FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

27

Kiana didn't look it, but she was reeling on the inside. Too much had happened in too short a time. The horror in the pass, Banno, Shekka, Hezzi... each one was enough to shatter her heart all by themselves and leave her a blubbering infirm, but all of them together... The only things that kept her going were the desire to embrace Ander when he came back, and the stubborn certainty that she could do something in the meantime, something meaningful, something to make a difference. It didn't need to be anything big. Just something...

She had thought this errand was a perfect opportunity to do just that. Something good, something to counterbalance all the bad. They weren't just blankets. They were warmth. They were kindness. They were a way for her to take all those horrible feelings in her heart and expel them, send them out into the world as something positive.

But then the grey Wolf came, doing the exact same thing. The only difference was that, instead of kindness, he was turning his sadness into anger. It was something Kiana could understand very well. Feeling anger was better than feeling sadness. It hurt less. It gave you something to grab onto, something to fight with, even if it didn't do any good in the end.

And then Ruka, driven to the edge of madness by the loss of her sister. Kiana hoped with all her heart that Rika really was in this camp somewhere, maybe in the medical tent, or sleeping under a thick bear pelt by one of the fires. But... no... that wasn't true. She was trying to hope, but she just couldn't. She knew in her heart of hearts that Rika was dead. And what could she possibly do about that? Nothing. The answer was a resounding nothing. A blanket couldn't bring that Wolfess's sister back. A blanket couldn't cover the wound. A blanket couldn't do anything. _She_couldn't do anything...

Kiana was so lost in her thoughts that she tripped over yet another long set of legs and nearly fell.

"Oh, sorry!" she said, her heart racing in her chest, knowing full well that any kind of action, if seen as hostile, might spark some very bad unpleasantness of the toothy variety. But the Wolfess she had tripped over merely lay there, all curled up into a tight little ball, hugging her knees, perfectly motionless except for the constant shivering. She didn't have any blankets, and her meagre Wolven attire (which consisted of a pair of leather pants and a raggedy chest wrapping of animal hide) seemed woefully inadequate for this kind of weather.

"Oh my word, are you all right?" Kiana asked, kneeling down. This Wolfess wasn't at all like Nilia, with her muscular frame and imposing looks. This one was very slender, and her fur was a light, silvery shade of grey, like early morning mist. And, just like mist, it looked like she might blow apart with even the faintest breeze.

Kiana reached out to touch her shoulder, just to give her a little shake, just to make sure she wasn't dying or anything, and that was when she noticed her eyes. They were a light blue, speckled with tiny flecks of sapphire. They would have been gorgeous, were they not so wide and staring, filled to the brim with paralysing fear.

_Is she scared of me?_Kiana thought, absolutely horrified by the idea. It was as if all those terrible feelings were suddenly given validation.

Of course she's scared of you, why wouldn't she be? You killed all her friends, maybe even her entire family.

No, you don't know that!

Then what is she doing here, all by herself? Everyone she ever knew and cared about is dead, and it's because of you. This is another Ruka, one of hundreds, and you made her this way.

No. That was something Kiana simply refused to believe. She couldn't help Ruka, but maybe this one... maybe this one...

"Listen, I can help you, okay? Just let me -" Kiana reached out to her. All she wanted to do was help her to her feet and guide her towards one of the fires. It was vitally important for her to help. She needed to help...

The Wolfess's eyes grew to the size of pottery lids and she shied away from Kiana's reaching fingers. "It's you..." she whispered. "You're the one who called the snow... It was you!"

"I... I only -"

"No, get away from me!" she screamed, covering her face. "Please, don't hurt me! Please! Noooo!!"

"I just -"

"Nooooo!!" Too weak to get up and run, she pushed herself away with all the strength she could muster, dragging her body along the hard, frozen ground like a snail.

Kiana wanted nothing more than to help her, but how? How could she help when her very presence was causing so much harm?

"Please, no! Please don't hurt me anymore!" the Wolfess begged, shivering from fear as well as the cold. In that moment, recoiling from the shadow falling over her, she was more like an injured rabbit than a fearsome Wolf. She curled herself back into a tight little ball, hid her face behind her knees, and began to weep. It was one of the most terrible sounds Kiana had ever heard, second only to the dull rumble of snow crashing down into the Cora's Pass, summoned by the mournful note of her own breath flowing through the hollow of a dead ram's horn. In a way, all those sounds were connected, each one following the other, each one a direct result of the other. First the horn, then the thunder, and now the weeping.

Now the weeping.

"I'm sorry!" Kiana said, desperate to somehow stop those tears, to somehow make this right. She wasn't scary! She wasn't a -

(Murderer)

• fairy tale monster! She never wanted to -

(Kill)

• hurt anyone! It just... it just happened! She had no other choice! She was forced to!

