A Million Heavens

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The nighttime clouds were slipping across the sky as if summoned. The wolf was near the old market, a place he remembered enjoying, but he resolved not to go inside, resolved to maintain his pace, an upright trot he could’ve sustained for days. He was off his regular route. He had passed several lots of broken machines that weren’t even guarded by dogs and now he was crossing kept grounds — the trees in rows, the hedges tidy, the signs sturdy and sponged. He cleared the first wing of a well-lit building, catching his trotting reflection in the mirrored windows. His head jerked sidelong toward a parking lot and there he saw the quiet humans.

The wolf understood that he had stopped short in some sort of courtyard and he understood that these humans had snuck up on him, or he had snuck up on them without meaning to, which was the same. He retreated into the shadows. The humans hadn’t spotted him. They seemed lost to the world. They sat with their legs folded beneath them. Not a whisper. Not a sigh. The wolf couldn’t tell what these humans were doing. A lot of knowledge was obvious to the wolf and hidden from humans, but they had their own wisdom — deductions they’d been refining for centuries, beliefs they would cling to until they could prove them.

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