Sleepy Fox Hollow the cat keeps kicking me in his sleep

He had taken the plunge - ventured to the crack in the stone again and again, and finally probed it with extreme caution. The darkness swept over him entirely. It swarmed across him like tiny freezing fingers tugging at his tangled fur. He could almost resist the temptation of knowing but the Void called to him - it whispered, entreated, begged - and in obeying its call, Mou had made a discovery.

The stone-wrought chasm opened up like the atrium of an ancient cathedral; stalagmites and stalagtites fashioned a maw of jagged stonework around him, lined with ice as a set of jaws might be rimmed with saliva. Frost decorated the floor where it had been wind-blasted through the gap but beyond that, the space was dry and sheltered.

The smell of something foul erupted not long after that - an insidious aroma, wet and heavy, which Mou did not want to investigate and yet, found himself doing so anyway. The scrape of his claws on the diorite earth was all he could detect, and the limited light did not shed any clues. He used his nose, sought the source - and therein found something bizarre.

A creature so like a wolf lay bloated and dead, dwarfed by stone spires. Its rear end was chewed and torn to pieces. Tendrils of elastic flesh draped where the hips ought to have been - but worse was the head. Wide-eyed, staring for eternity at the only route of egress Mou had thusfar found. Around its neck a strap of worn leather connected to further straps beyond the shoulders, and there along its gaseous spine were thick gouges from bear or cat, he could not tell.

Sickened by all that he spied, Mou clamped his jaws tightly shut and retreated, seeking the chasm, and gulped the cold air when he found it again.