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15minuteficlets challenge #49.
Apr. 10th, 2004 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynHad some trouble thinking of what to write on this week, and then I looked at the word and thought 'hmm, sounds like something for Sergeant Preston's dog.' This week's word: spring.
The mouse was not paying attention. It was sitting there, nibbling at something- a seed, maybe- and it was not paying attention. The wind smelled safe to the mouse, and the forest sounded quiet (at least so far as any forest with life in it is ever quiet), and so it nibbled happily away in silence. Which meant, then, that its last moments were happy ones. It didn't even have time to notice the vanishing of the moon's light, brought on not by an eclipse, but by the sudden spring of a vast silver-grey form, paws extended. If anything, there might have been enough time for the wee creature to register a hint of surprise- but probably not.
Yukon Prince lifted one forepaw and sniffed. Dead on impact. Prey was supposed to run. Oh, well, no sense wasting food. . . He snapped up the tiny corpse and padded a few steps off before sitting down to rip what little there was apart. It would stick in his throat if he swallowed it whole.
The woods were strange here. They smelled wrong, all thick and clotted and overgrown- life carelessly spent that might have lasted many winters if more carefully guarded. There were too many leaves rotting on the ground. The trees were the wrong shape, the wrong texture, ready to shatter and crack at the first heavy snowfall. The humans had said things about the colours being wrong, too, but Prince paid very little attention to that. It was nothing he understood. What he could sense was wrong enough; he had no urge to add more to it.
The creatures, now – at least there was something a little like home about them. The mouse, for example. It tasted like a mouse should. The rabbit he had found earlier, when he was hunting with Toto - that smelled like a rabbit should, too, down to the fear. Although it had talked; that was a little strange. Rabbits were not supposed to plead for their lives. They were supposed to make fear-smell and run. Perhaps it would have tasted different from a proper rabbit if he had turned aside to catch it?
Prince did not much like that idea, so he dropped it. The taste of the mouse was still between his teeth- comforting, familiar. Like the smell of his human. They had come very far together, from the smells and the textures of home to the warm place that smelled of salt and people, and then again in the noisy thing that moved in the sky- from one strange place to the next to the next, until it was all a mess of impressions that made him want nothing more than a good, hard sneeze to clear his nose. The world changed too much for his liking; but some things did not change, and his human was one of them. That smell, that voice, that hand on his fur- in all the years of Prince's life that had always been the same, no matter where they were. Even here, the human all others (save two- his dead mate, and the girl with yellow hair) called Sergeant was just as Prince had always known him. He always would be, so far as Prince knew; and that, the great dog thought, was a good thing.
He got up, shaking the unfamiliar leaf-mould from his coat briefly, and padded out of the woods. The mouse had left him hungry, and the Sergeant had promised to bring him dinner.
The mouse was not paying attention. It was sitting there, nibbling at something- a seed, maybe- and it was not paying attention. The wind smelled safe to the mouse, and the forest sounded quiet (at least so far as any forest with life in it is ever quiet), and so it nibbled happily away in silence. Which meant, then, that its last moments were happy ones. It didn't even have time to notice the vanishing of the moon's light, brought on not by an eclipse, but by the sudden spring of a vast silver-grey form, paws extended. If anything, there might have been enough time for the wee creature to register a hint of surprise- but probably not.
Yukon Prince lifted one forepaw and sniffed. Dead on impact. Prey was supposed to run. Oh, well, no sense wasting food. . . He snapped up the tiny corpse and padded a few steps off before sitting down to rip what little there was apart. It would stick in his throat if he swallowed it whole.
The woods were strange here. They smelled wrong, all thick and clotted and overgrown- life carelessly spent that might have lasted many winters if more carefully guarded. There were too many leaves rotting on the ground. The trees were the wrong shape, the wrong texture, ready to shatter and crack at the first heavy snowfall. The humans had said things about the colours being wrong, too, but Prince paid very little attention to that. It was nothing he understood. What he could sense was wrong enough; he had no urge to add more to it.
The creatures, now – at least there was something a little like home about them. The mouse, for example. It tasted like a mouse should. The rabbit he had found earlier, when he was hunting with Toto - that smelled like a rabbit should, too, down to the fear. Although it had talked; that was a little strange. Rabbits were not supposed to plead for their lives. They were supposed to make fear-smell and run. Perhaps it would have tasted different from a proper rabbit if he had turned aside to catch it?
Prince did not much like that idea, so he dropped it. The taste of the mouse was still between his teeth- comforting, familiar. Like the smell of his human. They had come very far together, from the smells and the textures of home to the warm place that smelled of salt and people, and then again in the noisy thing that moved in the sky- from one strange place to the next to the next, until it was all a mess of impressions that made him want nothing more than a good, hard sneeze to clear his nose. The world changed too much for his liking; but some things did not change, and his human was one of them. That smell, that voice, that hand on his fur- in all the years of Prince's life that had always been the same, no matter where they were. Even here, the human all others (save two- his dead mate, and the girl with yellow hair) called Sergeant was just as Prince had always known him. He always would be, so far as Prince knew; and that, the great dog thought, was a good thing.
He got up, shaking the unfamiliar leaf-mould from his coat briefly, and padded out of the woods. The mouse had left him hungry, and the Sergeant had promised to bring him dinner.
