Wapun Meadow want to fly to a place where it's just you and me - nobody else so we can be free

Backdated to around Feb 17th or somethin'.

His lungs were burning. There was no where to go. No trees, no brush, no escape. It was him, the far reaching swath of meadow, and the devils. They circled him ever lower and tighter. He slowed his gallop to a jog, and then spun to face them and stopped. Braced and snarling, his eyes locked on the long, dark object they thrust toward him. He was ready. He waited for the crack of that flesh-ripping thunder.

Go on. End it then. I'm done.

It was only fitting he should go out the way she had. He had been the one to bring such ruin on her. He would be laid open; a paw-sized hole smashed through his ribs. His flesh reduced to spatter across the snowbanks. It would be quick at least. Not that he deserved it. He would gasp and try to take a breath with decimated lungs, but choke on his blood instead, and then... then it would be over.

Skwol shut his eyes and held her in his mind. He hoped then the stories were true. He imagined her and him soaring on the dark wings of their second life, but a sharp bite to his flank spooked him. Panicked, he snapped at the unexpected object buried in his haunch. He ran a few feet, and was enveloped in shadow. Dead, he would have thought, if he could have thought at all.


—


She was leaving him again. Fading away.

Stop... Please...

Skwol staggered to his feet. But he could not get his hindlimbs to coordinate with his front. He stumbled sideways and dropped to his haunches, dizzied and confused and with his eyes squinched against the raw force of daylight. Swaying and sickened, he let his front quarters drop into the snow too and bowed his head. His nose, between his forelimbs, sank into the cold as the world spun around him.

His ears flattened against the cacophony that suddenly surrounded him, and he felt the snow lash at his face. There was silence and stillness soon after. It was another half hour before he would try to stand again. Returning to his senses, Skwol soon realized that the scent of the devils was all around him, and he became aware of the thick strap that gripped his neck.

"No!" Skwol raged, twisting and thrashing and snapping at himself. He whirled and reared, each grief-stricken and furious word punctuated by the stomp of his forepaws on the ground. "Why. Am. I. Alive."