A Trial on Souls
A story I have decided to write weekly. They will most likely come in small increments like this one but I hope you will still enjoy! :)
She pounded through the forest, dodging trees swiftly as she had memorized the path. The night air tickled her soft fur and danced upon her rolling shoulder blades. A honey-drunken brown bear crashed from the bushes and stood up wanting another kind of sweet treat. Without hesitating she ran on towards him, leaping at the last moment. With a sound like a goose down pillow hitting skin, feathered wings unfolded to great lengths at her shoulders and she flapped them just enough to escape the bear's grasp. She then gracefully landed upon silent feet and kept upon her urgent mission. The bear slowly let itself onto its four legs again and stumbled back into the dark bushes.
She folded her wings again tightly to her black body so that the feathers just lightly ruffled up like cowlicks in her fur. Shadows unhinged themselves from her surroundings and stretched upon her. They dripped from every body part and caked her with an almost unnatural darkness. All but her eyes were almost completely invisible in the skyless forest. Her eyes, a brilliant unnatural silver, seemed to gleam and shine with a mysterious light that neither blinded nor lit the path her feet walked. The glow, as it seemed to be within her eyes, ended within the eyeballs and never left the confines of her head.
Being a fox and not a strong wolf, her body was not built for running this fast for the length that she had already run. Her body wished to relax and give out but she pounded on, carrying her frail body with heavy muscles. Her mouth was slightly gaped open as she sucked in air. A tongue dryly pulsed within her exhausted muzzle trying to find moisture in the night air.
Finally she found it, the giant oak guarded the berry bushes around like a silent protector. She ran right past it and then swung around gracefully as a dancer and bolted right back at the trunk. Before her nosed grazed itself on the rough bark of the tree, her paws fell through damp leaves knowingly onto packed earth below. A tunnel lay beneath the guardian tree carved by claws slightly larger than her own. The leaves that covered the entrance were placed tediously to cover, but they had been moved.
The fox closed her eyes so they would not be seen in the darkness and rather sensed her surroundings. Her feet finally pounded into the cave opening and she sensed no energies, nothing alive around her. Without opening her eyes, her body fell and she fainted. Her broken body heaved unconsciously on the cave floor.