Emberflame Ridge in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me

✹☾❂

 

There it was. Cat-smell. Eleuthera couldn’t say she was immediately alarmed, since there was a good chance that it was the passive, benevolent Umi, but she did immediately turn her course down the trail to seek out this creature and see if they were of a cantankerous nature or not. She would try to free these lands of it if the latter was true, or die trying.

It was better she die than her pack. Perhaps there might even be a song written about her if she were such a martyr!

Now following her nose instead of her paws, Eleuthera was led to a forest of evergreens with exquisitely twisted trunks and low-sweeping foliage. With the summer rains in full force and the heat of the sun fueling plant growth, it proved difficult to see through the undergrowth at eye-level. However, she managed to spot a smudge of greyish-brown through the grass and trees. It was a creature — a large one — testing the trees and meandering around. Eleuthera stopped to watch, her entire mien melting into her verdant milieu, toggling her head higher and lower to see if she could attain a better view.

In the end, the only way to gain an understanding of the situation was to move closer.

The lady of lilacs crept forward, forcing aside the tall grasses and low-hanging branches, approaching footstep by footstep, the tightness in her throat growing more intense as she glided forward, heart hammering in her ears — when would the cat notice her? would she have a moment to think before the creature rushed upon her and drained the life from her veins? Energy pumped through her body and she felt alive, electric — 

and finally, at long last, she glimpsed the creature. It was nothing more than a wolf, a brute, doing nothing especially important. The anticipation that had built within Eleuthera’s entire being still thrummed within her, preventing her from doing anything less than raising her head and letting out a cry, needing to create her own crescendo in place of what she thought might have been her final moments.“Oh my god!" she called out, lifting her head and giving away her position entirely.

“I thought you were a fucking cougar!"