fiammetta
by fire be purged
Fiammetta was deep in thought, the beauty of the day lost on her as she went, head down and eye focused on the slush at her paws. It had been a few days since her defeat against Eden, and her pride still smarted as much as her wounds. Her gait was stiff and ungraceful as she compensated for the gash in her side, whilst her eye socket smarted quietly in her skull, the pus that had collected in its very deepest vestiges leaking from the two puncture wounds that dotted the scar tissue there. If she hadn't been monstrous before, she certainly was now. And yet, she did not worry about her appearance. There were far more pressing problems at hand.
A sound to her right brought her reluctantly out of her sulky mood, and she craned her neck to see what all the raucous was about. There, in the centre of the field, a young wolf bounded happily. Her tongue hung carelessly from her mouth, and her joy oozed from her paws while she played with the snowy flowers. Fiam cocked her head, both irritated and envious. She could not remember the days when she had been so jovial, running for the sheer joy of it, with shoulders free of worldly weight. Even the arrival of two strange males to her side did not seem to interrupt the brown one's playful energy, although it brought a crease to the watching female's brow.
From where she stood, several paces away, she could not hear the conversation and yet she remained alert, single ear pricked and tail held aloft. If anything untoward happened she was there, ready to protect the innocent. At least, she hoped she could manage that since it seemed to her with every passing day that the fire had made a mistake. She was no hero, no vanquisher of evil, even if that was what she wanted so desperately to be. She was just a tiny and unfortunate wolf to whom life had granted a callous hand.
No Home - No Family - 6YO - 22 in, 32 lbs