FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

He'll be dead before we see another sunrise.

Gren's blunt words echoed in Kalla's head, over and over again. It was a simple truth and she knew it; one look at the wretch they had found was enough to tell that. As one of the pack's primary healers, she ought to know; she had never seen injuries as severe as these on a single wolf, dead or alive. And yet... She hummed a quiet tune to herself, thinking it over as she gazed upon his wounds once again, shivering slightly from the cold blasts of snow swirling around.

The salve spread over his open wounds had a fetid, almost overpowering odour, but she paid it no mind. She always laughed when one of the others, big strong males for the most part, shied away from her patients with their nostrils constricting slightly as they tried to block out the horrible smell. To her, it was no more disgusting than the wounds that she worked with; it was a tool to be used, nothing more. And the blizzard sweeps the smell away anyways... Babies...

These wounds, though...

Gingerly, she ran her sensitive paw pads along the course of the fallen wolf's spine, and winced at what she found. She could literally feel the different shards of bone and tissue, shattered beyond all hope of repair, move as she gently ran her paws along the length. One... Two... Three... Three separate breaks in the spinal column, she thought to herself, mentally chalking up the injuries once again. Looking beyond his spine, she shuddered slightly to herself, feeling a sudden wave of empathy wash over her, cringing. She had never seen so many bone fractures in her life. The rib cage was a shattered and slightly flattened mess of tangled bone and mangled flesh, blood oozing slowly through holes where the bones had punctured the skin. The leg bones had fared no better; here and there the gleaming white of bone shone through his stained alabaster fur, where they were intact enough to be seen.

"Whoever this poor devil is, he sure fell pretty far..." she muttered, looking up through squinted eyes. The harsh, beetling granite rock face stretched on upwards, seemingly infinitely, until the black rock gradually merged with the overhanging clouds, becoming a solid wall of white fog, impenetrable by the naked eye. If she squinted hard enough, she thought that she could maybe see a gap; perhaps there was a narrow passage high above, and that was where her charge had fallen from. In an instant though, the swirling vapours overhead closed off her fleeting vision.

Turning her gaze back upon the wolf's ruined form, she frowned slightly. There was... Something intriguing about his injuries. She noted with vague surprise that his chest was still rising and falling steadily, despite the extreme extent of his injuries. He looks like he could just be sleeping... Indeed, to look upon the wolf's face, surprisingly unscathed from the fall, he seemed peaceful and content, happily dreaming away. His eyes... Eye, I should say, she thought, was even twitching slightly under its lid, furthering the illusion.

"Hey, Gren!" she called out, calling over her male counterpart. This can't be normal, she thought, peering at the wolf's serene face. "Gren, c'mere for a sec!"

From the swirling snows a black shape gradually took form, resolving into a ebon wolf of massive proportions and blazing, golden eyes. With a start, she took an involuntary step back from the approaching wolf, heart-rate quickening before realizing it was in fact her friend, and not a bear. His face was massive and angular, with fiery golden eyes evenly spaced framing his long muzzle. Tall, ragged black ears were plastered back against his skull, and his long tail hang out straight behind him like a flag. Shaking her head at her own foolishness, she irately called him over.

"Look at this..." she said, gesturing to his shattered ribcage. He looked briefly, then glanced back at her with a raised eyebrow, nonplussed. With a roll of her eyes, she swept her paw across the wolf's broken body, as if to show the entirety, not simply one injury. "There is something strange going on here..." she told him, paw sweeping across again. "See the extent of these injuries? By any means, this one should have passed on hours ago! He shouldn't have even survived his fall! And yet..." Trailing off, she pointed at his face.

As the massive wolf lowered his paw towards the shattered wolf's face, she froze up as she always did, having to restrain herself from batting his paw away. It was a huge and powerful thing, practically a cudgel in all aspects, and yet he had the gentlest but most assured touch of any healer she had ever met.

She held her breath as he gently cupped the wolf's uninjured muzzle in his paw, raising it slightly from the ground. An eyebrow lifted, briefly, but other than a brief empathetic grimace that was the only show of surprise he revealed. In the deep brazen pools of his eyes, however, she could see uncertainty dancing with confusion.

