Change in Life

Chapter 32. Doing Better

This seemed like the better idea at the time, Blake thought, his inebriated legs shaking as he gripped Beryl delicately by the scruff of the neck, damn you drunk me...!

It appeared a quick and simple solution when he was looking up at the narrow edges and moss covered grips. He had managed it, if a bit nervously, the first time he climbed it. Halfway up this time round, his swirled vision peered down over his snout and the trembling cub in his grasp. He had to fight the urge to grind his teeth tensely  with his so called second chance dangling with the premium skybox view of her hollow log among the shirking trees. Her closed petrified eyes stole a furtive peak at Blake's abrupt hesitation. She saw her scrunched up hind legs hanging over the crumbling periphery. She squeezed her body tighter in on itself and whimpered frightfully.

'Don't worry,' Blake mumbled unsteadily. 'I've done this before.'

The wistful encouragement was completely lost on the shaking cub. 'I want to go back down,' Beryl whined pathetically again. Each ledge Blake managed to find was greeted with the same response.

Blake ignored this comment as it was way too late to go back down. With the halfway point reached in the morning light, their body's still obscured in the cliff's shadows, going back down would take time off the desperate attention he needed to give Beryl. He huffed as he reached up and hooked his forelegs on the next edge above him. Hyperventilating a few quick breaths, he then pushed his body off his current platform and pulled the rest of his body up to the slightly angled surface. Scree rolled out from under his paws, signaled by Beryl's panicked screech.

'Mommy...!' she wailed. All blind faith she had for strangers had evaporated.

'It's okay, Beryl. I've got you.' Blake tried to invoke some of his fatherly instincts stored away for his own children to empower her with enough courage until they made it to the top. Needless to say, with Beryl's fidgeting and constant screeching at the slightest movements, this wasn't happening.

Another slippery ledge was reached, slowly followed by the next. As the distance to fall increased, so did the potent smell of ammonia reeling off the hapless vixen. The sun rose to peak over the lip of the cliff just as Blake made the final heave to the top. This would have been a lot easier as a human. He would have darted up this merger cliff face as quick as Astrid did to trees... Not accounting for the dying intoxication and the petrified cub in front of him, of course.

Panting with the onset of a fazed head-spin, Blake looked happily down at Beryl with a groggy smile. 'See! Nothing to worry about.'

Beryl had only known one adult; her mother. She looked up at her as the source of all her content, comfort, compassion. And now, because of some crazy fox's idea to cut some time, all adoration for them had drastically been cut neatly in half at the brief meeting of this second one. Spotting a recognizable circled hollow in the morning glare, she darted her tiny body to the rotting log and crawled in, giving a faint whimper when she found no solid end to push herself against.

The exhausting climb had burned off most of his buzz and he began to think things through more rationally. He was eager down there for a promising way to begin making up for the lives that were taken because of him that he didn't think of her wellbeing in full. It was apparent that alcohol not only made humans a bit simpleminded. He carefully approached the log and looked in. The terrified glare in return didn't help his mood and he felt that depressing pit beginning to open up.

'I shouldn't have put you through that, Beryl,' he murmured. 'But we're up here now. I can get you some food and-'

Beryl sobbed, wanting someone that she didn't know where to look for. 'I want my mom...'