The Sunspire Act One, Melodrama

    One soft-footed step after another, head hanging low. She had hardly noticed the gradual rising of the land at first, and even as the slope grew steeper at first the increased strain upon her muscles only bled into the deep ache within her that penetrated to her very bones. It was only once her contracting muscles began to burn a little, searing in protest from the long distance traveled rather than from her turtle-like speed, that the lady wolf raised her dulled amber eyes and took a look around her, her gaze lackluster and uncomprehending. She had one white paw half-raised for her next weary step, and lifted it nearer her chest now, trembling. Its once-pristine nails were scarred and roughened by her travels, one of them with its delicate little tip even broken off entirely. Ordinarily this might have proven cause for more minute examination with the greatest of concern, but this day, this life was not an ordinary one, it plainly seemed to her emotion-hazed vision, and ordinary concerns were therefore summarily disregarded. She took in a sudden deep, shaky breath and (as if this was an act of great courage) stretched her upraised paw out before her to take another step, releasing her intake of air in a deep, heartfelt sigh. “Ohhhhh-oh-ohh-ohhh,” she moaned to herself, a tearful and high-pitched noise which was almost, but not quite, a puppyish whine. “Oh, me…”

    Her pace dragged onward and upward, her chin tucking itself automatically as her legs strained up the steepening grade. She hardly paid attention to whence she placed her feet, her chipped and broken nails digging in among the rocks and scree to propel her wearily onward. She no longer quite consciously knew why she toiled so, her thoughts preoccupied with wistfulness and sorrow. How, how had it ever come to this? She knew not where she was going any longer, nor where her life’s companions had gone; one by one they had floated away, like ghosts, and only gradually had it dawned upon her that even her last trailing pup had drifted off elsewhere, wearied by their endless toiling journey even as she herself was. It was probably for the best, she reflected, before sinking back down into the murky swamps of misery within her head. She was in no position to keep him from mischief now; she was hardly even in a position to care for her own broken body and heart. If she let herself pause for more than the merest moment, she suspected that she might simply sit down and stop there forever.

    As the skies darkened, the stars bedecked its blued expanse with glittering points that resembled scintillating diamonds, with hardly a cloud present to mar the sight. The night’s beauty was lost upon her, however, as she trailed upward still, taking note of its majesty only long enough to deepen her mourning. It was tragic, truly tragic, that such beauty was so lost upon her! She would have wept over it if only her wretched eyes had any tears to spare. Tragic. Her feet stuttered to a halt and she looked around herself, blinking and bewildered, as it dawned slowly upon her that the slope had given up its own endless climb, and the wide span of gravel before her had given way to an infinite span of sky. She hesitated, and ventured another timorous pace forward, raising her eyes slowly to the heavens above, and feeling very small against their black extent lit only by those innumerable starry pinpricks gazing coldly back down at her. Ophelia stared apprehensively back at them, as her lower lip and jaw started to tremble. Then, unable to bear her own silent company one moment longer, she threw back her head and howled wildly, recklessly, without any regard for the intrusive rudeness of her action, her preoccupation-dulled nose not even having bothered to check if these lands already had a claimant. “Here I am still!” she cried, overwhelmed by theatrical levels of emotion, and playing them for all they were worth. “How could you have left me behind, my beloved?!” She threw back her nose, hyperextended her rearmost leg, and gazed long and sorrowful up, up at the blazing darkness of the skies and wished to lose herself in its beckoning embrace. Yes, save for those terrible sparkling bits of starry brightness (which she chose at the moment to selectively ignore), it was just as dark and empty as her very soul, she decided. …Her carefully overwrought stance and moue of distress, meantime, were just a little too artfully posed to be fully believed.