"That is most... Perplexing," he rumbled finally, deep voice almost drowned out by the howling storm. "By all accounts he should be at the very least either in severe agony or completely unresponsive... Comatose, if you'd prefer." Pausing for a moment, he glanced back at the wolf's face, then back up to her. "And yet he is, for all intents and purposes, sleeping. At the height of his dream sleep, I should say..." Shaking his shaggy head, he peered at the wolf's pulverized spine again, muttering: "I do not understand it."

Finally, he looked back up at her. "Come, we should rest. We have done all we can for this poor wretch; unfortunately there simply isn't anything more we could do." Giving the fallen one another quick glance, he knew what he had predicted earlier was true. "We've done all we can, Kalla. When morning comes we will see that he is given a proper sending off, but for now we must rest."

Acquiescing wearily, Kalla grudgingly left the white wolf's side to stand beside her friend. "Let's at least lay by him... If he should happen to wake, we wouldn't want his last moments of life to be spent alone."

After a moment's indecision, Gren nodded, then yawned, turning in a circle before laying his long body down gently beside the white wolf's ruined form, keeping him warm. Watching as Kalla did the same, he nodded to himself, closing his eyes slowly. Poor devil... he thought, mind drifting. I wonder who he was? Frowning, Gren shifted uneasily, sighing. _ I wonder how he got here..._

---

***

_Wiggling his rump, Rahk ducked down behind the low shrubbery, waiting for his brother. His tail wagged with nervous energy, lips curled up in a playful, silent snarl as his keen blue eyes darted back and forth, keeping watch for his brother's dark form. The tall grasses rustled softly in the gentle breeze, a peacefully rhythmical undulation. _

Rahk's eyes suddenly flew wide open, eyebrows shooting up with his tail... But it was nothing but a rabbit, casually meandering through the wide meadow. Scrunching up his face pitifully, Rahk whimpered slightly. It went against his very nature to just leave that little snack alone... But he was here for another purpose, namely to scare the living shit out of his brother. Whining again, he forced himself to look away, ignoring the rabbit's almost smug movements across the field until it had vanished from his sight.

Proud of his restraint, Rahk murred happily to himself, rump wiggling in time with his tail's frantic sweeps. Right on queue, he saw a familiar small dark form prancing through the grasses, slowly meandering towards the white cub's hidden form. Rahk chuckled silently as his brother came nearer and nearer. 'He HATES it when I do this...' he thought to himself, smirking as he lowered his hind quarters, preparing to leap.

Closer, closer... 'Almost...' he thought to himself.

If Sky'r had but looked up, he would likely have seen his brother's lurking form, quivering with all the nervous energy of a young cub. Obliviously his older brother began past the row of shrubs, but then gave a sudden start, turned tail, and ran back in the direction he had come from like there was a swarm of bees stinging his rump.

_Rahk's disappointment was so strong that is was almost palpable. Whining, he stood up, tail drooping. He had almost managed it! "Where did that little meany run off to?!" he muttered angrily in that cute, half-growling voice of a young wolf not yet full-grown. He was little more than six moons old, still possessing the happy energy of a cub half his age. _

Suddenly, he heard a rustle in the bushes behind him.

"Wha..?"

Suddenly, a large weight landed on his back, and his world became a blur of trees and sky blending into one, yelping and whining as he was bowled over. Finally, he came to a heaving stop in the middle of the meadow and jumped to his paws, wheeling around wildly until he saw...

Sky'r.

"You stink, Sky!" Rahk called out indignantly, meaning it with every fibre of his being. "No fair! You can't steal my jokes!"

Slowly trotting towards him, Sky'r had a smug grin on his handsome muzzle, golden eyes lit up with a gleeful shine as he wagged his tail. "I believe the joke's on you, little bro." Chuckling, he exclaimed: "You should have heard you yelp! Priceless! Next thing you know you'll be calling out for your mommy!"

Rahk growled testily, tail flared straight out behind him, but before he could open his mouth he bit his tongue, quickly silencing any retorts which had been about to spring forth. For, there behind Sky was...

"And why would he need to be calling out for me, Sky'r?"

If Sky had thought Rahk's reaction had been priceless, then Rahk definitely got his payback now. At the first sound of that familiar voice his tail tucked itself so far between his legs that it was pressed tight up against his belly; his eyes widened and he gave an inadvertent gasp, jaw dropping. His laughing dried up in an instant, and he slowly looked around back towards the source of the voice, cringing with his head low.

