Shadewylf

18 - Letter

The first thing Angel saw was rock.

Plain grey rock, curiously jagged, as if it had been hacked at and carved by many a frustrated set of claws. Speckled with paler greys. Covered with a fine layer of dust which curled upwards as she breathed, swirling and floating in a slow, mesmerising dance.

A cluster drew closer, until one gentle inhale sent them spiralling towards her, dancing into her nostrils. They itched. She sneezed, and the dusty cloud scattered to make way for the burst of air.

The action seemed also to release some of the cobwebs clogging up her mind, allowing a few, disjointed thoughts to escape to the surface.

Am I dead?

She closed her eyes for a moment. Aches were beginning to lace their way along her left flank, and throbbing pain stabbed into limbs she couldn't put a name to, somehow. The exact words were still wrapped up in the more murky sections of her mind, still unreachable in this strange state.

When she opened her eyes again, the dust was still there. Still dancing. It was illuminated by streams of light that didn't quite appear natural - it felt more like streaks of pale flame, like the light that painted the forest as it pushed back against the night. The light from Fiammetta's fiery lamps.

Fiammetta. Was she here too? Had she won the battle, or had she also fallen? As much as Angel searched amongst the dust for some fragment of memory, she didn't know. All she remembered of the time before she'd fallen to the dark's embrace was a rush of claws and blood.

Black fur. Black wings. Piercing blue eyes, flicking from strangely soft to eerily dark. Then the fall, and the last fight. Morgan, running. Fangs, drawing closer, swallowing her whole.

But they hadn't. She didn't remember them reaching her. They'd been close, so close... and then the dark had taken them too, as it had taken everything.

Maybe she had simply chosen not to remember the final moment of her death. Maybe the memory had been locked away from her. Or maybe, just maybe, death hadn't claimed her after all.

After all, this place of dust and stone didn't feel like the shimmering beauty of the stars, or any sort of mystical afterlife. She doubted she'd earned that sort of death, anyway - it was much more likely that she would be reborn, and in that case she shouldn't remember a thing. She shouldn't still be Angel. But she was.

Turning her eyes from the dust, she tipped her gaze upwards, only to find a ceiling of more grey rock. A single stalactite stretched downwards above her, like one enormous fang. As she stared at it, she watched something sparkle at its tip, growing in size until its weight grew too much for the rock to bear. It fell, glittering in the flame-like light as it approached, before coming into contact with Angel's snout with a chilling splash.

The ice-cold droplet awoke another part of her mind, and she decided that she was very much alive. This sort of clutching pain was something only felt when down on the earth.

So where am I?

Pulling in her paws, she pressed the pads against the cool stone, then pushed upwards. Almost immediately, one of her back legs crumbled, and she thumped back into the ground again. But she couldn't give up. With a grunt, she forced her other three paws to scrabble for a stable position, and then heaved upwards once more.

She bit back a yelp, her fangs clenching together against the sting of pain etched like a complicated map under her fur. It felt like it was everywhere.

No. Bowing her head, she focused, breathing deeply. It wasn't everywhere. If she concentrated, she could pinpoint maybe a dozen scratches, none too deep. Nothing to worry about. The wounds that truly screamed were the gouges cut into the hind leg she kept lifted, and the punctured bones in her wing.