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The fur along his shoulders rose as he padded through the empty halls of a once-colorful palace. Over the years sand had piled up in the corners of the open rooms and along the walls of the long hallways. It covered the floors of the palace in a fine layer of grit. Dust covered the empty tables, chairs, shelves, statues, and decorations that filled the lifeless rooms. Bugs ate away at the musty beds and closets full of clothes for people who had long since gone. Tapestries and paintings hung from the walls, colors fading under the bright sun. Most of the windows were glassless to let air move freely through the desert kingdom but the few that had been made with stained glass were shattered, the colorful glass glittering like buried diamonds on the sandy floors. The sand around the broken glass was stained red from when he had gotten a shard stuck in his paw.
Once he had wandered the halls on two legs in a deep purple outfit with a golden crown on his head. Once he had called for his subjects with a voice that could form words. Once he had yelled at the shadows that followed him under his voice had gone horse.
But that time had passed and he wandered the empty halls of his palace on four legs with his ears pinned to his head and his tail between his legs. In the cool of the night, he howled for those he had lost. He still growled at the shadows that padded behind him but the time when he had energy for it grew further apart.
The setting sun sent blood-red rays of light through the hall that he slunk down. It had long since stopped warming his brown fur. He panted lightly in the dry heat that would soon turn to the cold of a desert night with a thousand stars decorating the sky above the desolate home he had once built. Once he had spent long nights under the stars with his friends. Once he had watched the stars as he called for his family. Once he had watched the stars appear and disappear as grief for the life he had lost filled him. He didn’t watch the stars anymore.
The sun dipped fully behind the horizon and he was left in the darkness of a place he still called home. He had wandered the halls a thousand times as a person and as a wolf. He could navigate it easily in the pitch-blackness of a moonless night.
Down the long corridor where the wind sounded like it was screaming during storms, across the room with the once colorful wooden roof that he wished would collapse on him, and through the high doorway that had once been covered in moss. The moss had died on the wall in the heat and without any food or water but in the corners of the room there was moss to be found— dark as the night and littered with white flowers resembling stars. Through the doorway and into the throne room, he walked silently.
He had lost his voice when he became the lone wolf that wandered the halls of a dead palace. The wolf —the physical manifestation of sorrow that he had become— had lost his voice when he had no family to return his call.
He walked the path of harder-packed sand in the line that he always took to the dais. The steps were once worn under his boots but now they were worn under his paws. He curled up on the platform covered in moss that had once been his throne. Next to him, there was a shallow pool dug into the dias and fed with an underground stream for the Ocean’s Queen— his wife— Lizzie. He lay on his throne, his nose hidden under his tail in an attempt at protection against the cold desert air, and watched the pool where Lizzie should have been until the sun rose once more and he began his wandering once more like a sad ghost in an old house.
He was alone when the strange man came to the shell that had once been his palace but was still his home in an empty, sorrowful sense. He was alone and had been alone for a very long time. The tapestries on the walls were faded to nearly white. The colorful paint that covered the walls had long since chipped and flaked off. Some rooms and halls were filled with sand. Plants grew through the cracks in the floors— in the walls— in the ceiling. The glass shards had been completely covered in feet of sand.
The man had taken shelter in a roofless room during the night, a small fire built in the middle of the room and the man sitting close to it for warmth.
He came when both the moon and the sun were hidden and all the light came from the stars far above and the fire on the floor. He stood in the doorway as he watched the man through the fire. The man didn’t notice him at first, too busy scribbling furiously in a notebook. Though when the man did look up he saw how the stranger’s eyes widened. He watched from the doorway and he did not move, observing the man who had come into the building that had once been his palace and set up camp in one of the rooms.
The next day he followed the man like the shadows that haunted him. The man wandered through the halls that he had walked a thousand times but the man moved with a purpose he had lost long ago. The man hadn’t lost his voice yet, constantly muttering to himself as he made notes in a worn book he carried around.
That night the man tossed him a strip of jerky. He had snatched it out of the air, swallowing in quickly and turning back to the man who watched him with deep blue eyes that almost seemed sad.
That was how the cycle went as the sun and the moon continued their dance across the sky. He lapped at the cool water that formed the throne next to his own or went to the broken well set near the kitchens to drink from the spring water there. He watched when the man took water from the fountains scattered around the gardens and later, once the sun had set, boiled the water so it would be safe to drink. He hunted the small lizards and birds that had taken up residence in the palace with his people gone. He watched, from the other side of the fire, as the man cooked a rabbit he had managed to catch or, more often, ate bread and jerky from his pack. Sometimes the man tossed him a piece of food or a part of the rabbit he couldn’t eat.