Standing behind him was, of course, their mother. Tall and imposing, her regal blue eyes gazed down upon them with good humour lightly covered in motherly concern. Laughter sparkled behind her gleaming eyes, but when she frowned imperiously down upon the two of them, all they could do was collectively gulp and sink lower into the grass, buried under the weight of their embarrassment.

"Now, what was it you were talking about there, Sky'r?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow in the dark cub's direction. "Something tells me that you two have been up to no good..." Seeing Rahk's immediate head shaking, she shook her head back at him, saying: "And don't bother to deny it! I know that look on your face, Rahk..."

_Sky'r chose that time to pipe up, exclaiming: "He was going to jump me!" _

At that, Rahk's head sunk even lower into the fragrant grass, muzzle pressed firmly into the soft floor as his tail curled itself around under his legs as best as it could.

Their mother rolled her eyes, fighting to keep a grin off her face. "And why exactly then would he be the one calling for me, Sky'r?" The look on his face was enough to tell her that it wasn't the entire story. _Busted... _she thought to herself.

_"He jumped on me! Knocked me over and made me roll out into the field!" Rahk exclaimed, tail suddenly springing up from its hiding place. "I didn't do nothing! He hit me!!" _

At that, Sky'r forgot his fear and growled at his brother, voice cracking slightly as he yelled "You liar! Did not!"

"Did too!"

Again, their mother rolled her eyes. "Children, children!" she cried in an exasperated tone; suddenly, as if remembering her presence the cubs stopped their bickering instantly. "Are you done?"

Two sets of eyes focussed upon her, two mouths both intoned the same embarrassed phrase: "Yes, mother."

"Good. Now... Rahk, apologize to your brother! And no buts!" Watching as her son reluctantly apologized to his older sibling, she grinned slightly. "And as for you, Sky'r... Well... Oh, just apologize and call it even."

_Right on queue, their father walked out of the trees, walking up to rest his head gently against his mate's. "Trouble?" he asked in his deep, rumbling voice. _

"Nothing I can't handle, love..." their mother replied, chuckling. "Just a little... 'Disagreement'... No worries."

Smirking slightly, their father turned back towards the trees, then stopped, looking back. "You guys coming? We have a little surprise for you..."

Suddenly, all of their troubles were forgotten in an instant. _A surprise?! _Rahk thought excitedly, leaping up from the tall grass to spring to his side. Unsurprisingly, he saw his brother take up position on the other side of their father, sticking his tongue out at Rahk when he thought his father couldn't see.

_Their parents began striding off purposefully into the dark bush, and in a flash Rahk and his brother were darting after them. An opportunity like this just didn't come every day, after all! _

***

Kalla woke to a chill breeze, ruffling her fur as the sun's first early rays shone over the low-lying hills to the east. Eyes opening slowly, she quickly grimaced and closed them to thin slits as the piercing sunlight glared in. Grunting in a very un-ladylike manner, she carefully untangled herself from the white wolf's broken limbs, standing slowly while her joints popped. It's too early for this garbage...At least the blizzard has broken. Getting up stiffly, she gave her body a quick shake, knocking off the snow that had accumulated there during the night.

Looking around carefully, she could see that half the hunting party was gone already on their morning hunt; most likely they would be back before long, judging by the time. For now, the clearing under the cliff was mainly filled by sleeping bodies, huddled together for extra warmth. Smiling slightly, she turned around, and was almost surprised to see the slow rise and fall of the white wolf's collapsed chest, seemingly without difficulty despite the shattering of his rib cage. Gren however was nowhere to be seen. The deep indentation where he had lain was still clearly embossed in the hard-packed snow underfoot, but of his dark form there was no sign.

Giving the white wolf a quick lookover, she was astonished to see that relatively little blood had seeped past the absorbent moss patches she had glued in place over his wounds. The thick pastes she had applied to his wounds still seemed to be holding, and by some miracle he was still drawing breath. Nothing more I can do for this one right now, she thought to herself. Seeing his fractured bones and deformed body still gave her a slight shiver, but now as opposed to the previous night's queasy tremors it was merely an empathetic reaction.

