A Trial on Souls page 2
The second page of my story. Sorry its a little late.
She was awake. She realized that she was fully conscious again. Actually, she had known this for some time, but she hadn't wanted to accept her reality. Her body painfully shook occasionally from the healing of her ripped muscles. This was her cave, her family's cave. Her mate, her pups, they should be here. Their energies hung in the air like invisible wires, prickling her fur. Their energies, which should be strong, were fading like fireflies on their last breath.
Finally she crept one eye open and looked into the cave depths, and she closed it once more. Just as she had feared, three humps of black forms lay on the cave floor before her. She closed her eyes tighter and tried to disappear. She began to choke on her own breathing and found her chest too tight to breathe. She felt her eyes swelling but no tears formed. She suspected that she was too dehydrated to cry.
A sudden spasm of her throbbing body made her cry out and her eyes flung open. She lay there on her side and stared at the bodies. Time had ceased to exist and her will was broken. So broken in fact that she lay there for hours not moving. She felt the air change and shift as the sun set and the moon rose, but still she lay there. Upon the second evening her body had stopped its shaking and now just held a constant dull throb.
Her thirst had exceeded its limit and she desperately needed water. She finally sat slowly on her haunches, stretching her newly healed muscles. She limped to the side of the cave on her blistered paws. She and her mate had carved a slight ravine in the side of the cave to catch the natural water source that dripped through the side. She looked down and saw her face in the softly flowing stream. The water was a rust color that didn't match the dirt it came from.
She looked up to where the water was flowing from farther up the cave. The body of a honey badger lay in the water as if thirty in its death. One eye had been scratched by claws and now was deflated within its swollen face and the other eye stared angrily at her. The silver fox then decided that her thirst had limits and the bloodied water did little for her appetite. She gave up her want of water and slowly made her way over to the other three bodies.
One male silver fox and two young pups lay frozen in their suffering. First she sniffed the pup's heads and licked their face free of dirt like a good mother. Then she dragged herself painfully to the male. Her mate lay there with a long pain-stricken face. A pain of claws and teeth ripping his flesh and a pain of failing his family. She whimpered and licked his face but no breath ruffled the fur on her nose. She placed her paw softly on his chest and it fell. Maggots, beetles, and other despicable flesh-eating insects fell out of his con-caved abdomen. They hissed and scratched angrily and she jumped away landing on her swollen, aching paws.
She cried out and stood there waiting for the pain to subside. Finally, she limped painfully to the front of the cave, flinching with every soft step, and turned to face the bodies. She then laid herself down upon her belly, stretching her front paws out before her chest, and placed her muzzle in her wet, pus soaked paws where she closed her eyes once more.