Never Come Between Us

Satira had never known there could be emotions as strong as the heart-stopping fear she was currently experiencing. Or maybe that was the crushing pressure of the constricting snake keeping her chest from expanding. The little girl was completely unaware of anything happening outside of her head right now, oblivious to her mother’s renewed violent efforts to free her from her reptilian death sentence. Her head was pounding and her ears were ringing as her heartbeat fluctuated between a weak, rapid flurry to nonexistent depending on how tight the snake wanted to squeeze her. The reptile could have killed her instantly by squeezing just a bit harder until her tiny body popped, but the snake was a bastard, toying with the pup’s life while it fought with her mother. Blackness had fully overtaken her vision by now and a faint blue hue came over the girl’s cheeks as she suffocated. How long had she been in the snake’s deadly coils? A minute? Two? Death felt so painfully slow and also so incredibly quick.

But Asla intervened in the nick of time, defying that fate. The woman’s sharp teeth and deadly claws found purchase in the snake’s body, and before her heart could beat its last, the snake relaxed its muscles and dropped the tan girl to the ground. Satira gasped hard, sucking a deep breath into her greedy, aching lungs and immediately began coughing. She tried to get back to her paws, stumbling away with a final desperate parting swipe to the flailing snake’s tail. Her oxygen deprived body felt like jelly while she tried to put as much distance between her and the snake as possible. The air smelled thick with blood and the feral sounds of fury from her mother barely registered as the snake was butchered alive by the Reaper. Tira ended up collapsing only a few feet away in a coughing fit, her lungs hurting every time they inflated. Her vision returned, spinning and swirling while she recovered from her near-death experience. She wanted to get back up, to go help her mother fight off the snake instead of lying on the ground wheezing like she was asthmatic.

Satira lay across the cold ground, fighting to catch her breath while her senses began to gradually reactivate. She fortunately hadn’t been suffocated long enough to cause any lasting damage, but her confidence had definitely been shattered. Once the world had gone quiet and Satira could get enough breath in her bruised chest, she let out a couple weak whines for Asla, the scared little pup calling for her mother. The possibility that Asla might not have won the fight didn’t even occur to the girl, or that the snake might be coming to eat her again. In her mind, Asla could never be beaten, and she just wanted the comforting protection of her mother to remind her that she was safe and make her feel less like a failure.

"Satira Fatalis"