Silverfire

The forest was quiet that night — unnaturally so. The kind of quiet that makes your ears ring with the absence of everything you usually ignore. You don’t notice how much the world hums until it suddenly doesn’t.

I’d wandered too far again. No surprise. Sleep was a stranger lately, and walking until the trees swallowed me whole had become my answer. Not a solution, just… a habit. A ritual without meaning. But this time, something was different.

The moon hung low and pale, like someone had scraped silver dust across the sky. It washed the world in that soft, ghostlight kind of glow — the kind that makes you feel like you’re somewhere in between dreaming and waking.

I saw him when the mist shifted — a shape slipping between tree trunks like he’d always been there. I stopped. Not because I was afraid, but because something in my mind whispered, “Pay attention.” That whisper had never led me wrong.

It was a wolf.

Not a mangy, sharp-boned kind, but one carved out of silence and moonlight. His fur caught the moon like metal — not shining, not dull, just… true. Like he was made of something the rest of the world had forgotten.

His eyes met mine, and it was like staring into still water that somehow reflected your insides.

He didn’t snarl. He didn’t run. He watched, the way old trees watch you — like they've seen your kind come and go before. I lifted my lantern, not thinking, just trying to see more. He didn’t flinch. Just turned and walked, smooth as shadow over snow.

And I followed.

Was that smart? Probably not. But logic doesn’t hold up well when the air itself feels like it’s holding its breath for something sacred. Every step I took felt like it mattered more than the one before it. Like the earth was listening.

He led me deeper, through thickets and silence. The forest changed. It was subtle — branches bent more carefully overhead, moss grew in softer carpets, the cold stopped biting. It felt like the woods themselves were parting for him. Or maybe for me, because I was with him.

We reached a hollow, ringed with old stones cracked by time and tangled with roots. The moonlight poured into it like it was a cup made just for that. He stopped in the center.

And then — he howled.

It wasn’t just sound. It was a feeling that passed through my bones and stayed there, sitting like a story I hadn’t lived yet. It was lonely and proud and enormous. It was sorrow and defiance and something older than language. It was wild — not dangerous wild, but wild like rivers, and thunder, and stars that don’t care if you ever find them.

I don’t know how long I stood there. My knees felt weak, but not from fear. From knowing I’d seen something I wasn’t meant to understand.

He looked at me one more time, then faded back into the trees like he had never been real.

Except I know he was.

The forest exhaled again. A breeze stirred. Distant owls remembered they had things to do. I stayed a moment longer, lantern in hand, watching the place where the wolf had been.

I think he let me see him. I don’t know why. Maybe I was just the first to look up at the right moment, in the right way. Maybe he was lonely.

I still go back sometimes. Not because I expect to see him again. But because some places don’t leave you alone once you’ve met them.

And neither do some stories.