Sometimes he still howled.
It was a part of his earliest memories: some of the men would press further into the forest, looking for signs of animal life, while his mother was one of those who lagged behind, slowed by his weight as she carried him. One by one, they lost sight of the rest of the people as the trees grew thicker and darker. Just when the forest seemed to swallow them up, his mother would tilt her head to the sky and howl.
They never had to wait long. Sometimes they would hear the others answering close by and knew they weren’t as lost as they feared. Sometimes the responding howls were far ahead, barely louder than the wind. Either way, someone always howled back.
He'd had no words, then, for the sense of peace and safety that overtook him whenever they responded. Of course, none of them did, either: words were not a thing that any of them possessed. Love was fingers carefully picking through your scalp; Education was a slap on the hand. It was all he'd known and needed until he found the egg.
When he was still a boy, a strange feeling had drawn him out to a snowy ridge not far from where his people were sleeping. There, a hard, round egg had flown to him, glowing like the moon, and bathed him in a light brighter than day. He had then seen a man, but not just any man: a Jor-El. Images appeared in his head, paired with sounds he had never heard before: “Son”, “Planet", “Explosion”, “Rocket", “Earth". Kal-El dropped to his knees, overwhelmed.
The next morning, still in a daze, he stared thoughtfully at the woman who had cared for him for as long as he could recall. “Mother.”
She smiled kindly, not understanding, and reached out to pick through his hair.
He began to change in other ways, after that point: He was stronger and faster than any of the others, and the claws of a long-toothed cat merely broke against his skin. He could have fire any time he wanted, simply by staring at where he wanted it to be. Some of the people began to keep their distance.
The herds moved. The people moved. He hung back with his mother, whose aging frame moved slower than ever. When he howled, there were fewer and fewer replies.
“Alien". That sound had come with an image of a baby cast out alone among the vast, empty skies. Kal-El wished he'd never learned this word. Even though its existence changed nothing about the people around him, it gave his newfound loneliness a terrible shape and shadow. His mother sensed his misery, but her touch brought no comfort.
Everything changed after he heard the scream. The world had grown smaller once he'd learned to fly, and now even the great mountain range was no barrier. A woman on the other side clung desperately to the upper branches of a tree, though scaling it would be no challenge to the angry bear charging towards her.
The torn carcass of a deer lay nearby. It should have been enough to distract even the hungriest bear away from a scrawny little woman; but then, as Kal-El dropped from the sky, he noticed the fresh cut on the bear's nose. A stone with a sharpened edge glinted from its landing place on the snow.
The bear’s sharp claws chipped against him as though they had struck rock. It roared and tried in vain to knock him to the ground, only to charge again when he shoved it back instead. In the end, a blast of heat at its paw finally sent it running back into the woods. When everything was over, he looked up at the woman: no doubt, once she was down from the tree, she would also run away from him.
She didn’t scream when he floated up to her and gently plucked her from the branches. Though she gaped at him during their trip to the ground, she gave no sign of any fright. Then…she spoke.
Kal-El blinked. He didn’t know these sounds she uttered, but they were certainly more like the ones from the egg than any of the grunts his people made. “Kryptonian,” he guessed.
His utterance startled her more than the flying. She pointed at him, head tilted in curiosity, and babbled yet more words.
An idea struck him. Perhaps he couldn’t put images in her mind, but he tapped his chest to call attention to himself. “Kal-El", he said, hoping that she could make the connection as he had, all those years ago.
“Ah!” The woman smiled, pointed at herself, and briefly dipped her head. “Lolo.”
By the time dawn broke, she was in his arms, jabbering and pointing excitedly at a patch of ground far below them. They landed near the mouth of a cavern, and he could hear the din of human voices within. She tugged his arm, trying to pull him towards it.
Kal-El remained where he stood. “Alien,” he said quietly, unable to explain any further.
Much like his mother, she didn’t seem to understand. She redoubled her efforts at prodding him, babbling with increasing energy.
Finally, he pried her fingers from his arm. He tapped his chest and pointed up at the sky. “Kal-El. Krypton.” Then, hoping she would comprehend, he pointed at her and at the mouth of the cave. “Lolo. Earth.”
She stared at him, frowning, then placed a hand on his chest. “Kal-El…Earth.”
He stilled.
She nodded towards the cavern again. “Lolo…Earth…Kal-El Earth.” Her hands slid up onto his shoulders, and she looked beseechingly into his eyes. “Kal-El, Lolo.”
He hesitated, his heart pounding and his gut fluttering as his eyes met hers. He reached his fingers into her hair.
Settling into his new life with her was easier than he’d expected. It didn’t take him long to begin learning the words being spoken around him, and within days, people were coming up to him and asking for fire. He was able to tell them about the egg, and about the amazing things he saw when flying. The more he spoke to them, the smaller their lingering fear of him became. Soon, even the most timid of them were embracing him as a brother and giving him their children to hold.
Still…some nights, hovering alone above the frosted canopy of the woods, he would cup his hands around his mouth and howl. He would close his eyes, listening, and then hear his wife’s voice howling back to him. She always pretended to be annoyed, afterwards: when he returned home to her, she would huff and smack him on the chest. “Wild-boy!” she would call him. Yet no matter how much she complained, she still always howled back.
END
