A Walk With Bishop

       The wolf kept its head low.  Humans were not accustomed to an ever changing horror.  They slipped into routine easily; one that got them into trouble in the first place. 

     It paused.  The intersection of trees branched off into three directions of clear terrain and yet it was far from clear.  Wandering beasts of natural varieties roamed.

     Bishop swished its tale.  The crack of twigs behind it made him turn, stop and sit. 

     Moonlight fell across its metallic black face.  It reflected rainbows of color that wasted away into shadows.  Copper lips parted, revealed pin strips of silver teeth and then it looked beyond the heavens into eternity.  The question was not as simple as it might have felt it.  Humans were brief visitors to them.  Their time was short, a mayfly existence that might be shot down in one projectile piece of searing lead.

     It frowned, a sagging metallic loop of flesh at each corner of its mouth, and then shrugged its pencil thin shoulders.  Perhaps it would not be as bad as it imagined.  Humans were a mystery and in the same light completely predictable creatures.  They do tend to surprise every once in a great while.  Most of them hold true to a list of values and morals.  Others lived off of demented fragments of past and revenge.

     These woods were no ordinary woods, it thought, lowering its head to an impossible angle that stretched its wiry neck.  It was full of exits, openings and twists and turns.  They just could not see them with their mortal eyes.  It limited their vision. 

      It was a grotesque display of power to simply remove the forest and beasts from the skyline.  One thing was certain; this shape was quickly growing old in standards of an old suit.  It needed something else to stretch into.  It had been at least everything twice, maybe three times, everything except a human.  It slowed.  Well, there was nothing against the idea, but still the thought of parading around in human skin was a nightmare of possibilities.

     A shimmer enveloped it.  A bend of light absorbed it.  Beneath layers of color reconstruction had begun and as it neared completion the pocket of energy grew.  What emerged was an astounding creation of harmonic beauty and mastery.  Bits of shimmer fell away from long white hair.  It seemed to flow on and on down a sturdy and wide back of black leather.  As it turned a pair of glowing gray eyes blinked, looked with an utmost hypnotic ecstasy locked within their charming pools and then he turned back a full man.

              "That is better," he said, his voice a rich caramel splendor that shifted attention.

     The world opened to him.  Then he swallowed.  Washed in a haunting memory of the current status of the world, his surveyed the city as it burnt furiously.  One city looked just like the next one.  There were no buildings to see just piles of rubble that for some reason continued to smolder.  Cars were hunks of twisted metal.  What still stood was far from unscathed.  Though these few acts of greatness were not as rare as once believed they were still a joy to come across in line of all this destruction.