Haunted Wood in time, child

he had skirted around the caldera after their audience with the redhawk wolves, breaking off from his group at twilight to explore a little further south. over the prairie he went until he came to another wood, dark and foggy. aditya slipped like a silver-brown wraith through the oak trees, watching his every move as he did so.

he felt at extreme unease in this place, his fur prickling with each step he took. for one, he could barely see more than a few paces in front of him at all times. and this forest was quieter than most; birds were not singing, perhaps due to their flying south for the winter, and the usual scurrying of prey was absent. all to be heard was the wind through the bare-branched trees, whistling as it went by.

a sudden crack caught his ear, and he whirled in a semi-circle, looking to see where it had come from. a dark shape appeared in the mist, eyes the gold of a summer moon shining through the dim. lips curling into a snarl, he backed away, but the wolf drew closer, seeming to take two steps to his one.

"stop!" he growled loudly, baring his teeth. "who are you?"

the wolf stopped, and even in the shadows he saw the glimmer of a white smile. "you do not recognize me, my child?"

a feeling of both comfort and shame washed warm over his body, and aditya slowly relaxed, lowering his hackles and dipping his head. "hariji," he whispered, eyes cast downwards. "i. . .i am sorry. you startled me."

"no doubt," the god responded, looking about him with a wry expression. "this place is quite disconcerting. why have you come here?"

aditya lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "exploring. trying to learn the territory."

hari surveyed him with a look bordering on censorious, but stopping just short. "you should take care not to stray into unfamiliar territory at night," he murmured. "your ancestors were taken in similar conditions. remember. . .hari and nitya?"

aditya nodded, trying to keep overt excitement from his tone. so hari had come to reveal the rest of the story, then! the feeling of the last visit with the divine had not yet left him, and now the awe rose in him once more, eyes fixed on hari, waiting for his next words.

"they were taken to a zoo, in bharat. do you know what a zoo is, aditya?" adi nodded once more. being from a place much closer to humans, he understood the general concept: animals kept in captivity, away from their natural habitat. he shuddered to know his ancestors had suffered the same fate.

"while in captivity, they had children. one of those children--gopal--was transported with a few others across the sea, to live in another zoo in another land." one corner of hari's mouth lifted in a smile. "things, however, went amiss." by his expression, aditya deduced that perhaps hari had had a hand in said things going amiss.

"the five wolves escaped, in an accident the humans caused. two were caught, but three were never found, running away into the wild to claim their birthright," hari said. "gopal, your great-grandfather, was one of them."

"that," he concluded, "is how you come to be here, and not in bharat."

with a flick of his ebony tail, hari turned to walk away after dropping this final statement. adi stood speechless for a moment, taking in all this new information, before crying out. "hariji! i must ask. . .do you know who my father is? does he live?"

the god turned to face aditya once more, eyes soft. "in time, child," he whispered. then the dark form vanished into the fog, leaving not even a breath behind, as if he had never materialized from the forest in the first place.

leave this forest, hari's voice--or was it his own?--echoed through his mind, reverberating off the walls of his skull with great intensity. not wasting a moment's time, aditya spun on his heel and took off at a slow lope through the trees. the uneasiness clung to him still as he burst out of the wood and galloped over the plains to return to his packmates, suffused with the knowledge hari had given him tonight.