I whistled him when I drew my steel sword against the timber stealing enemy. It wasn’t until he sensed the fig haters that he chose to surface.

One hand firmly entwined in fast ropes, their bodies charged with theft, their steel instruments of death in their free hands, the pirates of Treeless Island were ready to board and pillage. Death, of course, and my beautiful pine ship would be part of their loot. But they had first to pass my watch dog.

I swallowed my bile. Adrenalin tastes like blood and I savagely spat my hatred of the timber pirates onto my wooden deck. Red fig seeds characterised my spit, and my fig spit was for them.

If this was to be my time I knew that my water wolf would finish the job for me and chew their stolen timbers to splinters.. He would avenge my death and sweep the pirates to their salt peter.

“Where he go?” the wooden legged fig hater challenged me. “Where that salty dog monster that eat sea fig. I dam his belly and pull plug on his life.”

The food bowl rattled and I knew my salty dog would take the bait. With a roar of hunger, up he rose from the depths. Both vessels dropped on his wake as the sea receded to bring on the dog tsunami: my salty dog water wolf.

Up, up he rose on his hind legs from his long suck of water. His shape was unmistakable; a wolf head and body salivating to the smell of fresh Treeless blood. Never had he sucked back so much of the ocean or arisen with such velocity.

As he galloped toward our ships his growl instructed me to lash my sailors in. Barking my own commands to tie them selves down I fumbled for the coil beside the life boat. My fumbling met only with a clear deck and no time for error. There was nothing to lash with.

It was then I knew my water wolf would be left to howl alone that night as I floated in the big dip waiting for the sharks to break me into fish food. My death was quick and my watery coffin sweetened by the smell of dog and sea fig.

The pirates were gone, smashed to pieces in the jaws of savage water. My ship though, remained afloat and intact but for those few souls, lost at sea, because they failed to secure their ties in time.

How my water wolf fretted when he panted back for his words of praise and a scratch behind his ear. He howled for my soul and his prolonged howling shook the ships upon the sea. Drowning in grief for his lost master my bearded wolf dog sacrificed his water life and chose to shift his guard to the land where I had lived with the woman who hated the sailor’s life.

With all the shaking force of nature at his heel, water wolf tsunamied himself high on the eastern side of Treeless Island. He surged forward trapping Treeless life inside him while he cycloned across the ocean, mounted the coast of my home land and came to heel at the feet of his dead master’s woman.

There his watery form solidified, hardened by the wooden souls of Treeless pirate families, and he took the form of a bearded wolf tree – huge, ferocious and dripping.

In my after life as a Torres Strait pigeon I visit my loyal water wolf and happily shit fig seeds on the tormented tortured souls still deep within his growling. Their pleas for mercy are silenced by the bark of wolf tree and never will they be released to rape and pillage forests again.



If you wish to join the Writers Prompt Daily simply use the above photo as a prompt and post a short story, poem or paragraph to your blog. Leave a comment and the link here so that all participants can come to you and read/comment/encourage. Story above is copyright and is Megan Bayliss' writing around the above picture prompt.