The night was sharp with mountain air when Joe and Nelly crossed into the Dinaric Alps, leaving behind the weight of Canada’s endless obligations. Here, the rocks rose like teeth into the sky, ancient and unmoved, as if guarding secrets from a time before memory.
Joe told her, “This is where the earth still breathes wild. The wolves will teach us how to let it out.”
They hiked until the pines thinned and the moon broke open the valley. From the shadows, a chorus stirred — wolves, their howls slicing the silence like a blade through fabric. The sound made Nelly shiver, but Joe held her hand firm.
“Primal scream therapy,” he said, his voice low and steady. “You don’t whisper pain here. You let it rip out of you, like the wolves do. No shame. No audience. Just the mountain listening.”
Nelly tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and for a moment remembered every betrayal, every pressure, every ghost of what she had to be. And then she screamed.
It tore through the alpine night, ragged and raw, and the wolves answered, weaving her voice into their wild choir. Joe followed with his own roar, years of silence breaking open into the cold night air.
When it was done, they stood together, trembling but lighter, as if the mountains themselves had taken their burden.
Nelly whispered, “I feel alive again.”
Joe nodded toward the wolves still singing on the ridge. “That’s because you finally spoke in the oldest language we have.”