Kiana backed away from the weeping Wolfess, backed away like one would back away from the scene of a terrible crime.

All around her, Wolves were turning their heads to look at what all the noise was about. The ghosts were blank, the nice ones were sad, the mean ones were angry, but none of them seemed particularly surprised by what was unfolding here, and none of them made any moves to intervene.

Maybe they're all scared of me, too...

And suddenly, as if someone had set a pool of oil to the flame, a bitter, fuming anger flared up inside of her.

What right did they have to make her feel this way? As if she were some kind of monster? What right did any of them have?

The Wolfess was still cowering on the ground, shivering in the cold with her tail wrapped around her ankles and her shoulders heaving with every gasp and sob. Kiana pitied her with all her heart. She felt sorry for her. She wanted to help her in any way she could. She wanted to set things right. But at the same time... the sight of her covered face somehow fanned the flames growing inside her heart. The sound of her weeping was like a thousand needles driving their way into her ears. Her hands, held up as if to ward off a blow, filled her with revulsion, and the worst part of it was that Kiana didn't even know what that revulsion was supposed to be aimed at.

On some level, Kiana knew she was doing the exact same thing as the grey Wolf, taking her sadness and turning it into anger, but what else could she do? She couldn't take it anymore. If she left it like this, it would rip her heart to bleeding tatters. Some of it had to get out. It just had to...

Kiana curled her fingers into a fist. The scratch burned across the back of her hand like a line of fire.

"I didn't want to do it," she said, barely above a whisper. Her voice trembled and stung her throat with every syllable. "Do you hear me? I didn't _want_to do it."

The Wolfess was still crying, still curled up, still paralysed with fear. She kept muttering between her hitching sobs - words that made the heat rise in Kiana's cheeks, words that, although she knew it was sinful to hate them, only added more fuel to the growing fire. "Please!" she whimpered. "Please, leave me alone! Please don't hurt me, I beg of you!"

Kiana squeezed so hard she could feel the sting of her claws driving themselves into her palms. "Would you have left us alone?" she asked. "If a crying Fox cub said those same words to you, what would you have done?"

"Wh-What?"

Kiana bent down and screamed in her face: "I didn't want to blow on that horn! You made me do it! You are the ones who turned me into a killer, so don't you dare sit there and whimper like a child! Don't you dare cower from me as if I'm a monster when you are the ones who made us fear for our lives! Don't you dare sit there and cry when you bloody well know you wouldn't have paid any heed to our tears were our positions reversed! You are the ones who came into our lands! You came to kill us, to burn us, to rip us apart just because you felt like it! And now you have the gall to sit there and cry because you didn't get your way? Well I am sick of it! I am sick of being made to feel like this! We could have left you to die in the snow, but we didn't! We could have ensured the safety of our loved ones by leaving you to freeze and suffocate, but we didn't! We dug you out, we saved your lives, we gave you food and shelter and treated your wounds and some of my best friends died because of it! My own father nearly lost his life! My mate's brother is barely hanging on! And it all happened because we tried to help you! You, who tried to kill us! Even now, all I'm trying to do is help you, and you shy away from me like my touch is poison! Well I'm not! I'm not poison! Do you hear me!? And if I am... if I really am poison... something that can kill through touch alone... then I'm only like that because you made me this way! You made me this way! You - You..."

Kiana couldn't scream anymore. Her throat was too sore. The air was too cold. Her muscles were too tired. Everything was just... too much. She could feel the tears running down her face, but she didn't even bother to wipe them away this time. She just sat down heavily, right there on the ground, and let them fall in total silence.

Her outburst must have shocked the Wolfess into silence, too, because there was no more sobbing, no more gasping for breath. She simply looked at her with those sapphire eyes, slightly bloodshot from all the crying. Her tears had carved two lines of discolouration through her fur, one across the bridge of her muzzle, and one past her temple. The patch of ground beneath her head was sodden with it.

"I'm sorry..." Kiana said. "I'm sorry I screamed at you. I'm sorry I blew on that horn. But I had to. It's okay if you hate me, it's okay if you're scared of me, but all I ask is that you please try to understand that simple fact. I had to. You were coming to kill us, and I had to..."

The Wolfess stared at her. Thin streams of mist issued from her slightly parted lips with every breath. Tears streamed down her face, following the path their predecessors had taken, and slowly seeped into the earth beneath her cheek. Her whole body was trembling.

Kiana stood up, wiped her eyes on her sleeve and brushed the dirt off her dress. "I'm going to fetch you a blanket," she said. "You don't have to use it if you don't want to, but I'm getting you one anyway."

