Dawn peeked through the trees, scattering the stars and staining the sky’s black velvet. Hush watched for a time, waited to see the fingers of purple and pink reaching, straining to reach the opposite horizon. When the first beam of real sunlight broke through the naked autumn branches, she rose from her sleeping place, the earth still cold and raw under her feet from clearing it the night before. She’d taken to sleeping against the naked ground at night, but with fall hanging heavy and damp in the air, it was difficult to get warm even in the sunshine.
She moved through her forest on quiet paws, the sun rising at her back, gentle hills rising ahead as the trees thinned out around her. The pines gradually faded into low shrub and dense underbrush, prickly grass between her toes; the air grew heavier as she neared the swamps. Here she slowed – this wet place filled with its strange creatures. Hush wasn’t afraid, though. It wasn’t her forest, but she knew this place, too.
She sank almost to her belly, the sounds of her shifting body drowned by the alien sounds of the swamp. She was hungry, but she was alone, and quite tired. Her wanderlust was insatiable, and she’d been on the move constantly for some time. She needed to hunt smart. So she waited, and she listened. Frogs croaked somewhere off in the murky waters up ahead, something larger (a boar, maybe?) was pushing through the scrub nearby, but in the end her meal delivered itself.
A snake drifted almost lazily through the grass, undoubtedly making its way toward an open patch of sunshine somewhere away from the chilly air. Had she been less hungry, she might have felt guilty about interrupting its morning ritual, but today she was a creature of need. She dove at the snake when it came near, planning to crush its midsection like a twig. Fast as she was, it was faster, and a wave of heat radiated from her leg even as the snake went limp between her teeth.
The heat became pain while she tried to eat, and her discomfort only grew as time passed. Her heart began to race, and the pain dogged her mercilessly when she moved to rise from the ground again. No single bite had ever hurt this much. A wave of dizziness brought back what she had managed to eat, and for a moment all she could do was stare at her undigested breakfast as her vision wobbled. Fear seized her then. She forced herself to move. Sen, Sen will know what to do. And if not him, then Moth. Taviora. I have to get home. She wobbled out of the swamp and back to the forest, but by the time the cypress trees had turned to pine again, she was barely even limping. When her leg gave out under her, the only thing she could do was scream.
Home suddenly seemed very far away.
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