The air was cold and hard, blowing loads of dead leaves off the oaks, almost turning them into skeletons. The clouds were thick, not letting any of the suns last light get to the ground. It looked like it was going to be an early winter.
When Blake awoke the next night and felt his legs right legs, hind and fore, on the ground, cramped up and stiff again. Moaning in discomfort, while keeping his eyes shut in a futile attempt to sleep as much as he could before Jade woke, he tried to move them. He felt nothing, save for a twitch of pins and needles shooting to his paws.
Great, he thought bitterly.
He finally opened his eyes and was shocked at what he found. Jade was snuggling into his chest, lying on top of the limbs on his right side. His left limbs were at least comfy. They were stretched on top of her, his fore-paw bent down slightly, holding her... Heat rushed to his face. He had no idea she was there, but somehow he felt this wasn't the first time she had slept next to him. He did wake the previous morning with cramped legs. This explained a lot.
Sitting up, as much as Jade allowed him, with stunned embarrassment, he could see a pleasant smile on her muzzle. He tried to get up but every time he moved, the vixen would push herself against him, further trapping his dead limbs under her. Blake stopped moving and waited until she stopped. After a while, he slowly inched his legs out and got up his feet. She hadn't noticed that he wasn't there anymore and breathed a sigh of relief as feeling faded back in to his legs.
With a big stretch, exercising his sleeping paws, he began to think. It was time to see his old home, his human home, to see what had happened to it since he had gone. Since he had spent a lot of time in the woods as a human, he didn't give his parents a second thought. Yet those were usually day trips, something he would return from at the end of the day.
It had been a few days now since the spiritual bonding and the moment Blake was no longer apart of their world. They would be worried sick. His mother and father had no idea that they had lost their only child a few nights earlier. Blake was desperate to know how they were coping.
When he rushed to the entrance of Jade's den, he stopped and thought clearly. He was no longer a human. Going back to his human home could prove fatal now that he was a fox. Despite the panic his father would be going through, he wouldn't pass up a chance to rid the world of another fox if it meant a better chance for his sheep farming escapade. He might even want to take out his anguish on the new fox.
Blake was home sick though. He was willing to take a chance.
Looking at Jade with a content smile, not knowing if it would be the last time, he ran out of the den and made his way to the fields. With a couple of hours of light left, it made it a lot easier to navigate his way through the labyrinth of trees. As he ran, he could hear the sounds of critters scattering away to their hiding holes, trying not to be noticed by the fox. Blake wasn't hungry yet, so they had nothing to fear.
*
The clouds started to part from each other. The final signs of the sun were glowing yellow onto the fields, making the grass look like it was about to die under a summer heat, but it was quite the other way round. The wind was hard and the sun gave no heat. Blake was sure it wasn't long to go before the house was in sight.
With the cold air blowing past his red coated body, a shiver went down Blake's back as he came to the patch of blood and a pile of dew soaked clothes from where he and Jade first met. That horrid night flashed through his head. It still shocked and amazed him. So many questions were answered in the space a minute.
A few meters away, he spotted the knife. He sniffed it. This thing had ruined his life as a human. He got expelled from school and in turn, lost his connection with Sky. Despite all this, he felt glad he got it. If it wasn't for this knife, he wouldn't have had the extra boost of anger that pushed him to run out into the woods, his spirit wouldn't have acknowledged Jade's immediate presence, and Blake wouldn't have investigated it further. In hindsight, if it wasn't for this, there would be no doubt he would have lived the rest of his human life in depression, maybe even ending in suicide.
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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...
