The square was quiet, bathed in the faint glow of Guardian Hill, where the pulse of the city’s lights rippled like a slow heartbeat. Cosmo found himself drawn to a gnarled old tree at the edge of the stone plaza. Sitting beneath it, legs stretched out like old roots, was a scarred armadillo. His face, lined with age and toughened by sun and battle, bore stories of its own. A deep scar ran over his left eye, leaving it clouded and milky, but the other gleamed sharp and bright.
Cosmo, ever curious, approached, his paws brushing dust from his fur. “Good evening, sir,” he said softly. “Why do you sit here alone?”
The armadillo cracked a grin—one yellow tooth peeking from the corner of his mouth. “Alone? Nah, pup. I’m sittin’ with the oldest company there is.” He gestured to the wind whispering through the leaves. “Nature.”
Cosmo tilted his head. “But you’re in the city.”
The armadillo chuckled, a sound like gravel shifting. “Aye. But my mind’s elsewhere. Listen close, pup, and I’ll tell you a tale. Maybe you’ll understand.”
“I was nine when my grandfather handed me a rifle and told me to earn my keep. A skinny boy in short shorts, barefoot and sunburnt, with nothing but a pack of dogs and ten bullets in my pocket. My grandfather’s farm stretched for miles in the northern territories of South Africa—land where the earth bakes red, and the rivers run thick with crocodiles. Lions roamed the nights, black mambas slid through the grass unseen, and you’d hear a leopard cough from the trees when dusk settled.
“By midday, my grandfather would nap. A man of hard hands and quiet faith, he worked the land at dawn and built woodwork by dusk, pausing only to pray for those who needed it. He’d hand me the .22 rifle, its metal warm from the sun, and he’d say, ‘Tonight’s dinner, boy. Make it count.’
“I’d check the magazine, pack my water, and whistle for the dogs—four of them, all teeth and loyalty. There was no sitting in the house. For a boy, stillness was a sin. So I’d march out into that vast, unforgiving land, the sun a weight on my back and the sweat rolling in streaks.
“I remember the quiet. Not like city quiet. This was the stillness of something alive, something watching. You walked with purpose in those lands because to stop was to invite danger. Snakes coiled beneath the rocks, ready to strike. A lion’s shadow might stretch across the dry riverbeds, daring you to move. The wind carried whispers, warnings you learned to listen for.
“There were days I’d find my mark—pheasants, helmeted guineafowl, sometimes a small buck if the dogs flushed it out. The rifle kicked, and the sound would scatter the birds, send the echoes bouncing across the savannah. My hands would shake afterward—not from fear, but from the weight of it. Life taken to put food on the table.
“And there were days when I came back empty-handed, my legs aching, my face streaked with dust, the dogs panting beside me. I’d walk into the farmhouse, my head hung low. My grandfather would nod, as if to say, ‘Tomorrow, boy. Tomorrow you’ll learn.’
“But no matter the day, the land was the same. It humbled me. It challenged me. And it healed me.”
The armadillo paused, his voice dropping lower, rougher. “See, pup, in the years since, I’ve lived in cities like this one—places that hum with machines, full of people who’ve forgotten the rhythm of the earth beneath their feet. They chase after things that don’t matter, tied to devices and rules and nonsense. And when they break, they don’t know why.”
He turned his good eye to Cosmo. “Nature heals, pup. You strip away the noise, the lights, the chaos, and you’re left with what’s real. The wind. The earth. The stillness. You see the laws of nature and realize they’ve been there longer than any city wall. You learn your place in it. And you find yourself.”
Cosmo, silent now, felt the weight of the armadillo’s words. “And do you still seek it?”
The armadillo’s scarred face softened into something almost kind. “Every chance I get. I still walk with my dogs, same as I did as a boy. I don’t hunt anymore. There’s no need. But I walk because it reminds me of who I am. The land’s still there, waiting. It always is.”
He leaned back against the tree, closing his good eye as the wind rustled the branches above. “Find your stillness, pup. When the world spins too fast, that’s where you’ll find your strength.”
Cosmo sat beside the armadillo, listening to the wind weave through the square. The Guardian Galaxy may have been the future, but at that moment, he understood something timeless—there is power in stillness. There is clarity in nature.
The armadillo’s words lingered like echoes of an old hymn, carried on the wind.
