5 Minute Freewrite Day 444: Cougar

When you are good at something, you have confidence, you underestimate everything and anything that has to face that part of you which makes your proud. For young Fabricia, this confidence-boosting aspect of herself was swordplay, she was just naturally awesome at it. Since the first time she grabbed a sword by instructions of her master, her bully siblings had to think twice before physically hurting her. Not that she would actually hurt them, she could, but that would finally make Father snap and throw her out.

In any case, she took up wandering around, in the city and outside it, confident on her metal edge and in the tight security of her glamorous city, and today was a day she felt like going a little further out. Being small she could sneak around the guards, through crevices and passages made for burglars, and so she was now in a very unknown part of the forest, but what is there to fear?, it looked exactly the same as any other group of trees.

Except for one thing: a small and furry thing that made a noise from behind a bush. Frabricia, lover of small animals just couldn’t avoid getting close to pet it, and it wasn’t long before she knew why her Sword Teacher insisted in “beating some common sense” into her. The dark brown patch of fur was a cougar’s pup, and its mother was just some meters behind it.

Jumping back when hearing the potent roar, Fabricia quickly brought up her sword and tried to think what to do. I can beat it, right?, right!, or maybe not, I’ve never fought an animal… but her thought were interrupted because, well, a mother protecting her child doesn’t doubt, and the older feline jumped into the girl. A storm of steel and claws followed.

She survived to tell the tale, and the mother cougar surely did so too, but the feline didn’t have a screaming father and a worried teacher to scream and her and punish her doubly for her failed adventure. Those following weeks were extra hard and annoying, but now she had some cool scars as a medal of honor, and as a reminder that you shouldn’t try to pet wildlife.