Prayer: She didn't plan on being seen.

She didn't plan on being seen.

Posted by Juno on 12/18/2007, 10:21 pm
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She silently crept among the dead and slender pine trees, tall and eerie against the pale winter sky. The clouds were painted pastel on the horizon, blended artistically with the rest of the faint heavens. Snow planned to fall, and the arctic fox knew this better than some.

The grounds were, by all means, deserted. Juno softly tapped her paws against the dirt, where ice had formed from the morning's frozen dew. Her small feet found a protruding root, which she traced up to a towering willow tree. Its boughs were long and threw ponderous shadows over the ground, immersing Juno in their depths immediately. She breathed a sigh, then thumped herself against the massive trunk. Her head rested on the rough and aging bark, a puff of steam exitting her nostrils as she breathed again into the frozen air. Her golden eyes appeared somewhat moist, more than would regularly be seen on a vixen of her sort. Everyone had a story behind them, and hers was... rather long.

Juno was a rather old fox, having travelled to wolf mountain and lived there for years. It was growing old on her, but there was no idea in her to leave. She had been to gangs, she had been to packs, she had been to wars, met many, lost many, found many, forgot many.... It dawned on her that perhaps the time would come when her life ended. Being a small vixen, her dead had nearly come a handful of times, and there was little in her that would aid her to keep up with the larger creatures. Another winter was coming, and the snow was her home, but she feared the cold grasp of death against the comparitively warm winter snow.

She knew well enough that she had no future.

Being a trouble maker didn't get one very far. Her black claws scratched against the mighty roots of the willow, marvelling at how a tree, with no true predators, dwarfed a living thing to such embrassing extremes. It seemed that every little thing on this planet cast a second, third, fourth, fifth terrifying shadow over the fox, until she may become visibly and physically black with the inner torment that befell her every waking second. The earth had never been safe, but time was eroding her former strength, former beauty, transforming her into a specter of her formal glory.

Where she had been fearless, she was now filled with trepidation. She could tell little in what direction her life was going. She had wordlessly abandoned the pack she had once lived in, wordlessly forgotten many of the friends she had made, wordlessly left her former mate and kits. The only creature she had by her side was Poinsettia, whom she had also wordlessly crept awy from for solitude. And now she was unsure. She had hoped the prayer grounds would give her solace, but they greeted her with malevolent shadows from the weeping willow's oppresive bows. The moment told her that nothing on earth could stop the flow of time. There were many who longed to live for ever, but could not live in fear. And this was Juno. Suddenly the world became visible to eyes that shirked the enevitable. There was simply a lack of comfort in every corner, and the apparation of Charon, hand outstretched for the coin with which she'd pay toll.