Oh, how close he had been death; to the teeth of his very sister, poised above him like a guillotine ready to fall. Yet, he had been given salvation that day, some morsel of mercy from those who lingered above him like dark, oppressive shadows. He had squirmed and wriggled, a twisted body desperate to cling to the bloodied, ravaged body of a woman barely able to breathe. Yet, he had clung and he had fought with vigor, unable to deny his instincts. They told him to survive and so he did, nestled deep within his siblings, guarded from a world beyond.

Yet the world, it seemed, would catch up to him some day, desperate for his attention. It had begun in the darkness of his den, his eyelids peeling back slowly to reveal the faintest light as it crept its fingers down into their shadowy recluse. It lured him forward and more of the outside world poured into his own; light, colour, sound and smells that surged down like a wave. Like a greedy sin, it tempted him. It lured him to the mouth over and over, his twisted limb dragged behind him like a gnarled branch. Soon, his body reached the point of plausibility - his dreams came to fruition, a possibility he had never considered before. From the darkness, he could roam into the light, beckoned forth by a world beyond his imagination.

With desperate, hungry paws, he had broken out into the great beyond - his paws found stability in the sand and dirt, his gnarled limb working its way beneath him with awkward success. Slowly, he learned to adapt, making his way away from his mother's safety and into the very midst of those that had both saved him and yet condemned him all the same. To him, however, it was but a dream; he watched the clouds above drift across the spring blue of the sky, the cries of far off birds slicing the air like claws. Above him, the leaves rustled and below him, the earth was hot from the sun. He felt warm and alive as he ambled along, stumbling from time to time with little on his mind save the desire for adventure.

Eventually, he had come across a sudden darkness in the earth; like his home, the earth crumbled suddenly into nothing. It was small, though, so much smaller than his mother's den and so, he had grown curious enough to approach it. His nose poked into the darkness, sucking up dust and a smell all too akin to food! Imagine his excitement - his surprise! - when he smelt such a thing, heard the thudding sound of its heart and brisk scratching of its claws as it seemed to disappear further into the nothingness. He yipped and thrust forward in an effort to follow, a desperate child with his bottom in the air and scrambling paws. To think he had been saved, after all.