Stories of Shattered Shadows

Orange Fur

From the depths of thick brambles and bushes and lush trees, amber orbs gleamed from the cover of dark green. And though it was sheltered safely in the deep of the ripe season forest, the girl could still very clearly see it's amber gape, curious snout peeking from accompanying bushes. And its fur. Oh, that fur in which stood like wildfire, displaying its orange on the blunt greens of forest's shadow.

"All you ever do is stare at those stupid things." The boy sat across from her at the kitchen table.

"They're very intriguing."

It didn't leave its gaze.

She had a sudden thought. "Have you ever wondered how they hid to the shadows with that orange fur?"

There was a crash but the girl didn't turn her head to see the fallen chair. "If you like them so much, why not become one and find out? And then when Pa comes, he'll have them all shot and you with them!" Five small stomps and a door was slammed.

She didn't look away, still. Neither did it.

...

The deep green of the ripe season had molted to the late phases of yellows and reds, soon to break away from the nest of their trees and bushes and to blanket the ground in crisp, gold season.

The girl had mirth because she knew it was at perfect for their fiery coats to tuck away in the gold season—away from the reeking barrel of pa's gun.

But then there was the boy's words. "You should be afraid for your stupid friends. In six weeks, they'll be visible from a mile and soon to be fancying Pa's wall."

And that was when the girl's mirth contorted for her to realize the gold season—Death of the ripen—was truly only the birth of frosty white, when their orange pelts would stand as fire against ice.

A snuffling at her window and she grinned at the curious snout that prodded the sill, black pads to surely leave a print upon its leave.

"However do you sneak up on me with such ease with that orange fur?"

...

The halt between the ripen and the dead was over and gone, snow making the world shiver at its cold lick. The girl sat only with her shadow in the lone of her room. She did not utter. She did not muse. She did not gaze to the window for that familiar flash of orange fire.

The boy had gone. Pa had gone. But the walls–their hue of golden wheat–were masked with the horrid taint of many, many pelts. Even hung upon her aurous walls–not a blaze brush, but still something worth her sympathies.

The girl knew why the dead season was so bitter with its bite. And she now realized how the dead season had fancied such grim title.

There was a very quiet prod at her window, and the girl caught the flicker of its fire.

"I still don't understand how you do it." She said.

A scratching, but the girl didn't respond to its beg.

"I believe you should leave to somewhere safest. Pa will catch you, and I can't be see in your presence or he could get me, too."

There was a strange chatter. Pa had grown a passionate curtle for that noise. The girl had loved it. It's a creative sound, I think–her words disapproved on in an instant.

The girl gave a glance and saw another, two flames burning beside each other. "Go away." They did not go away.

There was a squeal, slam and pa's aggravated snarls. Pa had returned from his hunt, without possession of a new fiery cloak, and a ferocious hyena wished to be released from his stomach.

Her hands pressed to the sill of the window. "Leave!"

They gave little squabbling chatters and sat upon their haunches as if to be stubborn. Pa's stomps were aimed toward the girl's room, and toward the fire she realized she had grown so mercilessly attached to. "He knows that you are here. Please, you must-"

It looked as though the wall had chipped from the collision, and there was a reeking barrel shoved to the girl's nose. The powdery, grey reek of cruelty and the girl's imagery of her own skin upon the wall.

Glass shattered and showered the ground and Pa stepped back–not a yelp– with that same powdery grey shining in his eyes.

They stood beside her, fangs showing like knives, eyes gleaming of a more human than human eye, and that orange fur–that wildfire that spread across dark green, burnt gold, frost white, and dead grey, and sparked across her skin, her mind, her heart. And she did not need to gaze from a distance at that glorious orange fur any longer.

The flickering flames beside her wisped through the window–a snaking bullet only eating at the floor–, and she followed behind, her own raging blaze flickering as the tail of a comet behind her.

And as Pa's snarls and barks and howls grew very distant very fast, and the girl was swathed on all sides by the wildfire that stood scarred upon her, and their fire was to meld with the ice of dead season,

she had the satisfaction of the answer to her question.