ray of sunshine

Kane felt his own heart beating strongly within his chest with fear for the woman he was witnessing tremble and struggle with her current situation. His single ruby watched as she turned around and looked at him with her eyes wide, pleading for help. Her look of innocence burned right through him, and he'd never felt a stronger need to help someone in his life. He started to step back across the ice, watching it web out from under her as she ran across it. He was growing more and more concerned, but she finally made it to him.

His eye found hers and his features remained blank as he tried to process everything that was happening, however.. the only thing he really could focus on at the moment was the beautiful glass orbs staring at him. She thanked him, and it broke him from his trance as he straightened himself up and turned his body to present his right side to her. They needed to move, and he was just about to suggest that when he heard the next crack in the ice. He grunted, feeling his footing become unbalanced as the ice beneath him no longer had a connection with the rest of it. He felt the waves of the ocean pushing up against his foundation and watched as Clementine took off running.

He followed behind her as closely as possible, but it was growing harder and harder to keep his balance without stable footing anymore. He grunted as he eventually slipped, his chest slamming into a large chunk of ice beneath him. He felt the chunk at his back left paw submerge some and push backward away from his body, his foot slipping into the frigid cold waters below. It sent a chill through his bones and made him leap forward immediately, talons gripping the ice and snow as he growled and gave all of his strength to get back on his feet.

Every muscle in his core was tensed, trying to fight the loss of balance by keeping himself in-tune with his footing. If the ice started sinking left, his muscles pulled to the right and vice versa as he focused on every step. He was hardly running anymore, too focused on not slipping through. Water splashed as the ice beneath him moved around and threatened him with every droplet that hit his dark fur. Clementine had managed to make some distance ahead, and he was thankful for that.. but now he was in a new predicament of his own. He saw her ahead, watching him, but only for a brief moment before his eye flashed back to watch the ice immediately in front of him. He tried to aim for bigger chunks, but even they were sinking underneath his weight now as smaller and smaller options became available.

He had been defeated, the ice no longer big enough to remain floating underneath him. His front half went down first and the rest of him simply followed. He held his breath as he felt the water completely surround him, and he tried his best to lift himself back upward to the opening where he had fallen in, but he was already drifting too far away from it. He used all of his strength to fight against the cold knives of the water around him and keep kicking as he tried desperately to find another break in the ice he could get through. He was drifting toward thicker ice, the cracks fading and he'd missed his opportunity.

His heart was racing, but he told himself not to panic.. told himself to keep control of his emotions so that his energy was not wasted. He needed all of it. With a calm mind, he looked around him in the water and found the image of a couple seals swimming away from him up ahead. They had to be going toward the edge of the ice.

He let his back leg push through the branches of a pine and kicked himself off of its core to give himself more speed as he swam after the seals. His lungs were burning by the time he managed to get to the break in the ice they were heading toward. The seals forfeited their idea of getting out of the water themselves and kept swimming, but Kane appeared gasping for air out of a large crack in the ice.. around thirty feet away from where he had initially fallen in. His claws created deep tracks in the ice as he tried to pull himself out, but they kept losing their grip. He was shaking as he clung to the side of the ice, grunting and desperately trying to find something to hold on to so he could get out.

His wits were leaving him as the cold completely consumed him, he needed to get out but his frantic scraping of the ice was getting him absolutely nowhere and he had no idea what to do now.