“Hello,” said the man once to him as he walked down one of the inner hallways, torch raised to see the paintings on the walls that had been somewhat protected from the destroying elements. “Do you live here?”
He —a wolf who had once been a man— paused where he followed the strange man.
The man glanced back at him, smiled, and tossed him a small piece of bread. “Have you been here for a long time?”
He snatched the bread from the floor, his tail twitching in the ghost of a wag. The man’s smile was sad for a moment. It reminded him of sitting by a friend’s bedside as they died slowly. He sat down and watched the man, tilting his head to the side.
“I’m Pix,” the man said as he turned back to stare at the wall, pulling a notebook from his bag. “I’m an archeologist which means that I explore old stuff like this.”
The man seemed sad and he didn’t remember if he had ever been good at comforting people —there was a lot he didn’t remember— but he wanted to comfort the man. He didn’t know how.
When the man— when Pix headed back to where he had set up camp he followed, always a few steps behind. He laid down across from the man, just in the circle of light, and watched him.
Pix hummed as he wrote in his notebook, his gaze occasionally going to where he —the wolf, the person who had forgotten who he was— lay. “Who did you use to be?” he asked after a moment.
He raised his head, ears perked up.
“You seem pretty tame,” he said, shrugging. “I doubt you would let me touch you and I don’t want to lose my hand. But most wild animals, even if they’re curious, wouldn’t be following me around like this. Were you around when there were other people here? But that’s been a very long time. Did other people live there for a while after the kingdom fell? Did you come from them? Did you get lost? Left behind?”
He had been left behind. His allies— his friends— his family had left him behind. He prayed to whatever god would listen to an old king —an old shifter left behind in the ruins of his kingdom— that they hadn’t left him behind on purpose.
“Where is your family?” Pix asked softly. “Did they die?”
He lowered his head again, curling further into himself, unwanting to face the emotions brewing deep in his chest. It made him want to go to sleep and never wake up. But the man was nice and the man was familiar and the man —Pix, an old friend— made him want to stay present.
He found Pix in the courtyard as the man worked to pack up his stuff onto the giant blue bird that the archeologist had brought to the castle. As he watched from the cool shade of the doorway the man refilled his pouch in the old well in the center of the courtyard. He knew the water from it was cold and clear despite the heat of the day and the sand slowly reclaiming the old ruins.
“I have to head back to my home,” Pix said, tightening the straps to a bag. “But I’ll be back. I’m sure there’s plenty of stuff that I missed here.”
The fur between his shoulders rose, a feeling of dread making his stomach sink. He whined softly and the man glanced toward him. “I’ll be back, don’t worry. Then you can lead me around the halls again since you seem to know the place better than me.”
He watched as Pix mounted the dodo —the man had called it Winchester before, he was pretty sure— and adjusted his cloak, pulling the hood up. He watched as the man guided the bird through the archway and out of the courtyard. He watched as the old friend walked deeper into the mesa with its blood-red sand.
And it felt wrong, Pix was his friend. His friend was leaving. He was alone again in the ruins of his home. He whined again, drowning in the loneliness of a life long gone.
When the sun was setting, the shadows stretching long and dark over the sand and buildings, he stood, shaking his fur. The emptiness weighed him down— made him want to lay back down— made him want to sleep and never wake up— make him want to be covered in sand and become one with his broken kingdom. But he moved forward and followed the path the man had taken.
It was strange to leave the broken palace behind— to look back and watch it disappear behind the horizon. He followed the man— his friend— Pix. He left behind his kingdom with the ghosts of an old life and broken memories like glass shards long since covered in sand. He followed a man who reminded him so painfully of an old friend. He followed the soft hum of hope and home that he had thought died long ago.
Maybe it was wrong to enjoy the wind blowing through his fur that didn’t smell like crumbling ruins. It felt wrong to leave behind something that had been such a deep part of him for so long. But it felt worse to let Pix (his friend, his best man at his wedding, his friend who he thought was dead, who must be dead because it had been so long but had been standing before him and speaking and wandering the halls of his palace) go alone. He had lost everything once and he wouldn’t let it go again.
For the first time in a very long while his shape felt wrong for his soul. For the first time in a very long while magic sang through his veins and pulsed along with his heart.
Fur melted into feathers, dull nails became hooked talons, jagged teeth turned in a hooked beak, and the old king finally shifted .
Where an old brown wolf with grey fur around his muzzle ran across the red sand of the mesa a hawk flew high above the ground. He beat his wings against the air and soared upward in the cool night air, the desert temperature dropping as the sun slipped fully below the horizon.
Joel took off after where Pix had disappeared over the horizon, following him to wherever an old friend led an old king only starting to remember who he once was.