Kiana turned to leave, and that's when she felt the weak grip of a hand around her ankle, and the raspy croak of the Wolfess's voice rising up from down below, altogether different from what it was before.

"My mate died in the snow..."

Kiana didn't want to look down. For a moment she entertained the thought of just walking on and pretending she hadn't heard anything, but she could no more do that than the sun could rise in the west and set in the east. She turned her head, and the Wolfess was looking up at her again, but her mind-numbing fear had been replaced by something else, something even worse.

Crippling sorrow.

"He didn't want to come..." she whispered. "He said it wasn't right. He begged me to stay, but I... I wanted to come. I practically dragged him with me. I thought it would be like Wardo had said. I thought it was going to be like a game... I thought..." The last string, the last drop of glue, the last piece of whatever it was that had kept her together all this time, finally let go, and her face just_shattered_. "I thought it would be fun!!" she wailed, her lips brushing against the tear-soaked sand. "I thought it would be fun!! Cora forgive me, I thought it would be fun!!"

Never before had Kiana experienced such an overwhelming contradiction within herself. On one side, she felt disgust and revulsion so intense she had to fight just to keep from vomiting. That this Wolfess would think of mass murder as a 'game', as something 'fun' to while away the time, was something she couldn't even comprehend. She could only feel at the edges of it, like a blind vixen stumbling around in an unfamiliar room, dragging her fingers over rough surfaces and sharp corners, trying to make sense of it all. But maybe that was a blessing. If she could fully understand those dark shapes she would surely go mad where she stood, mad just like this Wolfess crying at her feet.

Oh yes. She was mad, of that Kiana had no doubt. And that was where the other side of the conflict came in. For as badly as she was disgusted by this creature, as much as she loathed it and despised it, she couldn't help but pity it as well.

Here was a Wolfess who had lost everything to her own bloodlust. She could blame Wardo, she could blame Banno, she could blame Shekka, she could even blame Ander and Kiana, but in the end, she would have to look at herself and decide how to distribute that blame. Should most of it go to Wardo and Shekka, who fanned the flames of insanity? To Banno, who led them all to their doom? To Ander and Kiana, who built the wall and called the snow down upon their heads? Or...

"I'm sorry..." the Wolfess whispered, her voice muffled by the sand. "I'm sorry..."

Kiana pitied her because, in some ways, looking upon her was like looking at a lost child, a child who did not understand where she was or how she came here, a child who could never, ever find her way home again.

Maybe that's why Kiana did what she did. Maybe that's why, in the end, her pity won out over her revulsion.

She got down on her knees, tapped the Wolfess on the shoulder, and when she looked up, she embraced her, folding her arms around her shivering body, shocked by how cold she was. How skinny. She could clearly feel every rib.

"I'm sorry, too..." Kiana whispered. The Wolfess had gone completely rigid. It was like hugging a block of ice.

"Stop touching me..." she whispered, her arms sticking out stiffly like tree branches.

Kiana shook her head.

"Stop touching me!" she repeated, her voice rising, becoming more shrill. "I said stop touching me!"

Kiana shook her head again. They were both shivering now.

"Let go of me! Let go of me!"

Kiana refused yet again. Maybe this was how she could help. Maybe, if she could share some of her warmth, this Wolfess wouldn't have to be so alone, so -

An ice cold pair of hands crawled their way up her chest and settled around her throat. There was power in those bony fingers. A lot of power. She could feel the hard tips of her claws scraping through her fur. She could feel the pressure, light at first, but quickly building, and now Kiana's heart was pounding in her chest, sending dull throbs through her temples. The panic was settling in, grabbing hold just as this Wolfess was grabbing her neck, squeezing down, pushing her, pushing her -

The Wolfess merely pushed her away, emphatically breaking their one-sided embrace. Looking down at the ground, where their knees almost touched, she shook her head in outright denial. Her breath came out in heavy gasps, as if she had run for miles to reach this point. "No..." she said, refusing to look Kiana in the eye. "I can't..."

Her fingers were still wrapped around Kiana's neck, and although she wasn't squeezing, it still felt to Kiana as if she had a -

(Pair of scissors.)

• dagger to her throat. She slowly, ever so slowly, reached up and tugged on the Wolfess's wrists, hoping that maybe she wasn't aware of what she was doing, but there was no give in those sinewy muscles at all. Her fingers were like an iron collar around her neck.

