Icy toes and Ice Floes

Weary in heart and body and soul, he had thought nothing of the little endearments. His face was puzzled as she spoke, the way that she got closer, the way that she seemed friendly, and the words, her words, how very contrary. She had begun to seem altogether more lovely and caring but then she spat out a confusing poison. He heard a ringing in his ears as if she had struck him a blow, but it was no ringing but the sound of his heart thudding in his throat. The rush of blood, the rise of what little adrenaline his body could provide, fight or flight, fight or flight, FIGHT OR FLIGHT, his instincts screamed at him like an eagle diving at his head relentlessly, like the ceaseless tick-tocking of a great clock in an empty hall altogether too large and growing louder still.

In the confusion, he smelt fear. He came to realize it was his own. The blurred months and seasons and years and pain and hurt and exhaustion and all of the cries of those he killed and did not kill but still were dying seemed like a red film on his eyes and grew more opaque the longer he looked until he could no longer see her but a sea of blood, his blood, the blood he had shed, and the blood of his soul drowning.

In all of this, only a few seconds had passed, and to an onlooker, the black and too-skinny wolf had seized up, as rigid and pale as rigor mortis.

And then he ran. His first steps came stumbling, nearly wiping him out into the snow before his retreat had even begun. This retreat was of no seasoned soldier but of the boy in him still 6 months old and terrified watching the conquering pack behead their leaders in gruesome agony and awesome power and the realization that moment was the easiest moment he had to live through because that choice was the only one that was not his own. His tail alternated between curling beneath his stomach and between flashing out to the side for balance. He ran as hard and as fast as he could, taking no liberties to dodge or weave or other embellishments seen in action movies. A marigold streak marked the first 200 feet of his flight, vividly yellow from the dehydration of his journey.