Night

By Yuan Yihuan, Class 1, Junior One, Shunde No.1 Middle School Experimental School, Shunde District, Foshan, Guangdong

The setting sun cast its last feeble threads of red light upon a thin bank of flame-colored cloud, then toppled down behind the mountains. The dark-red afterglow grew smaller and smaller; it resisted, it struggled, but all in vain. The merciless darkness nibbled away at it and devoured it bit by bit. That last streak of red at the horizon contorted its body and faded, little by little, into nothing.

The sky slowly deepened to thick black. In the west a few faint stars glimmered pale white, appearing and vanishing in the night. Now and then they slipped silently away into the darkness, then at some unnoticed moment peeked out again from thin clouds. Like the night-blooming cereus, they flashed a few rays of light all their own in the dark before diving back into the blackness. The bright white moon hid unobtrusively behind the clouds, as if veiled behind a thin layer of white gauze — a plate of pure white jade, luminous and flawless.

The night grew darker still, and everything on earth turned dim and lightless. Below the cliff nearest the moon, in a shadowy little wood, several pairs of gleaming green eyes flashed, warily watching every movement in the grove. They are the children favored by the god of night, who granted them bright eyes for the darkness — this is their kingdom, and now is their hour.

"Rustle, rustle, rustle..." A ghostly breeze swept through the wood, and a few fragile, tattered dead leaves scattered up with the wind, one of them drifting down beside the roots of a long-rotted tree.

Suddenly a shadow flashed past; the eerie wind muffled its breath and its footfalls. Its paws trod on heaps of withered yellow leaves, their sound merging with the rustling of the wind. The creature, strong muscles taut, left a stray white hair or two behind as it ran, its two glowing eyes shooting through the wood like meteors — at the speed of the wind, one could no longer tell what animal it was. Just then the bright moon brushed aside its veil and poured its white light freely upon the mortal world, bathing the earth in silvery moonlight. Those gleaming green eyes blinked, as if sensing the soft silver light, and, as if granted a kind of salvation, the creature leapt up and forward.

A white wolf leapt onto the cliff. It sat there in proud solitude, surveying all around with the air of a king lording over the world, then gazed toward the bright moon, so conspicuous in the darkness. It sat down, puffed out its chest, drew a deep breath and let out a long howl — "Awooo—".

The white wolf's soft howl rose into the sky, its faintly trembling close seeming to pour something out; its swiftly falling pitch raged as if it hated the hardship of staying alive. Its helplessness before the world, the mercilessness of the times, the laws of this earth — endless unsaid words all seemed to be contained in that wordless outpouring, expressing its pain to the utmost.

Then soft howls came from every direction — from the low slope far away, from beside the nearby grove, from below the cliff — as if in answer to one another, wolf howls rising one after another, telling their pain to the bright moon. The moon listened quietly to their outpouring and, without a stir, scattered its light over the earth, as if to comfort them.

Long after, the sky turned from thick ink to pale ink, and who knows whose rooster began to crow. With the crowing, the night came to an end.

(Supervising teacher: Yi Zhengbing)