Putting him out of her sight took effort, but steeling her will she turned her muzzle away from him and put her nose to the air, sniffing for her friend's unique odour. She didn't have to search long; it seemed like he had left relatively recently. Nose upturned, she trotted to the perimeter of the camp, sidestepping her sleeping comrades, and noticed a short trail of Gren's huge prints through the snow, leading a short ways away into the woods before turning off onto a smaller path. With a snort, she trotted down the path, kicking up small pellets of snow as her paws glided above the cold surface. The sound of rushing water began to fill her ears. _ He's probably just gone for a drink at that spring we found yesterday_, she thought to herself, slowing down to a brisk walk.

Just as she thought, she came upon her bear-like friend sitting at the water's edge. However, he wasn't actually drinking, but was merely staring off into the distance with a pensive expression on his long, blocky muzzle. Without turning his head, he spoke to her in his usual bass rumble, asking: "What do you think?"

Frowning, she trotted up to sit next to his flank, turning to look him in the eyes despite the fact that her head barely came up to his shoulder. "Think... About what? Our mysterious friend back there in the clearing?"

He looked back for a few moments with unfocused, unseeing eyes, clearly still deep in thought before replying. "About him... About the wreckage we found... The entire situation, really."

As usual, he spoke slowly, allowing each word to attain a certain weight before letting them drop from his muzzle. It gave him the outward appearance of somewhat of a simpleton; Kalla knew, as she had thought of him as such when she first met him. However, she had quickly realized that there was far more to Gren than met the eye, and took a moment before replying. "Well... He is..." Shaking her head, she gave him a bewildered expression. "Wreckage? What?"

For a moment, he stared at her with a bemused expression, then shook his head. "I forgot you only just got up, Kal. This morning, the hunters found some... Wreckage, littered along the slope of the mountain. It was one of the humans' flying machines..." He shook his head slowly. "All found within it were dead; they could have been killed by any number of things, including whatever brought the machine down in the first place, or the fire."

Kalla took a moment to register this information, then looked carefully back towards the camp with wide eyes. "Do you think our new friend..."

She trailed off into silence, but Gren clearly got the message. "Honestly, I have no idea. Perhaps these humans were hunting him; gods only know what he did to gall them. However..." Now it was he who trailed off, gravely following her gaze back towards the clearing.

The she-wolf was still, but her brain was suddenly in turmoil, brought about by Gren's last words. "You do realize that if they are chasing him, they may not stop? They may be still hunting him at this moment... And if they are..." Suddenly her head snapped skyward, eyes darting around as if she expected to see an army of flying machines descending upon their position at that very moment.

Upon these words, Gren's eyes blazed angrily in their sockets, and Kalla shrunk back slightly from their furious gaze. "Kalla, you can't be suggesting we simply leave him?!" he thundered angrily, spinning to face her dead on. "Even if they were still chasing him... Which I very much doubt... We would never leave one of our own, Kalla! You know that, you took the training, the Pact!"

Tucking her tail, she meekly lifted her head, showing her neck slightly. "Peace, Gren. I was merely raising the possibility, I was not suggesting anything!"

The dark wolf huffed irately, but settled back onto his powerful haunches. "Forgive me, Kalla, I did not mean to imply you would forget your oaths so easily. It's just, there has been a lot happening already in these past few days."

"Relax, old friend, nothing to forgive. I misspoke," Kalla admitted, hanging her head slightly. Wanting to turn the conversation, she decided to shift it back to the wreckage. "Whereabouts is this wreckage, Gren? I think I would like to see it for myself, see if I can give any guesses on what brought down the machine." Looking back towards camp again, she gave him a nod in that direction. "You should probably be getting back to camp anyways; the patient will be needing a thorough check-through, if you'd be willing. Just point me in the direction... On second thought, never mind." The smoke she had missed previously now drifted across her nostrils, and with a faint sneeze she looked up, seeing the thin, dark plume of smoke drifting above the thickly snow-carpeted foliage. "I'm sure I can find it."

Leaving Gren to his own devices, Kalla set off in the direction of the smoke plume, walking quickly across the cold ground. The path of the smoke led her roughly along the path of the stream, so she walked along its smooth, rocky banks for as long as she could. The only sounds were the soft clicking of her claws across the smooth river stone; all else was still and quiet, with even the wind gone now. The plume of smoke in front of her slowly grew larger, smoke drifting straight up into the cool, clear morning air and tainting it with its oily fetor.

