Big Salmon Lake la vie en rose

takes place a day or so after kitsch’s assault

@West

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It was’t until the poppy faded that Kitsch felt the true pain of her victimhood. Her limbs trembled as if the anonymous man was still there, gripping her harshly by her tender, innermost thigh. The pelt that draped along the nape of her neck and over her ermine shoulder was torn and tattered, subjected to the vehemence of his fangs — it stung with her every movement. A flood of tears left nothing but a throbbing, ringing headache in its wake. Blood wept from her most delicate and intimate of areas and the young girl grit her teeth from the rawness between her legs… and it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that she had a broken rib, snapped like a twig underneath the beast’s massive weight. 

The drugs leeched from her ravaged body but not from her mind; the dove could read the pain of her body so easily, but her brain still lacked the capacity to think thoughts. Even though she regained consciousness and mobility, Kitsch continued to lay listlessly in spot of her defilement, nestled into the small indentation her body had kneaded into the earth. Her body hurt too much to move; her spirit hurt too much to move. This was in this spot that she laid for the better part of a day, drifting in and out of consciousness, not moving for food nor water nor the beating sun nor her own discomfort. For all intents and purposes, the lamb appeared to be dead, for she did not even reposition herself to relieve her settled bones of their discomfort.

When night eventually fell, Kitsch hauled herself from the shallow grave. The dove didn’t feel safer under the cover of night [safety was a fallacy, anyways], but in the darkness she felt invisible and that’s what she really wanted: obscurity. It was that such a desire that pulled Kitsch south rather than north — away from Teaghlaigh — and not a thought was spared for the wolves of Ravensblood Forest, except to brood on how they would never even notice her absence anyways. For monotonous hours she shuffled her dip dyed toes in the dust, trudging along with her throbbing head hung low. Her thirst had grown to be just shy of voracious, so it was water she sought right then and nothing more.

The frigid winter had snapped long ago and the interminable snows had all melted. Rather than soak into the ground, the meltwater traveled above the ground and collected in little divets and pockets throughout the forest; coalescing into a nationwide networks of puddles and lakes. After hours of  Kitsch came upon one the larger reservoirs [quite a big body of water, actually] and immediately dipped her ink-tipped nose to it. The cool water slaked her interminable thirst and filled her belly once more; a comforting sensation after so much emptiness. Then, laying her body against the shore of the small lake, Kitsch dipped her stracciatella paw into the water and watched the ripples ring out across the lake’s jeweled waters over and over and over and over and over again.

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