Steal my breath away: Seren

There was something alluring about the quite of the night, a quite that was both still and alive in a single moment. The quite was the sound of a gently stirring wind or the rustle of a leaves embrace. It lived with the hoot of a passing owl and the scurrying of little foresters in the undergrowth. It was the darkness he gave himself over to whole-heartedly. For in its misty swirls of darkness he could almost hide the tension building in his muscles, the tightness of his hind legs, and the slight twitch of his long and often graceful tail. There was no grace in the taunt movements of his body now and still his tail swished in an idle movement of nerves and annoyance.

It would seem strange to behold this creature now, seen normally in the light of a quite beauty by movements that held an art of fluidity. He could not bear the truth of his own heart in these movements, the coiling tension as taunt as a rope on the verge of cracking away. He could almost see it now, through his long and terrible journey up the sloping mountain side, the path to the cliffs edge and the great drop below was almost on him now. It was here that he stopped, simply incapable of going further. He could not take those last few steps, even as he could not bear the shame of his own incapacitation. It was here he stopped three wolf lengths from the cliffs edge and sat his rump against the soft earth. He stilled his tail, as through realising for the first time of its defiant twitching.

He joined the silence that roamed this night as he sat there, simply watching the cliff he could not approach, the height he could not bear. He would get there someday, someday soon in fact, he would find himself at that edge and he would once again be ruler of his body. No fear could claim his heart. Not for ever anyway?