Everything, in the merest instant, everything was gone. Destroyed. Utterly wiped out. The dark wild dog’s blue-green eyes were dull as she surveyed the place that had once been called home. Carnage and pain, blood and broken bone, life shattered all around. Gone. Everything, everything…just gone. It was unbelievable.
Only a few days ago it had seemed as though nothing would ever change, as though nothing could ever change. The Dames and Knights sparred and patrolled, the Rangers stalked their prey across perilous cliffs and treacherous slopes with the nimbleness that none of the creatures on the flat lands far below could ever hope to properly imitate. Squires trained under strict teachers, Pages and Jumpers scampered about in the throes of childhood’s playful innocence. The elders, concerned about things only the elders seemed to know of, had suggested a group go out in search of a new home. Just in case. But that ‘just in case’ seemed so unlikely, she’d greeted the news with as much seriousness as anyone else, but deep down it had meant nothing to her. Life was what it was, or it had been. Now the world seemed not the same. Everything was changed. Everything was different. Everything was…
…gone.
Just gone.
Unbelievable.
Kurroa shuddered, the roar of the mountain’s moving would haunt her dreams until the day she breathed her last into the sky. So many were gone. Killed, most likely, but in truth simply not found. Or perhaps unfindable. They might live still, trapped somewhere deep within the cavernous depths of what had once been their home and shelter. Starving for light, for warmth, for company, for one last kind word… She shuddered again, before breathing deeply to seek that place of strength lodged deep within her breast. Focused. Calm. Enough tears and howls of grief were being shed. She was a Dame. Hurt or not, and that deep breath had sent spasms of pain across her sides, she was a leader in this time of crisis.
But she’d not done much leading. Indeed, she herself had been trapped, buried alive and half crushed. She was one of only a few lucky ones. Even her mate, sleeping curled beside her in their den, even he was gone. How she felt about that, Kurroa wasn’t sure. The horror of the mountain sliding, the shuddering that reverberated deep into her very bones, and the sudden absence of light when the mouth of the den she’d shared with the older Knight simply ceased to exist…she knew that feeling. It was fear. Fear and pain, physical, tangible, real. But her mate…
The dark female lowered her head slightly, closing her eyes. She could still sense him, feel the warmth as it ebbed from the body pinned beside her in the unending darkness. She doubted he’d even finished waking up, he’d not cried out nor uttered a single sound before the rumble turned to silence. Endless, endless silence broken only by her staggering breaths and frantic heartbeat. For days, or perhaps mere hours that dragged onward into eternity, she lay trapped beneath the rubble, buried in the mountain’s side, with the mate she never truly loved. But she had respected him, as he had respected her. They worked together well enough, were partners. A good match, everyone had said. A lucky match for the poor half-blind warrior, everyone had meant. Save for Aheero, who had never been anything but sincere. He was her closest, perhaps her only, true friend. If he’d been born a Knight… but he wasn’t. Nothing would change that. He would never aid her in fulfilling her duty. Oh, he would have tried, she was certain of it, he would have leapt at the chance to do something for her, anything. So easy to make smile, so happy to please her… It was the blue Ranger she would miss most when her spirit lay within the mountain for eternity, as she had believed then that it must. Her mate had understood that she did not love, that she was only devoted to her duty. He had known, and he had not minded for he had been the same.
A good match. But no more. No more.
She had never expected to see him again, her young friend who was himself proven an adult many, many times over. And yet, while she lay in the suffocating darkness, her own breath slowly smothering her, it was light that drew her eyes to open once more. And then, in the thick heavy dust, a scent she knew anywhere, a voice she’d grown to love. How Aheero had found her, she hadn’t been sure once he’d helped to drag her from what would have been her tomb. Her den, as had everyone else’s, was gone. The side of the mountain had fallen, and she could see the mark of the scar reaching down and down and down and down…far away and out of sight. Did it reach all the way to the flatlands? Perhaps Aheero would know. He would travel there before long, his paws would drag him away as they always did.
If only she might have gone with him!
“I do my duty,” Kurroa murmured to herself, rising painfully onto stiff paws. The sunlight was still too bright for her single eye, the dust of her mate’s grave lingering in her nostrils and nearly making her sneeze. Buried alive, her breath slowly stolen from her, and still she survived. Still she would fight on. For that was her way, her lot in life. Nothing had ever come easily to her, not a single thing. The runt of her litter, clumsy and small but desperate to succeed. And she had. The dutiful one, dedicated to her work and her pack, and then maimed so that she might not be the warrior she had struggled long to become. But she had fought on, learned to adjust her steps and her other senses. And she had succeeded. She had been presented an opportunity, one her heart rejected but her reason approved of. She had done her duty, not out of love for her mate, spirits rest his soul, but out of love for her pack. And she had done it.
This was but another of the spirit’s trials for her. Another obstacle for her to struggle to overcome. Another test, another task. She had survived her own tomb. She was still here. And she wasn’t finished yet.
Coughing slightly, blinking dust and sunlight from her good eye, Kurroa moved to join those who searched. She was a survivor. She was not finished. Far from it. Someday, someday she would shine. No matter how dark her world became, no matter how deep the gorge she tumbled into stretched, she would shine on. The trials the spirits threw at her, they only gave her strength. So do let them do unto her their worst. She was the star of the blackness. And she would shine on, even if all other lights went out.
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