01.24.2016
The moon’s disappearance from the sky was noticed by the entire town. And the next several nights were keenly watched by astronomers and curious folks alike. Several journeyed high up into the Knuckles to have a clearer vantage above the clouds and be nearer to the stars. But the wolf did not make an appearance for any of these nights.
Word eventually came in from coastal towns that the tires had stopped. Fishing had been majorly disrupted, but shipping was now in a weird place as well. Some places were now permanently reachable, while others were permanently out of reach. The total effects of losing the tides would take much longer to know completely. Towns now stranded were exploring moving closer to the now-stationary shoreline. And weather patterns were in flux as well.
After a week of diligent, but unrewarding sky-watching, the wolf made an appearance. He raced from the deep dark of the solar system and blazed a path in the sky like a comet, long silver tail trailing. The astronomers on the Knuckles had just received a new telescope, which they’d rigged up to get a better view of the planets. With it, they tracked the wolf and he was grown in size even more.
They guessed he’d been feasting on moons of planets further out, which they had no possibility of seeing, even with their new and powerful telescope. The wolf orbited the sun once, gathering speed and then flung itself at Mercury. The planet gave under the wolf’s weight, and careened out of its orbit, wheeling towards Venus. The two celestial bodies collided and molten rock fanned out as the planetary bodies ruptured into thousands of fragments.
The wolf drank the magma down like water, as much of it as he could before it cooled and turned into glassy rock. The planets’ fragments circled one another in eccentric orbits. Pieces smashed into one another and splintered into even smaller pieces. The wolf, glowing again from the molten planet he’d swallowed down, grabbed large chunks in his teeth and pulled them out into the far reaches of the solar system.
He never looked comfortable as he was close to the sun, so he must have taken the planet carrion far from the sun where he could eat it in relative darkness. Every few hours, he would return for another helping of the planet-wreck and drag it off. He enjoyed the spoils of these two planets for a week. Growing each day and requiring more of the planets at each feeding period.