The Unraveling Wool

In the dim light of the thinning fog,

the sheep stood still,

its wool a tangled hymn of grey skies

and fields forgotten.

The barn’s creak was a sullen echo,

a lullaby

to something more primal than sleep.

There, amidst the shivering moonlight,

it was said that the flocks would dream

of safety in numbers,

but dreams are fickle guests.

The sheep, with eyes like faded coins,

slowly unwound the threads of their ignorance.

A shadow had always lingered

beneath the fleece—

an itch that whispered of hunger,

of the wild secret beneath the wool.

It was a dance

wrought of ancient pacts and fates unspoken,

where the shepherd’s staff was a mere illusion

against the lure of the moon’s silver.

The meadow’s edge, a place where dreams

were stitched into the fabric of night,

had grown thin,

like paper peeling from a wall.

There, where grass grew tall

and whispers of old winds began to curl

into the dark,

the realization struck

with a sudden, jagged clarity.

The sheep turned slowly

to find not the warm wool of kin,

but a hunger reflecting back in the glassy eyes—

an echo of wolf's laughter,

distant and dry,

settling in the marrow of bones.

The sky, once a canvas of endless blue,

became a grim portrait of the inevitable.

In a moment like a breath caught in a storm,

it understood:

the teeth that grazed the tender skin

were its own;

the claws that left marks in the dusk

were but shadows

of the self it could not escape.

The final veil lifted,

and there stood the sheep,

not in pasture but in the brambles of despair,

a mirror to its own dark heart.

The moon, an indifferent witness,

cast long shadows

that spiraled into a void

where it could never again be more

than the wolf it had always been.

And so, in the throes of revelation,

the meadow fell silent,

its secrets entwined in the ghostly breath

of a creature

whose reflection held the weight

of an unbearable truth.

In the endless stretch of night,

the sheep, now a ghost of its own making,

disappeared into the echoes,

leaving behind a story

that would haunt the whispering grass

for eternity.