Issue 158 November 2026

Once there was a wolf who swallowed a star, and in his belly burned a fire so defiled it scorched him from inside.

His name was Jealousy—but we shall call him Grotto, for that is the name his pack knew him by. He lived among the Pack of Narrow Valleys, sixteen strong and ever-growing, their territory a treacherous maze of mountain passes and sinuous streams. At twilight, stars crested the peaks offering silent guidance, and Squall, the pack’s one-eyed matriarch, treasured the brightest light most of all.

She would listen. And Grotto would snarl.

Always that star, always the guide, always the force leading the leader through their undulating territory—when the skies clouded and hid the brightest star from sight, Squall refused to move the pack, bedding them down among balsamroot and sagebrush.

Grotto scoffed in secret. A leader does not hang their decisions on a piece of the sky, he thought one dusk, as Squall stared to the heavens.

We should travel south, Grotto said, pawing the earth. Every pup knows mule deer migrate toward the grass.

North by northwest, Squall said, and Grotto—hungry as the rest of them—had no choice but to follow.

He tucked his head and trailed the mule deer herd, resentment coiling under his coarse fur. He bristled when Squall whuffed orders. He snapped at packmates who crept too close. Night by night, the brightest star seared Grotto’s eyes as he trudged at the back of the pack.

You are my enemy, he thought, seething. You are the only thing Squall respects.

Gorged on venison, the Pack of Narrow Valleys slumbered, and Grotto slipped through the bed of a dry creek to a plateau fringed with gentian. Stars glimmered overhead.

Grotto bared his teeth. That brightest light, the false pack leader, taunted him.

He tensed his hindquarters and lunged for the sky. Grotto spread his jaws wide, red gums and spit-flecked maw, fangs gleaming in starlight—and snapped his teeth around the brightest star and rolled it into his throat.

He landed on four paws and licked his chops. The star slid down his gullet, one acidic, viscous slip at a time. Grotto’s fur rippled as the star leached his esophagus. It was a cool burn, the taste of rime and well-packed snow congealing in Grotto’s chest. He exhaled a plume of shimmering breath and laughed, his howl resonant.

Squall pierced him with her one-eyed stare the moment he returned.

She curled her lip. What have you done? she demanded.

Grotto clacked his jaw, swished his brushy tail, and held Squall’s golden eye steady. Done what?

Do not play the fool. I scented you up-trail, saw a shape leap into the sky—and now our guiding star is gone.

Grotto lifted his chin. I have eaten the one thing you hold above all else—now you are no more the leader than I.

Is that what you believe? Squall’s lips drew back, exposing yellowed fangs and the tremor of a growl inside her jaws. That star was our lifeline. It was the signal all elk and mule deer follow—the path that feeds our bellies!—and you have ruined it. May it ruin you the same!

She snapped at his nose—Grotto flinched—and stalked to the edge of the den site, her fur stiff as the dry grass beneath her paws. Grotto watched her go and ignored the stares and pinned ears of his packmates.

She overstates its weight, he thought. One star cannot hold so much power over life.

Grotto yawned, dug himself a shallow den, and slept through the day.

The restlessness arose first.

The star curdled in Grotto’s stomach, prodding him to his paws wherever he rested. The warmth of his packmates’ flanks was an absence that abscessed under his skin as autumn dipped its claws in frost. Bitter wind whipped Grotto’s fur as he plodded, paw by unceasing paw, behind a pack that wandered starless through the valley. Hunger strained Grotto’s stomach, but a visceral pulse stronger than starvation wriggled through his veins. The burn that had begun so cool inside his throat boiled, now, every inch of Grotto’s body tainted by a heat he could not dissipate.

He ground his teeth. He could not let Squall see—but she had abandoned him, she and the rest of the pack, their pace too fast for Grotto’s lethargic gait. He strained to catch their scent, but there was nothing: his nose was clogged with ozone, his ears packed with mistakes, his brain addled by a scalding sense of sharp, irrevocable dread.

The burn beneath his skin began to burst.

Grotto’s howl singed as white light tore through his throat and split his eyes. Starlit rays immolated his sagging fur as the swallowed star shed its prison of flesh. A silver streak arced into the sky; in the valley, Squall raised her head and howled.

The brightest star returned home, a husk of charred bones and star-singed fur discarded in its wake.

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Ⓒ Em Harriett