Another Case Of Bad Luck

Walk | Talk | Think

It was hard for the frantic healer to fight against the current. Strength had never been something that she possessed much of, but what little she had Callisto focused in a combined effort to keep her head as far above the waterline as she was able and to keep the rest of her moving steadily closer to the edge of the flood. She sought more than anything to gain purchase with her feet, convinced that if she could just get a foothold, then she could drag herself up and out of the water. As she dipped below the roaring tumult of water, she felt her grey toes graze the muddy earth beneath, causing her to claw toward it hopefully.

About the same time, she felt a sharp, biting sting against her scruff, something puncturing through her skin, and then the sudden jolt that came with it as she was forcibly pulled from the water. Sputtering, coughing water, she at last got her footing and half swam, half crawl her way through the last of the water and then wobbly upward onto dryer land. She could hardly keep herself standing, and the scare as much as the chill caused her teeth to chatter, but that was all inconsequential now. She was alive!

With relief, she turned to face her rescuer, her jaws already parting to speak to him, but the bank behind her was empty. Startled, the dark wolf glanced around her, sure that he had not managed to slip away along the newly formed shoreline. Which meant...

"Jak?" Her heart began to race within her chest as realization dawned, the weakness in her legs worsening as she stumbled just a single step closer to the water before she stopped herself. "Jak!" There was desperation and demand in her voice as she yelled his name, willing him to materialize amid the flood waters and prove himself whole and healthy and there with her. It was not a trade that he had made to get her free; he should have been there too! "Jakart!"

Though she continued to stumble along, Callisto followed the edge of the water for a few frantic paces, searching determinedly for any sign of the grey fighter amid the mess of the flood, but there was nothing. In her inattention, the flood had stolen him in her place. Hearing no answer to the shouts she made, she had to assume he could not - and would not - answer. Jakart was gone, claimed by the flood, but the healer, staring in shock, could not quite bring herself to believe it.

"Callisto!" She turned stiffly to spot the petite dark frame of the cat Belladonna running her way - apparently she had been safe and out of harm's way, somehow avoiding the whole messy ordeal. Redirecting her attention back toward the flood water, Callisto wondered how fate had deemed this necessary, how her singular good luck charm as she had seen him had somehow been wretched right out of her grasp so horrendously. I really am cursed. Feeling responsible and guilty, blinking back a sudden sting of tears, she tucked her head and turned away from the water, shuffling her way toward her companion and from the fate she had somehow been spared from.

-Exit Callisto-