To Fall Down Low

Chapter 2 - Caged Hatred

Somehow, the forest was still despite the bloodshed of nightfall. The sun had risen not long after the last traces of the sylveon gang had left the solitude of the trees, and soon after that the golden light had faded to white rays that barely reached past the leaves so that it was only slightly brighter than when it had not existed at all. Somewhere in the darkness, under cover of the cold ground, rotting and forgotten, lay the carcass of something killed in hopes of life. A ways off from that, the blackened stains of blood from a hopeless victim; scuffles in the dirt from the conflict slowly ebbing away with the never-ceasing hand of time. And yet somehow, the scene was a peaceful one-no matter what occurred, the forest found a way to return back to this state of motionless solitude. No doubt the actions of any one creature could not change this fact, though nonetheless every creature lived their lives in defiance to the nature around them.

Dreams, wholly mysterious, could be either the exception or the voucher to this rule.

"Leo, I don't know if I can make it much farther..."

"Come on, Cassandra. Just a little more, you can do it." Leo murmured reassuringly. He brushed his nose against the little umbreon's flank, pushing her forward. Bones jutted out of her pelt, fur perhaps the only thing keeping her body together now. That's right. Just a little more.

In response, Cassandra only whimpered and dragged her paws across the dirt in painful lurches. A spark of light fell across her pale red eyes and she squinted, veering to the side and nearly falling over. "Leo..."

Cassandra stopped suddenly and crouched low, trembling with the sole effort to keep herself on all four paws. Leo tried to nudge her forward again, but she was glued to the ground, unmovable. "There's food at home. Come on," he said, desperation grasping onto every word. Please, don't give up yet! The umbreon only stayed where she was, looking back to where he stood. Her eyes, drained as they were, remained as intense and full of emotion as they always had been; pain, yearning, and sorrow all fused together into an almost unbearable sight within the confines of her gaze. But then they changed: suddenly, unbelievably, her eyes turned deep scarlet and fell forward, dripping onto the ground in crimson rainfall; the rest of her body shrank away until only black bones remained, a darkened skeleton dripping of blood. Leo shrank away in terror, drawing his ears and tail close against his body, frozen to the spot.

"Leo...help me..." Cassandra-or what had once been Cassandra-opened her skeletal jaws and cried out, walking toward Leo in horrible lurching steps. He couldn't move away, but only stand still as the corpse slowly edged closer-closer-

"Leo...wake up."

A flock of birds rose into the sky, frightened, sending leaves falling from their perches atop the high swaying peaks of the trees- down, down onto the ground below where the two creatures lay, staring at each other in wide-eyed surprise. The source of the fright ended abruptly, as the black umbreon closed his mouth and the scream edged deeper into the shadows of growing daybreak until it finally disappeared altogether.

"Who are you? Get away from me!" Leo yelled, jumping high into the air and breaking his gaze with the stranger across from him. The stranger's eyes brimmed with confusion, deeply intense-too intense. He bristled, growling now, but as the memory of blood pouring onto the ground in pools and the darkened silhouette of the little umbreon crept back into his mind he recoiled, collapsing again into the dirt. Tears fell from his eyes, dripping as if to be a grim reminder of the past now present.

"I...I...well, you saved me, didn't you?" replied the stranger. Her white and pink pelt with those blue ribbons trailing from her ears seemed familiar, somehow, and those eyes-Leo couldn't bring himself to remember any more of it. "You brought me here, after Gaia nearly killed me. Thank you." she added, though her voice wavered with uncertainty. "Hey, are you okay?"