09-12-2021, 07:04 PM
There's no room to wonder how long the chase lasts. Teeth drag across her gaskin and she squeals, kicking out at the winged wolf behind her, but her movements are growing more sluggish. She might be built to run across open grassland or desert, but weaving between the trees and roots and rocks is exhausting her almost as much as the way he drives her, on and on, through the impossible landscape. Always he stays just far enough behind to make her think she might lose him. She knows she can't, but her rapidly beating heart, that traitorous thing, whispers hope into her ears, hope that he dashes as fast as he builds it, with nips at her belly and flanks and hindlegs, until she leaves a scattered trail of blood and frothy sweat stained a rusty pink.
When the path changes from soft soil to rough, porous, rock, she stumbles, stubbing her toe against its edge and falling to her knees, skinning them and scuffing her dark hooves against its surface. Her legs react slowly, stiffly, they do not want to stand again now that she's down, but his howl breaks the heavy air, answered by half a dozen calls, and Sintra groans and lunges forward on her bleeding knees, willing her body forward until her legs cooperate at last and lift her, limping, from the ground.
Seven wolves leap from the under-growth and over fallen trees. She has no time to notice that only one of them ever lands a bite. This time, at her elbow, and Sintra veers sharply left, crashing blindly through the wide leaves of a stand of elephant-eared plants. Beyond them, the earth falls away sharply, revealing a ravine glowing red with lava bleeding from the nearby volcano. Instinctively the mare backs away, head rearing back and ears pinned deep into the wild knots of her black mane, but the memory of the blue-eyed wolf is there even before he reaches her and she freezes in place. There's nowhere to go. There's no back.
The sound of wolves slipping through the vegetation breaks through her indecision. Sintra's violet eye rolls back to find them, the few that are not creeping up from her blind-side, and she charges forward. It's not so far away, that other edge. Her haunches bunch beneath her, forehooves sending small rocks clattering down below, but instead of launching her across, her muscles seize up and she tumbles down the bank instead, kicking and grunting. Her momentum stops just short of sending her for a bath in the lava stream, lying flat and still on a flat rocky outcropping, too weary to test her legs again.
Maybe he won't risk it, her heart whispers to her between its racing beats and the too fast rise-and-fall of her desperate lungs that makes stars gather at the edges of her vision. Maybe.
When the path changes from soft soil to rough, porous, rock, she stumbles, stubbing her toe against its edge and falling to her knees, skinning them and scuffing her dark hooves against its surface. Her legs react slowly, stiffly, they do not want to stand again now that she's down, but his howl breaks the heavy air, answered by half a dozen calls, and Sintra groans and lunges forward on her bleeding knees, willing her body forward until her legs cooperate at last and lift her, limping, from the ground.
Seven wolves leap from the under-growth and over fallen trees. She has no time to notice that only one of them ever lands a bite. This time, at her elbow, and Sintra veers sharply left, crashing blindly through the wide leaves of a stand of elephant-eared plants. Beyond them, the earth falls away sharply, revealing a ravine glowing red with lava bleeding from the nearby volcano. Instinctively the mare backs away, head rearing back and ears pinned deep into the wild knots of her black mane, but the memory of the blue-eyed wolf is there even before he reaches her and she freezes in place. There's nowhere to go. There's no back.
The sound of wolves slipping through the vegetation breaks through her indecision. Sintra's violet eye rolls back to find them, the few that are not creeping up from her blind-side, and she charges forward. It's not so far away, that other edge. Her haunches bunch beneath her, forehooves sending small rocks clattering down below, but instead of launching her across, her muscles seize up and she tumbles down the bank instead, kicking and grunting. Her momentum stops just short of sending her for a bath in the lava stream, lying flat and still on a flat rocky outcropping, too weary to test her legs again.
Maybe he won't risk it, her heart whispers to her between its racing beats and the too fast rise-and-fall of her desperate lungs that makes stars gather at the edges of her vision. Maybe.
@
Gale