The Error
The wolf felt the sting of cold air on his nose, accompanied by a warm smell marked by crisp notes of rosin and smoke.
He knew- somehow- that it was the smell of a fire burning in a hearth. It was a good smell, his memories said. One that told him that things were somehow right and good.
His chest ached. He seemed barely able to take a breath, and the few breaths he took were labored and punctuated by a wheezing cough.
He opened his eyes. He was in a room with white plaster walls. Above him a ceiling of rough-hewn timbers spanned the modest space, leading to a small, high window of diamond-shaped lattice glass.
"Bless me, you're awake!" said a voice in what he knew to be the Voloksi tongue. He turned to see a female wolf in a long, modest, home-spun gown rushing to his side.
Since when did he understand Voloksi? And why was all this so familiar? He knew her, but how?
"What... who...?" he tried to say, but the words came as a faint croak in his parched, cough-scarred throat.
"Hedea, come quick! He's alive! My Omonz is alive! Bring him some broth!" the female wolf said, taking his hand and squeezing it.
Omonz? Was that his name? He tried to speak but the breath he drew to form the words caught in his aching throat and a rasping cough stole his words. He found himself unable to draw a breath as the cough choked him, drowned him, pulled him down under. His vision became blurry. He found himself clutching the hand of the terrified female, unable to say anything as the room faded around him.
His last thought was how much he wanted to stay with her. Did he love her? How could he love her? How did he know her?
* * *
Cold air whipped across the fox's body as the scent of a thousand fires hit his nostrils.
He became aware that he was face down in the snow. The salty taste of blood- his own blood- pooled heavily in his muzzle.
He pulled the heavy cloak away from his face and pushed himself up, letting out a sharp cough. He looked down at the fresh trace of crimson in the snow as it dripped from his muzzle.
His whole body was in immense pain, every rib, every limb on fire with horrific agony.
Unsure of what else to do, he tried to get to his feet but fell flat on his face.
The first thing he noticed was how heavy his body felt. Looking down he noticed he was dressed in a suit of mail and plate armor and realized that his lanky body probably weighed more by half under the heavy steel.
The second thing he noticed was that his left leg seemed to not be supporting somehow. In fact, he wasn't even sure it was still there.
He sat up, wheezing from what he could only assume were monstrous chest injuries, and took the deepest breath he could manage before looking down at his leg.
What he saw was a complete leg, though by no means intact. Skin, sinew, and bone had been rearranged in a disturbing jigsaw of flesh, and the limb lay immobile and useless beneath him.
He suddenly became aware of his surroundings. He was in a forest of bare trees. Snow covered the ground all around, and off in the distance, a faint orange glow could be seen on the horizon. That was where the fires burned.
A sound of sobbing hit his ears- the kind of choked sobs of innocents mourning their dead.
Using his good leg and what he could only assume was the splintered shaft of some polearm he had wielded only hours before, the fox got to his feet and limped painfully toward the fires before him.
He tried to recall what had happened, where he was, how he had been so frightfully maimed, but every bid for recollection only frustrated him. It was as if he had found this body as it was and chosen to inhabit it, hoping to find life.
And yet, he had faint memories of a village that lay beyond the trees before him, of growing up there, of a family and even a child. Had they escaped? Did they die in the raid?
What raid? Who raided the village? And how could he have a family and have no memory of their names or faces?
The fox then realized, to his dismay, that he had barely traveled ten yards. He could not remember having ever been so exhausted, and as he forced himself to take one more step, he felt an overwhelming need to lie down once more, to rest, to sleep.
His good leg buckled underneath him, and the fox fell to the soft snow, crumpled in a heap, his breathing labored as the night around him faded, his thoughts going vague and his pain slowly fading into nothing.
* * *
"Guys! Guys! He's coming around!"
The young serval felt an odd mixture of soft and hard textures beneath him, a gentle baritone hum around him as cold air and the smell of a distant campfire tickled his nose.
"Keep driving, Jake, he's really fucked up still," said a coyote in a black hoodie to a tiger in the driver's seat.
"What... huh?" the serval said, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
"Dude, you OD'd. We thought we lost you," the coyote said.
"Don't you ever fucking do that again. Dammit, Seth, you had us worried!" the tiger bellowed.
"OD?" the serval asked. He couldn't remember what that meant. It was bad, though.
He tried to sit up and was able to catch a glimpse of wide expanses of farmland rushing by the windows of the speeding car before his weak muscles let him drop again.
"Seth, dude, chill out. You just got really fucked up, just relax, we're gonna get you to a doctor," the coyote said.
"I don't..." the serval began. That was when he felt his chest grow tight. At first it was just like a knot or a lump, but it quickly got worse. In seconds his chest was consumed with horrific pain, and he clutched at it, grimacing and wheezing.
"Dude, hurry up, he's in bad shape!" the coyote cried desperately.
"I'm going as fast as I fucking can!" the tiger shouted, tears in his eyes as he pressed the accelerator to the floor.
The last thing the serval saw was the coyote leaning over him, the canine's eyes filled with tears. "Dude, just hang in there. You gotta pull through. Think of Charlene! Think of her! She can't live without you!"
The words echoed in his mind as his world faded to black, the tightly-wound spring in his chest releasing all at once. It was such a relief that he didn't consider, for one moment, holding it back.
* * *
"And so, you see, we wished to reincarnate you. But you were so obstinate that you refused to die in the first place. It made things... shall we say, difficult for us."
A spirit- one that flickered the forms of perhaps a dozen or more bipedal creatures- stood before a dense cloud of glowing, swirling mist upon a plane of indescribable ethereal matter.
"And so you sent me to suffer a thousand deaths for my obstinacy? Why? To what end?" the spirit called out, daring the voice before him.
"We did no such thing," the voice said bluntly. "Your will to live frankly overpowered everything we did. We did not believe a mortal could possess such a will."
"So this is your error? You tell me the gods themselves made an error?" the spirit cried out, more in rage than anguish.
"If you wish to call it an error, then it was an error. But we are not the gods you speak of. We merely exist, as do you. Our meetings with mortals are what you may call an accident. Without errors, there would be fewer accidents. We chose you to reincarnate only as a caprice; we like you, and we chose you as one of our favorites, but only on a whim. But mortal, do you wish to be reincarnated?"
The spirit thought for a moment. "Only if it is done properly. If you would send me back into the dying shell of some unfortunate being, then destroy me now so that I can never suffer again."
"You shall see life from birth. Although we find we no longer favor you. When you return to this realm, you must walk among the spirits and never see the mortal plane again."
"Then so be it," the spirit said. "Let me walk among mortals, one last time."
From within the spiraling cloud before him, a beam of light burst forth and seared through the spirit's form. The agony of being burned in a fire ten thousand degrees hot burst through his being. The fear of being snatched from the safety of the spirit realm shook his being deep down.
From somewhere deep and visceral, he let out the loudest cry he could manage.
"It's a boy! Oh gods, it's a boy and he's beautiful!" a voice said in words he could not understand.
A newborn civet's panicked screams pierced the air, but the screams were soon quieted when a pair of loving arms wrapped around him.
"Have you thought of a name yet?" a male voice said.
"I think we'll wait," said a gentle female voice. "We've got time."
The young civet couldn't understand a word of the conversation. All he understood was the gentle warmth and a familiar scent of his mother, and for one sweet moment he realized he desired nothing.