Inspired by a wonderful conversation with my spiritual canine-brother-in-rotundity  hamiltonchallenger;

& based on this lovely painting commission by Karrot:

a furry fantasy flash fiction.

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At the Weirdest-conceivable Hour
By
Scribe Glosynge Woulf

That distinguished doyen of the para-scholastic circuit of Avant-traditionalist Theological Magicks, the distinguished yet ®e©lusive Scribe, Lycantheurge of the Southern Blue Agate Mountains, hastily attired himself in his not-so-distinguished and typically over-snug pair of heart-patterned undies as he clunkily thrusted his tubby habitus out of bed with an inevitable chubby thunk–once again, at the weirdest-conceivable hour.

With a stumbling, clumsy double-hop, and an extra fumble-and-a-half, the wolf finished struggling the drawing of his drawers up over his exposed fuzzy goods while retrieving the remainder of the sartorial minimum for exhibiting some nominal decency, scooping-up and flinging-on his scholar-garb--an almost-autonomic however soundly absurd commitment to ceremony, a still-yet abridged ritual which elided attention to the front buttons of his tattered gown–as his mind hurried ahead of him in his frenetic scurry of seemingly exigent purpose.

He single-mindedly, or absentmindedly, hiked his warbling frame with hurried digs of his stalwart cane, propelling himself out the hermitage's vestibule and launching himself with micrometrical gallops into the quick drifts of crisply rarefied air enrobing the mountain landing that sprawled ahead, a high seat beneath the capacious autumnal firmament.

For months, the obsessive-compulsive academician had mentally scoured the topological calculi of his latest experimental aerotheurgic contrivance; yet permitted himself but a fleeting meditative caesura between the final double-checks of his novel, theoretical postulative mathemes and the first trial-run.

His short tail wafted in scraggly rustles, stirred either from the fat waddle of his rump steadying his tilted stance or by the first whirlings of cooled air circumscribing his fluttering fur, as he benedicted the coming of the squall with harsh, staccato signings-of-paw, the rabidly forceful intent of which threatened his precarious balance. With a flourish intended as some mimesis of the menacing marcato of the conductor--but which, more accurately, cut a comical silhouette as the overhang of his belly rebounded off the waist of his underwear in unartful, jiggling slaps--he pointed his cane, brandishing the ambulatory aid like an accusation, at the volunteer practice dummy, the hapless Karrot.

At last, in a sudden rally of uncharacteristic grace, as if proffering compensation to the Divine for the preceding display of anti-choreography, the wolf dove into his final pounce with convicted finesse, his patched overcoat flowing behind him with wild freedom like a frayed banner ecstatically signalling the end of battle. The open sky seized in transfixed electric spatters, spangles, and ribbons for a stuttered moment; resplendent arcings of charged, banded ether rent and constellated the strata upwards as they forked from the bolt transpiercing the distance between the tip of the wolf’s enchanted cane and poor Karrot.

For a frozen instant, the panoramic whole of the highlands’ horizon bellowed in miraculous glowings–the ephemeral capture of how the wolf landed his target.

In the isolation of the arcadian retreat, and at the weirdest-conceivable hour, likely not another creature had glimpsed the sign of the New Magick; yet Scribe, now hunched and panting, wore with all due perverseness his inimitably askew, goofy grin as he remembered the time he signed his name in the stars.