- Jan 4, 2024
- 128
- 37
- 28
The forest is calm.
What wind rustles its leaves is cool and refreshing, scented with sweet summer blooms and the promise of prey. The ground is soft with rain-dappled grasses, the smattering of fallen leaves crunching satisfyingly under-paw. It's comfortable... and familiar... She wanders with wide, sun-bright eyes, scouring the quilting of colors as if it is her first time seeing them. Vibrant greens, hydrating blues, warm sepia tones of the trees. It's home, a part of her says, eager and at ease.
Invigorated steps travel the narrow paths formed by moons of paws treading them and only as she rounds the bend to a wave of reeking darkness does the feeling of eyes on her back finally register. There are others here... She knows they're there but her head refuses to turn, to confront them. She knows who they are by the sounds of their snickering grins.... the weight of their gaze. Their names... A voice whispers urgently to her as her feet start moving forward, Their names.... The sea of inky blankness draws closer and even as she wills herself not to draw any nearer, her feet don't stop in their dedicated marching.
She wants to ask them who they are that pursue her but her mouth runs dry at the sensation of their closeness... why are they getting closer? They're just at the end of her hair's length... just out of real touch but close enough to be sensed. The edge of the sea of wind-swept emerald ends and she stops, precariously close despite the way her nerves scream to flee. What is this...? It looks like the night sky.
Who are they, a persistent voice continues, Who did this?
Her brows furrow, confusion drawing creases in awkward spaces on her face, Did.... what? Without her will to do so, her head turns to stare down the river of blackness, spotting the glimmering of two stars in the distance. They are beautiful, gleaming.... impossibly bright against the backdrop of night. "Aren't they pretty?" Her chin tilts down in a hesitant nod, daffodil eyes transfixed on the spot where they seem to grow... bigger and brighter.... blindingly so. "Why not get a closer look?"
The solid comfort of green-leaf's floor is gone.
The world falls away and with a wild, spiraling tumble, she stumbles into the dark, swallowed by it and left stranded to float there as the heat of the stars grow hotter and hotter against her pelt. As they take up more and more of this suffocating darkness and push it away. It draws nearer... and nearer... until it is the only thing can see. Yellow-white like fresh daisies.... but sharper than a rose's thorns where it cuts clean paths across her fur, as if the streaks of light themselves are sharpened to claw-points.
The roar of the wind of the entire universe feels like it rushes past her ears, tugging at her every which way with a force she'd thought unimaginable. Who hurt you?
Tear-soaked eyes blink against the searing bright, a small whimper the first sound she can summon herself to make; an answer, "The Dark..."
The feeling of falling rattles her body from its fitful slumber, fawn fur stood on end- the dampness at her cheeks is real. The shredded bedding where one good forepaw had struggled to find a grip on the dirt to wake her... it's real too. The heavy rise and fall of her chest, the panted breathing stinking of fear... These are all her. Doecry draws in a shaky breath, feeling the tightness of her throat threatening a mangled sort of sob- It had all felt real.
It had to be real.
An answer hidden in fuzzy memory, in hardly-clear details. It filters back in the shape of an uncaring stare, the striping of a shadowy watcher at the edge of safety. The pressure and sudden weightlessness that had followed... and then nothing. Sniveling and burying her nose under the crook of her paw, sun-drop eyes swim with a selfish grief for herself. Pity. Because she didn't deserve it... and still here she was anyways.
The tell-tale shifting of paws just a small distance away reminds her of the drawn-out torture of her circumstances, of the agonizing touch of feather-gentle paws and a sorrowful, earthy stare that begs her understanding. "I'm just trying to help, sweetpea." Anxious and fearful, her lips draw back in a sharp, warning hiss- she is all bark... none of the bite of her mother despite her posturing... and no strength to fight with anyways. Still, the hurt informs her choices, encourages her to spit and scramble to escape just to end up no where. Just the end up bandaged and hushed and coaxed to sleep.
For all the drama of what little fight she puts up, the fight against her exhaustion is not struggled so sorely against. As her eyelids grow heavy and sleep comes crawling back again, she manages a small whisper, a confession, a tiny detail:
'It's Dark..."
