There was another creature out here. Another living creature. In fact, there were creatures everywhere. Some were for meeting, some were for eating. Such was the way life went, the predators eat the prey. That’s what keeps things in their delicate balance, but sometimes things could get sticky. Could get difficult, could get different. When a grizzly bear threatens to eat you because you’re so damn small and the only hope of getting away is your running. When a bobcat thinks you’d make a good snack and you have to fight back, nearly bleeding to death in the process. Don’t make an easy meal of yourself, rule one. Don’t let yourself get eaten, rule two. Rule three? Ky would tell you when she got that far. Not like she was likely to. You could only cheat death so many times, and this cat was running short on her lives. She’d make a damn good time of things while she had the chance.
She’d been watching the sun set over the river for some time now. It wasn’t so much that the little thing had been sitting in the dark—no. It was that it had gotten dark around her. That made all the sense in the world, right? That’s what Ky thought. Why else would someone else be sitting alone in the dark? It had once been light. She had lived in the light, and now she was living in the dark. Alone in the dark, and yet there were enough living things here for her not to be afraid. No. Being afraid was silly. She was not some silly, irrational girl. She was Ky. She was out here and she was going to not only survive, she was going to thrive. The mostly grown child was going to prove them all wrong.
Ky didn’t flinch when the young man came up and started to speak. In fact, the pale girl barely gave any indication that she’d so much as heard him until her response came to her lips. Not even looking at the young man, eyes still trained on the water where the trout were swimming placidly. Fish weren’t that bright, thankfully. They didn’t have the sense to know when they were being watched by hungry eyes. Pretty eyes, of course, but a little hunger had wormed its way into Ky’s gut. “Not hunting. Fishing.” She was hardly large enough to get any sizeable prey, anyway. The girl knew her limitations. halo
the ideal that i wanted to see |