Sun Mote Copse dead as dead can be

@Niamh @Phox @Towhee

He was still struggling, and it had been days, weeks? since he had been struck. But his body, it seemed, was no longer his own. It moved by itself, muscles spasming—clenching, jumping—without his control. And then there was his brain. He still did not who he was or what he’d been doing on that mountain in the first place. It had taken five hours for his legs to function well enough that he could tumble face-first down the mountain. By the time he’d reached bottom, he was so scratched and bruised and covered in mud that the side-effects of the lightning strike had seemed… trivial. 

Punishment.

He wandered for days, lost both physically and mentally. Chirping birds sounded like bullets in his brain, yet other sounds went unheard. He tried to hunt smaller animals, to chase them down, but running caused his body to feel like it had been pounded by a thousand falling rocks. He followed rivers, streams. Once, out of sheer luck, he managed to catch a fish. But it was not enough. He filed his belly with so much water that he felt he might explode, but that could not stop the gnawing hunger that made his already-weak limbs weaker. He was useless.

A blinding flash. Pain. Paralysis. Why had he been up there? What purpose was this all serving?

He followed the sound of cawing crows once, despite their calls causing blinding flashes of light to pulse into his brain. He found a dead deer, most of its meat stripped already. The crows pecked angrily at him as he ate what was left, but their beaks were no match for the daily pain he had been suffering with. The mouthfuls of meat, and the marrow in the bones, were enough to carry him forward, though what he was looking for, he wasn’t sure.

Eventually, he stumbled, dazed, through a swamp and out the other side. The mud and gunk clung to his fur and eventually dried, caking him in foul-smelling dirt. Along the edge of a forest, the smell of other wolves punched him in the face and he collapsed in exhaustion and relief. Perhaps they would take him in, feed him. Or perhaps they would drive him away, to his death, or kill him where he lay. Either way, it would be an end to his suffering.

Suffering. Punishment. Perdition.

He howled for whoever might hear him, and the effort left his head swimming.

A blinding flash. Pain. Why? Punishment.

Punishment. Pain. Suffering. Sin.

Perdition.