We floated between the gears.
Weightless.
Powerless.
Luna's voice still echoing.
Claiming our choices were her mechanisms.
Claiming free will was illusion.
Then something changed.
Not the gears.
Not the stars.
The wolves.
The ones floating near us.
Their bodies shifting.
Not moving.
Changing.
An older wolf—maybe forty—suddenly looked younger.
Lines fading from his face.
Gray disappearing from his hair.
He was aging backward.
Regressing.
Becoming thirty.
Then twenty.
His skin tightened, smoothed. Scars disappeared as if time rewound them. Wrinkles vanished like water evaporating. It was wrong—unnatural—watching age peel away like shedding skin.
A young wolf beside him did the opposite.
Her smooth face wrinkling.
Her dark hair graying.
She was aging forward.
Accelerating.
Becoming forty.
Then fifty.
