Wolf is coming.

I still remember that hillside—the sweet grass, the pine-scented winds, and the boy swinging his stick. We grazed in our woolly silence, watching him pace the rocks. He claimed to be "protecting" us, but we thought him a stormcloud disturbing our peace.
The day he first leapt onto a boulder screaming “Wolf!”, our hearts turned to ice. Distant village bells clanged as men charged uphill with iron forks. We huddled, trembling, yet found only butterflies dancing where fangs should’ve been. When the villagers left cursing, we tasted the boy’s laughter—bitter as wilted clover.
“Human cubs play cruel games,” muttered our eldest ewe, though I felt unease gnawing my ribs like winter hunger.
He cried wolf again at sunset. This time, we heard sluggish footsteps, saw villagers arrive with weary fury. Our lambs pressed close as the boy hurled stones at retreating backs, his giggles souring the air. “Mischief breeds wolves,” I bleated to my sister, sensing thunder in the calm.
Then came twilight’s reckoning.
We smelled it first—rotting flesh.
We felt it next—earth trembling beneath wolf-paws.
The boy’s scream pierced differently now: raw, broken. We stood frozen, hooves sinking into soil. No villagers came. No firelight split the dark.
I watched the wolf’s shadow engulf my sister. Her final cry stuck in my throat like burrs. We didn’t run—we knew running meant death. When it ended, we found the boy curled in blood-soaked dirt, weeping. Strangest of all—his tears smelled like ours: salt and hopelessness.
Now, when lambs ask about scars on my throat, I tell them:
“Trust is tender grass. Let human boots trample it once, and even spring rain can’t revive the roots.”
We still graze that hillside. The boy’s stick lies rotting under blackberry thorns. Sometimes when wind stirs the pines just so, we hear echoes—his crow-like laughter tangled with my sister’s silenced bleat.