Crack!
Above the viscous winds she heard it. Something no fox ever wanted to hear.
Gunfire!
She turned towards the source of the shot in terror as her life-mate fell right beside her. Her jaw dropped and eyes immediately began to burn with anguish. The blaring lights of their pursuers then turned and blinded her and followed her footing as she ran. She prayed she would make it.
Everything became a blur from then on. She felt her young getting closer to her in the trees as she ran. Her cubs petrified accelerated heart rate matching hers. She was going to make it to the trees. She had to!
With the wind on her heels as well as the trained sights of the gun, she forced her nimble body into the air. She landed on the boulder her young hid behind -
Crack!
Another shot was fired.
Like a ragdoll torn at the seems, she slammed down next to her daughter with a mortal bullet wound in her chest, bleeding out. Each pulse of her weakened heart only served to push the shock of pain from the hot bullet farther around her sleek body. The cub glared down at the red splash of the gunshot as though it were a dream. A terrible, numbing dream.
Both looked at each other in distress. Neither wanted it to end like this. It couldn't. It was her daughter's first night on the fields.
In her throat, she quietly growled something to her cub.
Mortified, her cub backed away a couple of steps and looked back to the open land, trying to find her father as the shooters came to collect their bounty. The mother growled the same thing again to her only daughter, this time with more force. An order. The young one came close for the last time and gave her mother a loving, yet in time, haunting nuzzle.
The dying creature then watched as her kin ran for her life deeper into the woods. Her red bushy tail was the last thing she saw of her daughter before her figure blended in to the undergrowth. With this, she felt a sense of relief. Her blood had spilled, but through her daughter the next generation would continue on the circle of life. Her own circle had been completed.
Hearing a muffled snap of a twig, she turned to face her murderer as he trued his sights once more. She faced her final moment with pride.
YOU ARE READING
Change in Life
FantasyBlake never wanted much in life, purely because he did not receive a lot to begin with. School brought him down and his father's enthusiastic hunting separated his heart from his family. All he really had were the woods near his home and the strange...
