I Know The End [P]

[Abyssopelagic]

The weather outside slowly changed from green leaf to leaf fall, and all she could do was watch it through the see-through material that stood between her and her freedom. She spent the vast majority of her days with her side pressed flush to the barrier, and felt the biting chill that still managed to sleep through it's glossy surface.
Sometimes she paced, when the anxiety and noxious mix of her emotions threatened to suffocate her, but mostly she sat and watched the world pass her by.

When she could bear it all no more, she slept and dreamed. Of home, of her children, of the mate she'd been taken from.....
She dreamt most often of her child that never had a chance. She could scarcely tell the difference between mere dreams and possible starry visits.
She had deluded herself into believing they were real, that she wasn't just dreaming because she was lonely and scared and so far from home. That she hadn't been forgotten and left to her fate.

Fate....
As her eyes watched another leaf fall to the ground, she remembered the day her world turned upside down.
It was to be a last stroll to the border, she had said. A last stroll before settling truly into motherhood.
And a last stroll it had indeed turned out to be.
She remembered hearing a loud bang, and remembered the searing pain that had radiated throughout her shoulder as something pierced it. It had knocked her to the side with a shriek and she thought it would be the end of her, but something, some two leg, found her, picked her up, and all had faded.
And she woke up wrapped, sore, and in this unfamiliar place. She was not alone.
There was a two-leg with her, she could only assume it was the same one that saved her.
She remembered more than once she'd spy them seemingly searching the nearby forest that was within sight of her new perch. They'd return, muttering something about "kittens" and "couldn't find them".
And they never would.
They must have noticed the signs of motherhood on her, to even be looking.
She had nothing to worry about. They were safe, away, in camp....
Where these creatures couldn't take them as well. They would never find them. They would never entrap them as she had been.

She did not sit idly in her confinement, either. She noted patterns of comings and goings, of all the places that lead to somewhere other than these unnatural walls, and places where the den were weakest.
Only scratching, only testing.
She did not need the two-legs learning of her plans to escape.
She's only been given the chance to try once. They'd opened the impenetrable and clear barrier, and a strange mess left in its place. She's gotten desperate and tried scraching and chewing her way free, but she wasn't quick enough. Her shoulder had ached from the effort and slowed her down enough she had barely chewed a hole big enough to fit through when they had returned, the thing that had wrapped her shoulder catching and stopping her progress.
She wailed and cried as she was roughly yanked away from her chance at freedom and locked inside a sturdy, silver webbing for days before she'd been allowed back out for more than a change in her stupid wrap. And now there were no more mesh hanging, only cold, solid surfaces she could stare out of and yearn.

The torture eventually incorporated the use of water, of spiny instruments the two-legs held in those large, meaty paws of theirs. It wasn't often, there were many days in-between each torture session and she always left them feeling like her fur was thinner than before, and a deep exhaustion from the emotional turmoil. She'd been too scared to do more than cower, knowing that no amount of fighting would make it end sooner. That there was no winning these fights.

She didn't know when the loneliness set in. She only knew that one day the loneliness had begged her to satisfy it's gnawing hunger. Eventually, she stopped struggling when the two-legs would stoop down and offer their paws. Instead, she cautiously sniffed and stared.
They didn't reach further.
So eventually she began seeking them out. Laying at the see through barriers in the same room as the large animals, and eventually realizing she could not sleep alone, so she began making herself a new nest in the den she always saw them sleeping in, to sleep when they did.
Eventually, she started to let them touch her, stroke her fur, pat her head.
All in an attempt to quash the growing need to be touched, to stamp out the aching longing for the touch of someone who didn't know where she was. To replace the feeling that everything was wrong whenever she fell asleep without the pressing of small bodies to her stomach.
Her only sense of normalcy was when the bite of the cold air drew bugs and mice into the house. She'd catch them, eat them, and nothing had ever tasted more delicious than those sparse catches.
She tired of the dry pellets she was fed, and even the containers of wet food hardly compared to actual meat.
They'd taken her catches more than once. Saw her pounce on a pest and came over to pat her, only to yank away her kill and toss it in a much larger container. It always left her seething with rage.
She could understand if they were taking them to eat, she'd never seen the large apes catch a damn thing. But to discard it to rot away?
What was the purpose of such an act!

Today, there were no mice. There weren't even any bugs. Not even the small buzzing ones. Nothing to chase and take her mind off the terrible boredom.
No, just her and the small sliver of a breeze the clear barrier let through. The two-legs had propped it open just a hare and despite her attempts, even able to fit a paw beneath the space that was left did nothing to possibly free her. It would not lift when she tried, even if she put all her might into it.
So she stopped, and stared out. Head tilted to view the outside world and to feel the air on her face. Sometimes she closed her eyes and pretended she wasn't trapped, that she was outside again, home again, or at least on the return trek.
She let out a shuddering breath at the thought, and desperately tried to remember the way the ground beneath her paws felt in ShadowClan....
She was drawn from her reverie with a scent, hopelessly familiar, wafted into her nose.
In an instant, she sat up and looked, nearly screaming when her eyes caught sight of a dangerously familiar pelt. Instead, she watched for longer, barely daring to get her hopes up.
And then she could see him clearly and she wept, reaching her good paw beneath the barrier. She reached in a vaine attempt.
She pushed, trying to shove her way to freedom, any and all fight in her to go home revitalized.
When she inevitably made no progress, she shrieked in anguish.





She wanted to be heard.



She wanted to be found.



She wanted to go home.







"VULTUREFANG!"

[ @elaif ]