Break, A Chibera Story

improv (67)in #chibera • 6 years ago (edited)

The sticky threads clung to Shabron. Each strand, as it tugged her skin, felt like it was connected directly to her heart. She stumbled from the woods with more pain than the bruises and scrapes caused. Her heart was broken.

Shabron couldn't stop the stabbing flashes of memory. Harbron and Garbron already wrapped in webbing. Kit yowling atop the head of the thing. @Snook's bangles flashing as she thrust a long stick at one of its eyes. She felt so helpless. She felt so sick. Her stomach lurched. Gagging, Shabron fell to her knees and leaned against a tree. More memories flashed, and her heart seemed to contract in her chest: Snook's hand crushed by a giant, spiny, hairy foreleg; an even larger leg sweeping towards her, sending her flying back into the woods; the piteous yowling of Kit from afar. Shabron could even remember hearing the silence coming from the two bundles of webbing, already deathly still.

Shabron desperately rubbed her arms against the rough bark of the tree. The sticky webbing pulled bark from the tree, but would not let go of her arms.

Image Source: my own photo, taken of the willow tree on my parent's farm on a misty morning.

She was a coward. A hero, or even a good person, would have run back, would have done anything, even given her own life hopelessly to be in the fray when her loved ones died. She was nothing, and they were gone. She was so tired, and she hurt so much. She lay next to this tree, not caring if she was exposed to the dangers of the forest. Merciful sleep took her.

Something heavy and soft pressed on her legs. This is what death feels like. Thank goodness. It is not so bad to die. Shabron thought this not for the sake of her fear of death, but for the sake of her conscience. If death is not bad, then Harbron and Garbron and Kit and Snook found peace.

The heavy soft thing moved. Then, against her hand what she imagined was a fish, tilapia perhaps, scraped against her arm with its scales pushed in the wrong direction. Painful, but not entirely unpleasant. Shabron was surprised to discover that she could open her eyes.

Kit, her soft, heavy body sitting on Shabron's legs, and her rough tongue scraping Shabron's arm, moved with a desperation that made Shabron ashamed of the comfort she unwillingly felt upon seeing Kit.

Shabron reached out her other arm to Kit, and tried caressing the lynx's head. Kit stopped licking, and her deep brown eyes locked on Shabron's matching ones. Move. Kit leaped from Shabron to the ground. As Kit limped away, Shabron could see the indentation of Kit's broken ribcage.

She obeyed. Shabron turned her own mind off, and followed the directions of the young cat who seemed to have more courage and sense than she did.

The sun rose at last. Kit's route straggled through fallen trees, paused in an open glade for no discernible reason, at least not to Shabron, and doubled back on itself twice. Still, Shabron followed, asleep on her feet, numb to her memories, thinking only hard enough to keep her balance.

through trees.jpg
Source: photo I took

Kit stopped under a tree that, to Shabron, looked like all the others. The lynx curled herself into a ball and seemed to fall fast asleep as a single ray of morning light found its way through the tangle of trees to strike the tuft of her ear and catch her whiskers.

Source: Wikimedia commons, public doman

Shabron lay down, encircling her Kit, and slept.

#story #fantasy #game #fiction #partiko

6 years ago in #chibera by improv (67)

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Break, A Chibera Story

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