Making Tracks (edited version)
I entered Fur the 'More's Flash Fiction contest again, and was flirting with the rules a bit by submitting this since it's slightly over the 1,000-word limit - thankfully within forgiveness! This won 2nd place, though thanks to several fire alarms going off that Saturday there were at least two entries that simply didn't get finished in time, which would've made it a five-story contest.
I noticed the footprint the other day. It wasn't like any I had seen around here, the print having crushed some of the underbrush down into the mud clearly. I started paying a little more attention each time I went out, and a few days later I found another, then another, then a whole track with a wholly unreasonable gait, all over ten days. I got the strong sense that there was something in this forest quite mysterious.
I shared with my mate about the odd footprints that next evening, but he wasn't impressed. He let me know there was probably some perfectly normal creature making the footprints I had found - despite my insistence particularly on the track - and that I would be wasting my time if I continued trying to figure out what was in our forest.
I didn't listen.
But nor was I successful. After that talk, weeks went by without any sign of a creature that I couldn't identify was wandering through our expanse of trees. Had I really been seeing things? No, that wasn't the answer, I had traced those footprints with my own hooves just to feel them out; I even tried smelling them, at one point thinking there was a scent I didn't recognize.
So if the creature was real, was it just playing with me? Had it moved on? Or died? Or maybe I hadn't been careful earlier and it was on to me, now hiding better? Whatever the reason, I wasn't finding any signs of it at all.
I'm not sure if it was a blessing or a curse that I was seeing less of my mate, too. He'd be gone for days on end. On one hand, I would generally just be happier with him around, and he knew how to keep me sane. On the other hand, there was no way I could talk to him about my creature, the newfound frustrations of not seeing it sure to earn the "I told you so" response...
He had been gone for almost two weeks when it happened. I was out on one of my normal trails when I heard - not saw - something new. I froze, ears at attention, listening to the completely foreign sound. It was faint but it was surely vocalizations of some sort. The more I listened, the more I learned - the creature had a two-toned voice, and its vocalizations were incredibly well-structured, even more so than the songs of the birds of the forest. I realized only after the fact that the birds had actually been silent for a while before I heard the creature, and didn't start singing again until well after I stupidly let the sound fade.
As silently as I could, I tried tracking down where the sound had come from. Sure enough, I found tracks again. Imagine my surprise when I found not one but two sets of the long footprints going alongside that stream! I hadn't been hearing a creature with a two-tone cry; I had been hearing two creatures conversing! The discovery excited and somewhat terrified me.
Another two days went by without any sign of my mate when I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a loud roar - not the roar of a waterfall, or a falling tree, or a rock slide, but an unfamiliar and clearly animalistic roar. I didn't sleep for the rest of the night, the balance between excitement and terror shifting noticeably more toward the latter. It hadn't been a friendly-sounding roar; I wasn't sure now if I really wanted to encounter my creature.
I did anyway the next day.
I was having lunch out on one of my trails when I heard an odd snap, the sound of a twig nearby being broken. I ceased eating and tensed up, looking around anxiously as my ears focused, hearing similar small sounds somewhat nearby, then one of those vocalizations coming closer. I was petrified, even more so when I finally saw one of the creatures between the trees ahead. Not just one - a whole pack of them, walking upright on two legs (that explained the odd gait pattern in their prints) soon filed into view...
Motionless as I was, they initially didn't notice me. But one in the middle stopped, looked my direction, and then cried out, getting the attention of them all. I'm not sure if it was a moment or an eternity, but both they and I were still as we stared. Then the one that cried out raised something that made an unnatural snapping sound and a bright flash of light.
I turned and bolted, running from another snapping sound as the whole group of them started whooping and hollering. If they were trying to blind me in advance of attacking, I wasn't going to let them as I galloped away faster than I think I've ever run, horn catching a few low branches along the way and giving me quite the neck-ache by the time night fell and I realized how exhausted I was.
My mate surprised me a few minutes later, also a bit out of breath but nowhere near myself in that manner. I didn't get a chance to share my experience with him before his own horn nearly gouged my neck as he hurriedly huddled beneath me, his own memory from the previous day flooding my mind.
He had been drinking at the base of a waterfall when he straightened up and turned, only to see the same group I had seen today nearly surrounding him. They looked even more dangerous around him, most of them with their teeth showing - the sharpness of the chompers was particularly visible on the one with the fluffy wagging tail and the one with a giant tan mane around his entire head. My mate panicked and started trying to splash across the stream, feeling one of the creatures lunge forward and pluck one of the translucent hairs from his gorgeous tail as he fled. He hid under a fallen tree since, only coming out when he heard me running past him about an hour ago.
We rested there for a while, necking and nuzzling comfortingly, before leaving that forest for good.