Dark Feathers

The woods roared silent. There were eyes everywhere, and they weren't afraid. Animals don't know bullets until they are dead, we humans aren't able to delight of such luck. The grass stood still, afraid to upset me, a human dragging itself around isn't something to be messed with. A red path was being laid behind me, reflecting the moonlight. A wolf watched with mercy, a dying prey wasn't worth hunting. With fur as black as the night around, it came to me. I laid expecting it to be merciful, not by sparing me, but by forcing me to give up... It didn't. It was a cold night, the blood dripped slowly. All I could see was a small town in the distance, probably Terul, but I was too tired to try and identify it. Howls reached the road, the wolf howled back, looked at me a last time and then ran away.

I went back to crawling as the dirt mixed up with the rain and the blood. I couldn't remember when it started to rain. I was probably distracted, maybe unconscious, and time was getting confusing. The eyes had disappeared, except for an owl sitting on a branch, watching me struggle to reach a root in the other side of the mud pool that had formed before me.

"Are you going to just watch big eyed mate?" I asked it with strange honesty.

It tilted its head to right and chirped roughly at me. I took it as a mean answer.

"Fine." I told it looking back to the root I had finally reached.

I managed to pull myself a few feet forward. The owl kept staring at me. At the end of the road I saw a weak light moving slowly towards me. I tried to get myself up by balancing my body on a small tree in hope that whoever was coming towards me would have the goodwill to help me. As it started going over a small rocky part of the path I heard the neigh of the horses and the crumbling of the carriage wheels pressing the rocks against the mud. The large trading caravan stopped by me, a single man was sitting on the driver's seat, he jumped out in his long trench coat, splattering mud over me and the carriage, in my blurry eyes he seemed to be just a tall and fat figure.

"Help me please." I begged him extending my arm right arm towards his body.

He pulled me strongly, my body hit the ground, the pain sprouted through my chest. His hands searched my body like a hunter skins his prey. I hoped for help, and he hoped for gold. Disappointed by not finding anything on me he kicked my ribs as strong as he possibly could to somehow punish me. I briefly fell out of consciousness, but life held onto me forcefully by making me wake up to stagger in pain once more. My vision blurred even more, tainting what remains of my eyesight to a red tone. The trees around me became shadows and the shadows merge into demons that manage to assure my deep suffering.

A raven, darker than the night around landed on my belly. It's shining purple eyes teared the darkness, stared at me with pity, or perhaps cruelty... I could never really understand which one it really was. It looked down into my bleeding wound, thinking what it was about to do. It bit my hand strongly, making a hole in the back of it. I instantly retracted it, and in that exact moment, the raven stuck its beak inside the bullet hole. Blood tainted its face, and I could only scream as the pain traversed my every bone. It violently pulled out the bullet,causing a moment of intense pain, followed by one of intense relief. As It flew away, blood still poured from its beak.

I was still bleeding, but the breeze made me relaxed. The forest's silence started being substituted by the sound of multiple insects, and of the foliage moving around. The rain finally went away, and, in the dark sky, the raven disappeared with its soft wings seeming to fade out. For a moment, I thought my death was arriving, for my vision started trembling and my ears couldn't hear anything but mere bits of wind that managed to find a way there. I though the reaper's sweet kiss had finally reached my lips, but life held onto me like a loving mother holds her baby away from strangers.