Scout

The boy had been hunting for only a few weeks when he realized how dangerous it was to be in the woods at night. He took up the job of providing the family with food, what little he had left of his family, after his father had died from an infected wound that he had received from an intimidated rodent. There were only his mother and younger sister left to expectantly wait at home in anticipation of some sort of meal for the night (there wasn’t much left to do out in the woods other than eat and appreciate each others’ company). The boy remembered when he had the leisure of having the role of waiting at home, and he missed those times.

“I miss my father,” he said. “I wish that he was with me to comfort me, to be my companion in this lonely forest, and to properly teach me how to do this task of hunting that I never expected to take up.”

He had been following a deer for a couple of minutes in hopes of bringing it back to his family’s shelter. He had never killed a deer before, but he had seen his father bring the graceful beasts strapped over his back many times before.

“Maybe I will be like my father,” he wished. “Maybe he will be with me, drawing the arrow back with me, guiding my aim to the deer’s vitals.”

The deer was very adventurous, though. It travelled through the forest deeper and deeper until the boy was no longer able to recognize the trees and brush as those of the world he grew up in. The animal had little care for this, though, as it had no suspicion that a small human had been silently following its every footstep.

When the deer stopped to eat some fresh evergreen plants, the boy nearly blew his cover from his heart skipping a beat. He seized the opportunity to raise his bow, grab and arrow, and prepare to kill the animal. He aimed for the deer’s vitals, and pulled back the string of his bow. In the heat of his excitement, whether it had been for the desire be as much of a man as his father or simply due to his overwhelming hunger, his hand began to nervously shake. The string of the bow snapped loudly, and the arrow whirred into the air above the boy. The deer bent its head quickly toward the disturbance, and it scurried away into the darkness between the trees as soon as it registered the threat of the boy.

“Curse these frail hands!” he yelled. “Now I’ll return home with no food, nothing to be proud of, and it’s all because of these hands!”

But his exclamations were cut short when he noticed a luminous appearance in the black of the forest. Not one shape, he realized, but two small, glowing shapes about two and a half feet above the ground. He made out the details of the bright circles: each had a golden brightness with a black pupil that was deeper than the abyss of the forest. These radiant eyes stared straight into the pale, sickly eyes of the now-frightened boy.

The boy realized that this was a black wolf, one of the most dangerous creatures of the forest night. Just like his mother’s warnings had told him, he could see nothing of the beast in the evening darkness except for those two orbs. The rest of the wolf’s body was left up to his imagination. He imagined the large fangs that would be used to strip his body away from his bones, the thick paws that would leap upon him and hold him down, and the large fur that coated the nimble, yet strong, build of the killing machine. The boy knew that this was only what he imagined, unsure of whether the reality was better or worse.

The boy and the beast were locked into each other’s sight. He wondered if the wolf had any ulterior motives behind his primal desires. He wondered if the wolf had its eyes on the same deer that he had been stalking through the forest earlier. He wanted to apologize to the wolf, to tell implore it to forgive him for scaring away its meal. How he would have given up, he thought, if he had known that such a threatening predator was also claiming ownership over that graceful creature. He wondered if his mother and sister would have forgiven him for giving up their dinner to evade a wolf. He wondered what his father would have thought. Would he have thought of him to be wise or cowardly? There was no drawback to attempting to escape now, though. The boy’s mind raced while trying to formulate a strategy to lose the wolf. His body stayed completely still despite his frantic state of mind. The wolf’s eyes matched this retention of composure: a focused, calm exterior that differed from its raging bloodlust inside.

The boy slowly took a step back, knowing that his life could be stripped away within the next second. The wolf’s eyes moved up by an inch, and the boy’s limbs turned into that of a statue’s as soon as he noticed. Clenching his muscles tightly, the boy shut his eyes and prepared for a jet-black demise. The wolf moved his legs up, and arched his back downward.

A howl echoed out from the heart of the forest.

The boy opened his eyes to hear the footsteps of the wolf trotting into the night. He loosened his muscles and thanked the Lord, thanked his father, thanked his ancestors for watching over him. He decided to find his way back home, even though he was unsure of his current location in the forest.

The boy turned around to head back and was immediately met with six pairs of glowing eyes that had responded to the dinner call.