The world is red.
Red and coppery and hot and bitter on his tongue, on his fur, in his eyes. He has felt angry before. He has felt bitter and cold and betrayed. But never has he felt such rage coiling through him, simmering under his skin, boiling beneath his thoughts, twisting through his heart with every beat and sending poison singing through his blood.
With ever passing pound of his pulse the darkness sank its clutching talons deeper, the light within fading as the part of him that railed against its lies and manipulations grew weaker. He had never known the dichotomy between man and beast before this night, but now he was learning it, in the way his consciousness was fading to instinct, emotion and reaction becoming more powerful while coherent thought grew hazed and distant.
The difference between friend and monster blurred when everyone was so much bigger than him, when even the smallest of the two-legs reached for him, touching him, sinking long, spidery fingers into his fur in unforgiveable violation. He released the one who’d fallen, turning instead to snap sharp, crimson teeth over the wrist of the one who had dared to lay hands on him, struggling to free himself until – unexpectedly – he was flung away, falling, twisting to land in the snow before the perch.
Shaking violently, the white fox whined and snapped at the laughing, screeching, skittering voices in its head, unraveling from the inside even as his friend – and victim – lay wounded on the outside not so far away.
Red and coppery and hot and bitter on his tongue, on his fur, in his eyes. He has felt angry before. He has felt bitter and cold and betrayed. But never has he felt such rage coiling through him, simmering under his skin, boiling beneath his thoughts, twisting through his heart with every beat and sending poison singing through his blood.
With ever passing pound of his pulse the darkness sank its clutching talons deeper, the light within fading as the part of him that railed against its lies and manipulations grew weaker. He had never known the dichotomy between man and beast before this night, but now he was learning it, in the way his consciousness was fading to instinct, emotion and reaction becoming more powerful while coherent thought grew hazed and distant.
The difference between friend and monster blurred when everyone was so much bigger than him, when even the smallest of the two-legs reached for him, touching him, sinking long, spidery fingers into his fur in unforgiveable violation. He released the one who’d fallen, turning instead to snap sharp, crimson teeth over the wrist of the one who had dared to lay hands on him, struggling to free himself until – unexpectedly – he was flung away, falling, twisting to land in the snow before the perch.
Shaking violently, the white fox whined and snapped at the laughing, screeching, skittering voices in its head, unraveling from the inside even as his friend – and victim – lay wounded on the outside not so far away.