"I understand everything you've told me..." she said, her voice choked with tears. "I understand why you did it... I understand that you had no choice... I understand that we never should have come here in the first place... I understand that we are in the wrong... that we wouldn't have shown you the same mercy you've shown us... I understand that all this death is the product of our own choices... I understand it all... but still..." She looked up and her gorgeous blue eyes were completely different from the fear-stricken orbs they were before. There was madness dancing just below the surface. The flecks of sapphire had darkened, like drops of poison rising up from the bottom of a well. "When I look at you... all I can see is the Fox that called down the snow. When I look at you, all I can see is the Fox who killed my mate, who buried him in a deep, cold hell. When I look at you..."

The fingers around Kiana's throat began to tighten. She could feel the tips of her thumb claws as two hard points slowly pressing against her windpipe. She gasped for air, but received only a tiny trickle. She clawed at the Wolfess's wrists, trying to pull them off, but there was no give at all.

"When I look at you... it doesn't matter that you're sorry," The Wolfess said, completely ignoring Kiana's struggles. "It doesn't matter that you cry for those you love, same as I do. It doesn't matter that Allekai wouldn't have been here if I hadn't asked him to come. It doesn't matter that you saved as many of us as you could. It doesn't matter that you shelter us from the storm. It doesn't matter. None of it matters. Because... when I look at you... all I see is the Fox we should have burned. The Fox who called down white death. The Fox who killed my mate, took away the future we might have had together, and then had the audacity to try and hug me, as if that would take it all back... I look at you... and I begin to feel that maybe... even though I know I'm in the wrong, even though I understand that you were protecting your loved ones, even though we would have done far worse to you than you have done to us... I begin to feel that maybe none of that matters either. I begin to feel that maybe... the only way for me to shed this pain... the only way for me to lie down and finally go to sleep... is to..."

Kiana was scared. Scared, not just because her air was slowly squeezing down to a slit and her breath was turning into a pathetic wheeze, but because she could see herself reflected back inside the madness at the bottom of those light blue eyes. She pulled on the Wolfess's fingers, trying to pry them open, but it was no use. She was just too strong. She tried to yell, to speak, to whisper, but she had no air! The only sound she could produce was a barely audible moan.

"You are not a monster... but when I look at you, a monster is what I see..." the Wolfess said, speaking out of sorrow as well as anger. "Your touch is not poison, but when you reach out to me with kindness, poison is all I feel. That is why... that is why..."

The pressure suddenly disappeared from around Kiana's neck and she fell back, gasping for air, her eyes wide and staring. Hot, stinging tears rolled down her cheeks.

The Wolfess looked at her, and she seemed so tired, so sad. "That is why I ask... that you please not touch me. I do not want a hug. I do not want a blanket. I do not want the warmth of your fires or the kindness of your heart. I just want to lie here, by myself, and hate you, Kiana of the Foxes. I want to stew in it. I want to hate you for what you did to me. I want to hate you for every second that I remain in this world, because... if I'm too busy hating you... then I won't have time to hate myself."

Kiana sat up, rubbing her throat. She could still feel those fingers locked around her neck like a noose, slowly fading.

The Wolfess turned her back, lay down, and curled up into a tight ball, shivering in the cold.

It was as if nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

Kiana tried to get back to her feet, but her legs felt like hollow tubes of wool and she sat down heavily. She couldn't stop shivering, and it had nothing to do with the cold or the ghostly fingers around her throat. It was the Wolfess's back. Her back, with its slender frame. The bumps of her shoulderblades showing through her animal hide garb. The ridges of her spine.

Her back.

She hates me... Kiana thought. She could actually feel it radiating off that back as if it were a furnace, but the heat it gave off wasn't warm at all, it was terribly cold. She knew it didn't make sense, but that was the closest she could come to visualizing it in her head. She had never been hated, truly hated, in her entire life, and all the hatred washing over her body now was like a cold heat that could freeze as well as burn. And, looking at that back and feeling that terrible sensation crawling all over her body, she knew there was nothing she could do about it. This couldn't be fixed by a hug or a blanket. This couldn't be fixed by anything. She had killed this Wolfess's mate, and because of that, she would hate her for every second of every day that she was alive. And that was all there was to it. It was horribly, terrifyingly simple.

Hate.

I don't even know her name... Kiana thought, and somehow that filled her with a sadness so deep she could barely keep the tears inside. To be hated so deeply by a Wolfess whose name she didn't even know, it was just...

It was sad.

Kiana shakily got to her feet and stood there, watching for a moment to see if she would do anything; cry, flick her ear, turn her head, yell at her to go away, anything - but she simply lay there, all curled up, shivering in total silence, quietly hating her.

Kiana turned and hastened down the path, clutching her dress close to her chest to keep the cold at bay. She looked back only once, with a dimly hopeful thought of asking the Wolfess her name, but her back was still turned, and she could still feel those waves of hatred pushing against her, scorchingly cold.