Soundless Thunder

The grey wolves pace the sky Their figures looming over the silent city Growls roll down the slopes of hills And ever so often, a terrifying sound that had him curling around himself like a snake afraid of humans coming to kill him Wolves crashing into wolves and bouncing apart Tendrils of white spring from the cracks in their broken façades The light flashes against his windowpane As intense as the white hot pain springing from the mass of cut flesh on his right wrist A crash in the hallway, light struck out at the windows Was that the shout of thunder, or the clattering of his bones? The grey wolves roared again, as did his father the tenor all too familiar to the boy's quavering ears The tendrils were there too, worming its way through the patrol in the sky He could see its glow and feel the rattle of thunder sing in time with the fear and sadness that twisted his gut into knots Crash! Another vase broken. Another wave of thunder rolled across the valley. Or was that the sound of a bottle rolling across the wooden floor? He couldn't tell anymore. He looked out of the window again. He remembered the old story that Mother had taught him about He could still hear the echoes of "Once upon a time..." and the silly story about the thunder feeling down because it couldn't sing He remembered the way his mother's voice maneuvered the ups and downs of the emotions in the story As she described how the lightning, crackling with indignation, hurled itself like a javelin across the sky and impaled the wolves who had robbed the thunder of its voice. He was thunder, voiceless until everything was bleak, helpless until the tendrils of light loosened, and unseen as his father drowned in the illusion of misery, the shimmering grey mirage that wrapped around him like a shroud, reflecting the grey sky overhead His vision narrowed ever so slowly to slivers of his dull window The lightning hurled itself like a javelin across the sky Hurtled towards the land, beckoning to thunder to follow him And it did. And he did.