The Wolf Who Ate the Sun

I came down from the mountain,
not because I hungered—
but because I could.

The farm lay soft before me,
bleating with small white dreams
that did not yet know what teeth were for.
They belonged to the silence,
and I had always been its voice.

He saw me,
and I let him.
I carried the sun in my hands that day,
letting it drip through my fingers
until his eyes blistered from staring too long.
He thought it was love—
the way the light touched his face.
It was never love.
It was ownership.

I told him lies with the cadence of scripture,
each word a hook pulling him closer to the edge.
He came willingly—
that’s the secret they never tell you about the lambs.
They want the wolf to love them.
They will crawl into your mouth if you open it wide enough.

One by one, I took the sheep.
They followed without question,
their innocence a perfume I inhaled deeply before I devoured it.
He watched,
and each loss hollowed him until he was only skin
and the trembling light of belief.

The last sheep was him.
I did not bite.
I wrapped myself around his mind,
slipped beneath his ribs,
and gnawed at the soul like marrow in a winter bone.
He thought he was drowning in me—
but I was already inside his lungs,
deciding when he would breathe.

When there was nothing left,
I walked away.
Back to the mountain.
Back to the place they call hell,
but where the grass tastes sweeter
because no one dares to graze there.

And he came, just as I knew he would.
The cliff is not an ending—
it is a gate.
He stepped through with the same faith
he had once placed in my hands.
A fallen lamb is still meat.
It does not matter if it walks into the darkness
or is dragged there.

When the sun set behind us,
I smiled.
Not because I loved him,
but because he was mine—
and everything that was his
was mine too.

by Onnaya