PA 3.5: End of a Tail

Purrfect Apawcalypse: Descratchment

The corpse was warm still. She felt its heat licking at her paw pads and melting into her fuzzy fur.

Like before, she had felt that invisible heartbeat, the betrayal of the body's inability to function.

"... You're just sleeping."

Her mutters were caught in the rain, but she still heard her blood pumping in her ears, and her legs kept throbbing with the anxious energy bubbling up across her body.

She thought to beckon the rabbit to wake up, but she couldn't speak. Every wire in her body directed itself outward, thorns stabbing at her paw as magic tendrils slithered out and coiled around the animal. Barbs sunk into the cut, snagging muscles and tugging at them, ripping the eyelids open as its wide eyes stared forward.

Its muzzle twitched, silently sniffing at the air while the gouge in its guts went untreated. She tried to focus on mending it, letting a calm focus sink into the back of her mind and dull her senses. The tendrils left her body, fully sinking into the creature, prompting it to jolt upwards and stare at Ginger from the corner of its eyes.

She jumped, more than a little freaked out at the thing's sudden liveliness. Her skirt's rear was muddied as she fell onto it, grunting at the impact before her tiny paws caught herself. With her eyes wincing open, she watched the rabbit bound off. Usually, they'd be so slow, but even with its guts hanging out and scars across its body, the rabbit kicked dust-up with its rapid bounds, sinking into the foliage.

"Hey, wait!" her tiny voice protested. She rose to try and run after it, stumbling over herself and landing back on the floor with the tangle of her legs and skirt. She looked back towards where the rabbit was and whined.

The sudden crackle of leaves made the bloodhound suck in a gasp. Her hair flung about as she whipped her head towards the sound, raising her paws up to her chest defensively and scanning the area as best she could. The fear tickled at her ribs and made her legs numb, but the popping in her head was the worst part, and it was only when she scanned the area for the fifth time that she felt it fade.

Then, she heard the bell ring.

---

She fiddled with her paws, pressing the beans up against one another and fidgeting to the point where it was distracting.

"Alright, I'll bite," he said, putting down his fork and chewing the remainder of the crummy spaghetti the school made every day. "What's wrong now?"

Ginger curled up, squeezing her paws against themselves and letting her bangs conceal her rapidly scrunching frown. "Nothing," she whispered.

"You don't do that unless you want to talk about something," he posited, "what."

Her anxiety washed over her again, there was another sensation creeping its way up her throat, and she couldn't stop it from crawling out. "N-Nervous."

Maybe it was something about how his steely eyes regarded her softly, or the cut to his voice that seemed to dull just a bit when he spoke to her, but she couldn't disobey him; her body acted against it. He tapped a claw against the two of them were sitting at the white table.

She opened her mouth, trying to get the words to come out, but the thing stuck in her throat kept them from coming out, and she waited for him to put it into words for her somehow.

"Well, what do you want to say? C'mon," he goaded, a touch of encouragement in his voice.

She mumbled.

He cocked his eyebrow, leaning in. "You okay?" he whispered.

The bloodhound almost cracked a smile. "Yes, thank you... I can't say it out l-loud."