatures that had failed to flee in time lay strewn about his path -- everywhere, and nowhere all at once. Where leaf and branch had once been firm and supple, now hung creaking, bone-dry sticks. Where freshly-trodded tracks were once aplenty, there now lay only ash, soot, and charcoal. The lonely footsteps of others like him who had come to explore, had either been fully or partially covered by the falling debris. He sensed that in a few hours, his too, would have freshly fallen ash settled into the ridges and crevasses his footsteps left.

Slowly, the earth ceased its persistent grumbling. Yong Cheng drew to a hault as he approached the pool.

It was grey.

He wanted to gasp, but even that sound eluded him. Ripples still spread from the edges of the pool toward its centre, but the middle was strangely still. A thin ring of dry earth stood above the waterline; presently, a thought chanced upon the explorer -- had, in the fiery heat, the water turned straight into mist?

He peered over the water's edge, looking at the hazy reflection of his own face in the pool's murky shallows. Suddenly, the maned wolf was keenly aware of a thirst that sprung up, not unlike a well of fresh groundwater, in his parched throat. In his desperation, he might have drunk despite the thin layer of ash that had formed atop the waters, if not for a lone fish that drifted into view, driven by the ripples the last rumbles of earth made.

It floated there, belly up, empty eyes gazing blanky at the sky.

He shuddered.

There was no life to be found here. Here he was, a usually stoic character, with unshed tears burning in his eyes. Perhaps one day, life would return to this barren land, and shoots would once again erupt from the baked ground under his feet.

But not today.

Knowing there was nothing here for him to see, Yong Cheng turned and padded slowly, silently, away.

He did not look back.

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