The darkness had never tasted so sweet.

Freedom, however irresponsibly forged,was a pleasure pleasant as honey on the tongue. It bathed the thoughts and being of the small, alabaster-and-brown female as she stretched her legs beneath her, racing as swiftly as she could away from the forests of Taviora. She knew that, come morning, Eden would set out to find her and return her once more to his home. He would not take into account that Fiammetta might have other plans. The cool wind blew soothingly into her face, ruffling her chest-fur, plastering her ears to her skull and chasing from her bodice the heat of the day that had seemed even more oppressive in the still, hot forest depths. In the distance she could spy the pale orange of the dawn filtering into view, and she silently cursed it, for it would both blow her cover and send her panting into the shadows to escape its sweltering clutches. However, for the moment, stars still lingered above her head and the bowl of night was only just beginning to fade.

As the female sped along, the landscape changed around her, morphing from a myriad of trees and forests into a flat, grassy landscape that seemed to stretch on for eternity, its constant layout broken only by a few stunted bushes to her left, and a large expanse of water to her right. Her heart began to swell with the simple joy of running; of being a hunter afraid of none. Even the deer, for all their swiftness and agility, could never run for the basic fun of it, for they did not know when they would require all their wits and strength to outmatch some hungry predator. What a waste that must be for them! Thankfully, Fiam did not have to ponder on such things, for she was no deer. She did not know the meaning of fear, and the definition of cowardice was not in her vocabulary. Foolish as that sometimes proved to be, it meant that Fiam spent the vast majority of her life happy and pursuing her own outcomes, living only for herself. Pack life had bored her and, despite her ambitions to one day lead, she found that she did not mind putting off such fantasies until she had thoroughly milked her juvenile existence of its every secret pleasure. Grinning to herself, she shut her mismatched eyes and tasted the breeze.

Her paws ceased their motion so suddenly that she almost lost her balance and fell. Thankfully though, she managed to right herself and came up short in a cloud of dust and uprooted grass stems. A clod of earth stuck to her ear, but she did not shake it off. Instead, she eyed the darkness around her, searching for the inky black shape she knew was lurking at the edges of her vision. There!. She made out his gargantuan frame gliding in her direction. Those bewitching emerald eyes caught her own and she suddenly knew he had seen her. It was too late to run. With a growl that shook her tiny frame, she splayed her paws beneath her and curled her tail above her back, letting every strand of fur on her body come up in readiness. Her eyes narrowed to angry slits and her breath made a vaporous cloud in the air, further serving to exaggerate her size and strength.

Perhaps she was just unlucky, for she doubted very much that many wolves got to enjoy the company of the black hellion in as many weeks. Raising her voice, she barked across the ever-narrowing gap between them, “If you choose to leave now, I won't harm you!” Spoken with the careless vanity and self-confidence of youth, in another case it may have been almost comical. However, in the current circumstances, amusing it certainly was not.


Fiammetta - female – No Home – No Family – 4YO – 22 inches, 32 pounds