A true memory from The Hermit Wolf
Long before men cut lines between the stars, the heavens knew the shape of a mother wolf. Her name was Astra, the Lupine Mother. She was not feared for her fierceness, but admired for her sense of guardianship.She was the one who watched the young souls that slipped too early from their mothers’ arms.
When children were lost to the night, it was Astra who found them. She would lift them in her jaws as she would her own cubs, carry them across the dark river of the sky, and lay them gently at dawn’s edge. To the people below, the shimmer of her coat was seen as the cluster of stars we call Lupus.
The hunters of Centaurus and the serpents of Hydra feared her, for she was not bound to their wars. She belonged only to the pack of the abandoned, the unseen, the forgotten. In her presence, no soul wandered alone.
And so the old ones said: when you see the stars gathered low in the southern sky, you are seeing Astra’s breath, the Lupine Mother, still guarding the way between night and day.