Finally, the stream took a sharp right bend, and with a sigh Kalla left its path to delve back into the colder snow. Trotting back amongst the trees, she dodged the occasional low-hanging branch and carried on. Claws skittering off the occasional rock, she nonetheless managed to keep her sure footing and carried on towards the source of the black smoke.

Finally, with a grimace she burst from the forest to arrive at a thin snowed meadow, pressed tight up against the steep cliff face. For a moment, her searching eyes couldn't readily distinguish what they saw; upon first glance there was simply a smoldering pile of blackened slag piled against the rock wall. Jagged chunks of metal stuck out this way and that, and for a moment she could barely even distinguish the rough outline of the craft. Thick blackened streaks were gashed deep into the dark rock of the cliffside, trailing up almost as far as the eye could see into the clouds. The stench and heat were almost overpowering; although the fire had gone out hours before the debris was still glowing a faint cherry red, giving off the occasional spark and cloud of blackened smoke. As she looked harder, however, she began to be able to distinguish the different components of the hated machines she had seen before; the elongated rear section, the twisted landing gear, and fragments of the rotating blades up top became clear to her eyes. Following immediately upon this was the realization of just what those blackened hulks near the front of the machine were...

With a sudden gulp, she felt her stomach clench queasily and looked away for a moment. She was used to serious injuries, but... The blackened, ashy corpses here were like nothing she had ever worked with before. The sweet smell of burnt meat filled the air below the noisome smells of spilt fuel and burnt wreckage, and with a gag she looked away, beginning to breath through her mouth. The worst part of it was, the meat actually smelled good, and knowing just where that smell was coming from was almost more than her stomach could bear. With a grunt she forced herself to look back, to get closer.

Very quickly, she reached a point at which the fur upon her muzzle felt like it was being singed off, so here was where she stopped. Steeling herself again, she forced her eyes upwards to the obliterated craft, grimacing again despite herself. The... Body... in the front seat of the aircraft was a blackened, charred wreck of its former self. In the places where the skin hadn't simply melted away, it was bubbled up and blistered in a horrible motley of angry red and charred black. The eyes had simply melted in their sockets; the fact that their contents had boiled away was a small comfort to her. In patches, his skeleton was exposed; the dark charred bones exposed to the cool air for the first time were still giving off faint tendrils of steam as they cooled slowly. The entire body had been somehow... Compressed... As though upon the landing his pelvis had abruptly decided to join his shoulders, with the entrails spewed out in a macabre fan before the seat. However... Damaged as the man was, dead as he was... There was nothing out of the ordinary about how he died. Given the circumstances... Breathing deeply and ignoring the odours surrounding her, she finally began to regain some modicum of self control, and decided to move on.

She shifted her gaze, now cool and collected, to the second pilot, sitting on the right side of the aircraft. Immediately, she could tell there was something different about this one. The entire right side of the aircraft seemed bowed in somehow, as though it had been struck by tremendous force. The pilot hadn't escaped whatever had damaged the craft either... His neck had been explosively shattered; she could now see small fragments of charred bone and flesh sprayed outwards from it across the ruined cockpit. His head, nearly completely severed by the extreme blow, lolled against the fractured metal wall. It appeared as though it had... Melted... Into the wall.

Apart from this, there was nothing new to be seen with the second pilot; his body was in very much the same condition as the other, but while she felt sure that the first had died on impact, for some reason she felt that the second had died before; maybe his death had caused the crash. Or maybe whatever caused the crash led to his death as well.

Whatever had brought down this machine, it hadn't been pilot error, she decided. She had little experience in such matters, but the way that the pilot's neck had been blasted across the cockpit like that... That simply isn't natural. Something strange happened to these men... Shaking her head, her eyes suddenly lost their cool look, and with a renewed gag at the sight of the human offal before her, the gorge quickly rose up in her throat. Turning her head away swiftly, she took a step back from the helicopter, but it was too late. With a strangled yerk sound, she leaned over and emptied the contents of her stomach onto the charred ground until there was nothing left inside.

Panting from exertion, she slowly raised her head, taking a couple steps back from her steaming ejections. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be away from this chary place. Wheeling her body around, she flung herself away from the crash, but the sight of the pilot's charred, blackened face remained in her mind's eye.