When The Wild Calls

Speculative Fiction Modern Parables

TO DREAM OF TALKING WOLVES AND CROWS might be strange to some.

To act on what they tell you to save some wild pups in an abandoned building with an unknown menace threatening your life - well, that might be crazy.

Kelly liked to read. And she had an active imagination. So talking to coyotes and crows in her dreams wasn't too much for her.

Until they wanted her to risk her own life to save some abandoned wild pups.

Because if she didn't, the pups would die. And so would she and everyone she knew...

Excerpt:

My name is Kelly and I like to read. And since the cities left us, that was hard enough. Finding real books was tough. Thought I'd like to be a writer one day. As soon as someone started producing paper and printing them again. Meawhile, I thought up stories and told them to people.

But I never thought I'd be doing something crazier than my own imagination.

It's like this: I'd had coyotes and crows talking to me for months in my dreams. Thought I'd been reading too many Amerindian legends. So I laid off them and picked up an old copy of Twain's "Life on the Mississippi", thinking some nonfiction would cure my imagination-osis.

Nope.

We'd have these talks. I'd sit there in my dream, on a log in my nightgown, while across a smoldering fire sat a well-groomed coyote on his haunches. On a pine bough overhead stood a crow, black and seemingly able to appear and disappear in the surrounding darkness.

Who would start the conversation was often anyone's guess.

But the last talk we had ended up saving my life, and those of my kin.

. . . .

"I tell you that you need to visit that building, Now." The coyote was staring at me, not moving his mouth, as usual in these dreams. It was all thought-sending. Telepathy by hooman-name, but the wolf-kin disliked the term as too limited…

"Why?" I asked.

"You need to save our kin and yours. Like I said before, and been telling you for nights. Now you have no choice. They are coming," answered Coyote.

"Who?" I asked.

"So many questions…" Coyote seemed to sigh. "Again: feral non-human persons who will kill my kin and then kill yours and you," replied Coyote.

Crow spoke up, "This is so. I have seen it with my eyes. They travelled long and are now here. You are out of time."

"Our time for talking is over. You act today, or we both lose kin. Crow and I cannot help you after tonight. You must act or we all die," said Coyote.

"What would you have me do?" I asked.

"We've covered this before. Are all Hoomans this slow?" Crow cawed to make the point.

"Enter the tall building, find the den, save the pups," Coyote sent.

"And face the dangers alone?" I asked.

Coyote sighed. "You are more courageous than any of your kin. Your people won't believe you to give you any help. Trying to convince them will waste precious time. So act now, alone."

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