What wind rustles its leaves is cool and refreshing, scented with sweet summer blooms and the promise of prey. The ground is soft with rain-dappled grasses, the smattering of fallen leaves crunching satisfyingly under-paw. It's comfortable... and familiar... She wanders with wide, sun-bright eyes, scouring the quilting of colors as if it is her first time seeing them. Vibrant greens, hydrating blues, warm sepia tones of the trees. It's home, a part of her says, eager and at ease.
Invigorated steps travel the narrow paths formed by moons of paws treading them and only as she rounds the bend to a wave of reeking darkness does the feeling of eyes on her back finally register. There are others here... She knows they're there but her head refuses to turn, to confront them. She knows who they are by the sounds of their snickering grins.... the weight of their gaze. Their names... A voice whispers urgently to her as her feet start moving forward, Their names.... The sea of inky blankness draws closer and even as she wills herself not to draw any nearer, her feet don't stop in their dedicated marching.
She wants to ask them who they are that pursue her but her mouth runs dry at the sensation of their closeness... why are they getting closer? They're just at the end of her hair's length... just out of real touch but close enough to be sensed. The edge of the sea of wind-swept emerald ends and she stops, precariously close despite the way her nerves scream to flee. What is this...? It looks like the night sky.
Who are they, a persistent voice continues, Who did this?
Her brows furrow, confusion drawing creases in awkward spaces on her face, Did.... what? Without her will to do so, her head turns to stare down the river of blackness, spotting the glimmering of two stars in the distance. They are beautiful, gleaming.... impossibly bright against the backdrop of night. "Aren't they pretty?" Her chin tilts down in a hesitant nod, daffodil eyes transfixed on the spot where they seem to grow... bigger and brighter.... blindingly so. "Why not get a closer look?"
The solid comfort of green-leaf's floor is gone.
The world falls away and with a wild, spiraling tumble, she stumbles into the dark, swallowed by it and left stranded to float there as the heat of the stars grow hotter and hotter against her pelt. As they take up more and more of this suffocating darkness and push it away. It draws nearer... and nearer... until it is the only thing can see. Yellow-white like fresh daisies.... but sharper than a rose's thorns where it cuts clean paths across her fur, as if the streaks of light themselves are sharpened to claw-points.
The roar of the wind of the entire universe feels like it rushes past her ears, tugging at her every which way with a force she'd thought unimaginable. Who hurt you?
Tear-soaked eyes blink against the searing bright, a small whimper the first sound she can summon herself to make; an answer, "The Dark..."
The feeling of falling rattles her body from its fitful slumber, fawn fur stood on end- the dampness at her cheeks is real. The shredded bedding where one good forepaw had struggled to find a grip on the dirt to wake her... it's real too. The heavy rise and fall of her chest, the panted breathing stinking of fear... These are all her. Doecry draws in a shaky breath, feeling the tightness of her throat threatening a mangled sort of sob- It had all felt real.
It had to be real.
An answer hidden in fuzzy memory, in hardly-clear details. It filters back in the shape of an uncaring stare, the striping of a shadowy watcher at the edge of safety. The pressure and sudden weightlessness that had followed... and then nothing. Sniveling and burying her nose under the crook of her paw, sun-drop eyes swim with a selfish grief for herself. Pity. Because she didn't deserve it... and still here she was anyways.
The tell-tale shifting of paws just a small distance away reminds her of the drawn-out torture of her circumstances, of the agonizing touch of feather-gentle paws and a sorrowful, earthy stare that begs her understanding. "I'm just trying to help, sweetpea." Anxious and fearful, her lips draw back in a sharp, warning hiss- she is all bark... none of the bite of her mother despite her posturing... and no strength to fight with anyways. Still, the hurt informs her choices, encourages her to spit and scramble to escape just to end up no where. Just the end up bandaged and hushed and coaxed to sleep.
For all the drama of what little fight she puts up, the fight against her exhaustion is not struggled so sorely against. As her eyelids grow heavy and sleep comes crawling back again, she manages a small whisper, a confession, a tiny detail:
'It's Dark..."
