This story is a work of fiction. Any referances to events, people, places, are used fictiously. Any names, characters, places, incidents, are all from my imgination, any relation to anything, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
All of my work is Copywright.
Alanna stood at the edge of the cliff, vertigo sweeping across her senses. She swayed, the ground below painfully sharp. She saw the venation of the leaves, the specks on the eggs in the blue jay's nest. She watched the claws of a bird dig into the tree bark as it scanned the debris below for a meal. She saw the timid deer, ears twitching nervously, it's dark stare darting across it's surroundings for danger. Everything was so bright in the morning sun. Her eyes contracted painfully, watering against the burn.
She listened to sounds carried in by the wind. Birds flying nearby, wildlife scampering along the forest floor, playing, gathering nourishment. Squirrels nibbling on the seeds of pine cones. Beavers chipping at wood for their lodges. The paws of the predators making their way to their prey. They crowded her. Things were newly loud, the volume turned up to eleven. Her head began to pound under the onslaught.
The smells. Earthly and wild. The flowers, the sugar of the berries, the spring water. The urine from marking territory and the sweat sticking to fur in the humid morning air. It was all nauseating. She drew back from the edge, trying to hold her ears and her nose and mouth at the same time.
Alanna turned to flee, only to find herself facing the very wolves she had been sensing. She took a few steps back, the heels of her bare feet working their way to the cliff's end. The wind whipped up, pushing at her, trying to cast her over the ledge. In front of her the growls were roars, the teeth of the wild hungry creatures were razors. She felt fear. Three opponents would have been nothing, but given her position, Alanna couldn't think of a proper defense. Only fear.
She had no time to be rational, no time to let a strategy come to fruition. She eyed her opponents and gave up logical thought, releasing her feral side. They were just wild dogs. They were larger than your domestice house pet, but Alanna had fought and killed things five times their size. She couldn't jump, in her weakened state she wouldn't survive.
Her nails grew hard and sharp, and she mimicked the bared teeth of the canines. A rumble built in her throat and a menacing growl came forth. She rolled her shoulders back and bent her knees, coming to eye level with the animals. She was giving them a chance to leave. They sunk lower to the ground and growled louder. They could kill her. She knew that they knew this.
The left wolf lunged. He came at an angle that, if he successfully knocked her over, she would land a few feet from the edge. She spun clockwise, raking the tips of her claws across it's shoulder and felt the open air just past the cliff. He missed and skidded, her right foot slipping off the edge. It seemed to grab and hold her, but this was just her mind playing tricks on her body. As he started running for the tree line to make a U-turn, and a second attempt, the middle wolf came to join the fight. She saw down his throat as he came at her face. She fisted the fur of his neck, whipping him around too powerfully. They both went off the edge, and rolled in the air for the thirty foot fall. Alanna, still gripping the dirty white wolf at arms distance, saw the forest floor. The tangle of rocks and branches looked like pain, not death, and as the ground came up to meet her, she screamed.
She lay in a crumpled heap, her white dress stained and torn, her wild red hair a tangle of leaves, twigs, and dirt. Her body bled, the fall leaving her cut and bruised but the wolf's broken form saving her from a direct colission. Now that she had escaped, she had no idea what to do. Alanna lay across the corpse, starving and exhausted, bleeding and scared, completely defeated. She curled into a ball, half draped on the sticky bloody fur of the wolf, half on the stones that bit into her legs. Broken wood and thorns stabbed her here and there, the sunlight warmed her skin, and she rested.
