Sun Mote Copse and stood awhile in thought

Heads up: this post/thread contains some graphic violence.

Breathing hard, Sugar looked down at the squirrel at her feet. It was breathing even harder, erratically, twitching noisily on the bed of leaf litter. She had broken at least one of its legs and perhaps even its back with a swift stroke of her small paw. She knew she should have mercy on it and dispatch it, though her fascination warred with her natural instincts. Part of her even wanted to help the poor creature now, put it to rights, and that was absurd even what with her interest in the field of medicine.

Finally, she blinked those depthless black eyes and struck out a paw again, pinning the flopping rodent to the ground and bending down to snap her teeth around its throat. Its neck crunched and all movement ceased as a pool of blood began to stain the leaves. Sugar watched it spreading for a moment before blinking again and plucking the fresh, warm carcass off the ground and carrying it beneath the sparse shade of a nearly bare maple tree. She took a seat on its skirt of "helicopters."

She laid the slain squirrel near the tree's roots but did not begin to eat. Sugar sat and contemplated the cooling corpse for a few minutes, then deftly reapplied her fangs, this time slicing open the pale underbelly. The cut was much more jagged than she would've liked. Sugar watched the dark blood ooze out slowly, then used both her muzzle and her paws to tear the gaping postmortem wound open wider, until she was smeared with blood and the squirrel's insides were on full, macabre display.

Title from "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll.