Friends,

For those of you who don’t know him, let me introduce you to Crippled Wolf.

Crippled Wolf first came to me in a dream on Friday, October 29, 2004, one morning after a total lunar eclipse.

I first shared his story on Walhydra’s Porch four years later.

In the dream, Crippled Wolf is a man just entering his sagehood.

To his kitchen door comes an athletic youth of twenty or so, fleeing from werewolf hunters.

Although Crippled Wolf’s friends, sitting inside at the table, try to warn him away from the youth, he knows immediately that this young man is to become one of his lovers—even though they will probably never make physical love.

The unnamed youth holds Crippled Wolf’s eyes calmly, despite the danger of his flight. They need no words for Crippled Wolf to understand everything.

Before him stands a werewolf, yet almost nothing of human lore about such creatures is true. These are, in fact, wolves who have been cursed—or so it seems to them—into living as human beings, save for the night of the full moon. Only then can they return to their true forms. Only then can they remember all that they know.

“Make me one of you,” Crippled Wolf whispers.

“You are one of us. Come with me.”

As they flee, the full moon rises.

The tattoo is on my right forearm, done by Bryan Dewberry of Inksmith & Rogers, Riverside, Jacksonville, FL, on Samhain, 2016.

I gave it to myself as a gift, having retired after sixteen years as a senior librarian and staff training coordinator the previous month.

And so it is.

Blessèd Be,
Michael

,