Zero Sum

The Wolves Man

He lived alone in the Siberian mountains. Him and his pack. When they would hunt they would share the kill. They would coordinate themselves without words. Having a connection that transcended species.

The name and language of his native people are now lost to history. 

There was a story that his people tell. When his tribe was still young. They were still weak. Having been pushed into the mountain wilderness. After their tribal lands were stolen by the invaders. Many of their people began starving. The cold of winter was approaching. Then the wolves came.

Many of the tribe were taken away by the vicious carnivores. However. Instead of being enraged with the wolves, they in time came to be grateful. Being that the wolves unceasing attack forced their tribe to become strong. 

The weak culled and only the powerful remained. Left to their own in the lonely mountains. The tribe turned their focus inwards. Teaching themselves profound meditation technique. They learned to talk to their own bodies down to their very last cell. With this ability they could teach their body not to be hungry for months on end. To keep moving forward even when it was ready to collapse.

This ability was so powerful that, even if they were to pass their hand through the fire, they would not get burned. Because they would tell their skin cells not to.

In time the tribe would take back their territory from the wolves. But not by exterminating them. Having known the pain of losing a homeland. Rather the tribe entered into a symbiotic relationship with the animals. The pack would help hunt down and kill prey. The tribe would build and maintain shelters and share their food stockpiles with the wolves.

Eventually the two species became one united pack.

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It has been centuries now. The tribe is no more. They either assimilated into the modern society, or died off. Neglecting their meditation, their bodies started to become weak again. Only the lone man remains, but having no one to pass on his secrets to. His tribe's secrets will die with him. Only his wolves keep him company nowadays. Descended from the wolves of his ancestors, they remain loyal and still recognize the man as their pack leader.

Their is only silence in the mountains. Plenty of time to look inward. The days become years. He has all but forgotten how to communicate with language. More accurate to say he has forgotten how to communicate in human language.

One day the silence is broken. There is a blinding flash of light. Then the sounds of an explosion. A crash is heard from further down the mountains. When he arrives at the source of the disturbance. He finds a crashed plane. Having himself never left these mountains he has no way of knowing what it's purpose is. Only from having learned about such things from others in his tribe who would integrate with the villages down the mountains.

The other tribe members no longer visit him. They tried to convince him to come down with them. He felt he was too far gone from the human way of living. Preferring the stillness of the mountains, over the commotion of the humans. Slowly but surely over generations the tribe, which was once great, disintegrated into the normal population and vanished. Forgetting their mountain ways and preferring the ease and comfort of modern living.

There are no survivors amongst the crashed wreckage. Save for one. He almost misses him but when one of his wolves starts gnawing at a carcass, and the carcass fights back, enough to frighten off the wolf, the man's indifference turns into curiosity. A boy emerges. Perhaps the word emerge is inaccurate. He is all but dead, but the man's curiosity wins out and in the end he decides to take the boy under his care.

The man and the boy have no way of communicating with language. Both are from different nations and tongues to begin with. Aside from that, there's the fact that the man has all but forsaken human language.

One day when the boy starts to fall behind the pack. The man lets him know that he will not tolerate weakness. By letting his wolves take turns gnawing away pieces of the boy's flesh. Message received. The boy never falls behind again. 

Using only signs of the hands. The man begins to teach the boy how to survive in the white winter. How to earn the cooperation of the wolves. And eventually, about the art of his tribe's meditation techniques.

The boy is intrigued over how the man receives no scratches despite the harsh terrain. Also how he is able to pass his hand over the fire without getting burnt. 

It takes much practice and many failures to fully learn the tribal ways. When the boy neglects his training, the man lets wolves attack. There is a saying in his tribe, it would roughly translate to; to live is pain, push through until you cannot anymore, because when you give up that means your death. Over many years the boy learns how to talk to his body and exercise control over it.

There arises a disagreement between the man and the boy. The boy having grown up, wants to return to the world he used to know, perhaps now with his gifts he is able to help the population also better himself. The man warns that the people have grown ever more apathetic and will be most unwelcoming to the boy.

But the boy will not be deterred. He wants to find the culprits who shot down the plane who killed his family. Again the man warns that revenge is ill suited to the ways of the mountain. In fact if he persists in harboring revenge on his mind he will no longer be welcome in the pack. Undeterred, the boy is banished from the mountains.

The boy is not fully aware of it himself. But he is much mightier than a regular human to begin with. Even without all his years of training. The man recognized it when he first found the boy among the wreckage. The boy fought back with more power than a boy his size should be able to muster. Flinging away his wolves like they were snowflakes.

The man never acknowledged to the boy his suspicions. Instead he trained him and instilled within him a strong inner self. Realizing that their was power within the boy, that if misused, could turn him into bane of society. But if the boy was correctly instructed, he could become a leader and perhaps even a hero to the world.

The boy would occasionally return to the mountains. The man was nowhere to be found. He would find you instead. And only if he deemed you worthy of an audience with him. The boy would only see the man if he returned to the mountains in the same way he had been found. With minimal protection from the cold weather, lightly clothed and nearly dead up in the mountains.

In time the boy would continue to learn from the man new ways to harness his unique abilities. To control his gifts rather than to be controlled by them.

But the man never revealed to the boy the real reason that plane had crashed that day.