I was racing through the forest, to a place I had left long ago. My heart was trying to beat itself out of my rib cage. I had been running for too long, and it wouldn’t be long before I collapsed. If I fell, or if I tripped, all would be lost. Hundreds of innocents would die. Everything came down to how fast I could run, and how long I could stay up. Just when I was starting to think all hope was lost, I burst out of the trees, and I barely avoided falling straight into a river, a river stained a translucent pink with blood. The haunting howl made by one’s final breath swirled around me, a morbid song that would never leave my mind. Savage winds ripped at my once white fur, now stained red and brown by my blood and the earth. The wind whistled through the towering snow-coated pines around me, creating an unsettling constant shrieking. The currents of air seemed to deliberately blow blood into my eyes, blurring my vision and making everything look red, not just the river, and the blood dripped from pools suspended above my bottom eyelids, leaving bloody tracks down my face like tears of blood. The taste of the red liquid sat bitter and salty on my tongue from the constant flow dripping down from my eyes each time I blinked.
I couldn’t stop now. I had to continue. The muscles in my legs screamed as I turned, almost slipped as my paws slid on the crimson ice, and continued my race against time. As I ran, my rasping breath burned my raw throat, and the freezing cold bit my nose with icy teeth. The blood splattered snow slowly turned my legs pink, then a deep scarlet as I plowed through drifts. I was so close. Just a bit further, just stay up a little longer… My mind raced with my legs, trying to remember the fastest way. Also, my mind fought a desperate battle against a single thought.. The prophecy…
One sacrifice to end the wars... Unite who had survived... I lost the battle. The memory pinned me to the ground. I fell hard onto my side, and I couldn’t move, engulfed in fatigue, exhaustion pumping through my veins instead of blood. The words of the prophet of long ago… Time around me fell to dust, and I lost myself to the chanting.
The scent of blood fills the air
And fills the white wolf with despair
Wolves attacking
Ice cracking
Plunging dogs to a river soaked red
For the fierce
War wind blows
As the white wolf knows
This is why
The red river flows
The fierce gusts bring war and famine
The need to bite
The need to kill
But an outcast will rise
To end the pain
Of too much blood spilled
Red diluted under rain
The prophecy fulfilled
The white wolf killed
And life continues
With a world to rebuild
I had fallen just as I reached the desolate glade I had been running to. I had made it. Across the clearing I saw a man with crude features, and a large metal stick that smelled sharply of chemicals, pointed directly at my chest. In his other hand, he held a leather rope, with an off feeling about it. The other end was wrapped around the hands of a young girl, who smelled of fear and wind. An old instinct, built up over thousands of years bubbled up inside of me, telling me that it was time for what I had avoided at all costs. I struggled to rise, my legs shaking with exhaustion. With a pang of regret, I knew they would be numb soon. I dug my hind paws into the ground, and in a final burst of energy, I pushed off, soaring towards the girl. The wind that had tugged on my fur and my ears, trying to turn me back, shifted, pushing my onwards towards the leather rope and the path that had been laid out for me so many years ago. I only vaguely remember a loud noise, the tangy taste of rope as my teeth clenched around it, then were torn away, and being jerked to the side. The sound of my head hitting the ground echoed, and seemed far away. Sounds got fuzzy and I could no longer tell which way was up or down. As the howls of my old pack died away, the wind mellowed, dwindling down to a soothing breeze, and rain began to fall, washing my sides and soaking my fur so that it stuck to me. I like the rain, I thought slowly, struggling to reach such a simple conclusion as the world around me grew fuzzy, colors blending, until my vision narrowed down to a lump of snow stained a deep ruby red, then slowly the red blurred and I shut my eyes, a single blood-tear falling onto the fresh white snow, in a beautiful clearing under the stars in the middle of a forest near a river, the home of several packs of wolves, and the single tear would never be seen by any. It was just a bit, a piece of a broken memory, forgotten as soon as discovered, lost to all but a dying wolf, a bloody track left down the side of a face that would never move again due to the infractions of others. Slowly, my senses returned, though they had a different quality about them that I just couldn’t quite put my paw on. I only paused a second to consider this, then I shook my head slowly as if to rid myself of the bothersome thought. I unfurled my wings, flapped several times, and I began to spiral upward. As I left the forest, on a calm updraft, I looked down at a dead wolf, white with black paws, but stained brown and red with blood and earth. Poor thing, I murmured, and I left without a further thought, soaring out over the pink river where many wolves stood confused, and I flew far, far away, towards the sun, up, up, into the light.
