In the Bowels of the World

[rainstar]

A warm breeze ruffled Athabasca's stiff black fur as she stood gazing out across the foggy water, blowing with it the deep, musky scent of the earthy mist. Solemnly, the femme closed her crystalline eyes and let her mind wander to happier times; when she had roamed unnoticed through the forests and deserts as a vagabond, the other wolves living unaware of her presence and the darkness that came with it. She had stalked through the world like a ghost in those days. The same warm feeling as in her lonesome youth trickled over her as she settled deeper into her fondest memories, wishing with all of her heart that the world could just forget about her. The femme longed passionately for solitude and peace, forever. Freedom from the demands of companionship and responsibility.

Atha's eyes fluttered open and she turned dissappointedly away from the lake, plodding along the shore, staring at her muddy paws. Occasionally she would pause and glance at the milky fog and then carry on; she was paying only the slightest attention to what she was doing. Nothing mattered at the moment. Except-
Athabasca stopped and looked curiously at the shoreline, a few lengths from where she stood. As the waves lazily drifted across the sand, the water would suddenly perform a small and barely noticeable act of irregularity; as Atha crept closer to investigate, she observed with awe the formation of a tiny whirlpool and a dainty gurgling noise with every stretch of the water upon the shore. The murky lake was a bit darker here, not withholding the appearance of the rest of the shoreline.

The jet-dark dame leaned forward and curiously dipped her paws into the water, expecting the usual weak splash and mud beneath her feet. When no solid ground met her ambling paws, the femme lurched forward with a shocked gasp and tumbled with a slightly louder splash than expected, into the dark water. As her head went under, her eyes were wide with panic as she began to sink, flailing her limbs in the warm water. Much to her surprise and her newfound fright, her arms did not splash above the water or touch the air; they jutted into solid rock, and sharp pain shot through her wrists and arms as she scraped her knuckles bloody. The femme opened her mouth to scream, bubbles cascading upward and clinging to the fur along the edge of her maw, but all that came out was a strangled moan. Her hind legs kicked out violently as she struggled to find air, they too striking the sharp rocks. Athabasca was too frightened to think straight, but one thought coursed through her head like the blood pumping hastily through her veins.
Tanaga, help me!

With every panicked movement she made, Atha became more disoriented and she felt herself sinking, or being dragged, deeper and deeper, making her ears hurt and her eyes widen in terror. Her heart was racing and her lungs heaved, drawing in nothing but foul-tasting water. She could taste her own blood as she swallowed mouthful after mouthful of the water, and she could feel it gushing from where she had gouged her paws and forearms on the jutting stones, staining the lake red and filling her senses with fear. Slowly, Atha's movements became weaker and her eyes began to close, a mixture of horror and confusion overpowering her and making her freeze as she sank yet deeper, surrounded by rock. Where did all the air go? An unearthly calm began to settle over her, erasing the fear and the pain for a moment as she began to lose consciousness, her eyes closed and her body unmoving. Coming home now, she thought. Time to go home.

Suddenly, Atha felt herself stop sinking and her body touch down on warm rock, her long fur swaying eerily in the water. Her eyes opened barely, and all she could see was darkness. They closed again and bubbles trickled from her nose, and with all her remaining strength she kicked with her back legs, shoving herself from the rocky bottom and toward whatever air might exist still, up there, wherever this was, like a last dying leap of faith. To her half-conscious surprise, the rocks dissappeared and she was suspended in the water, unable to feel anything touching her. The femme weakly outstretched a forepaw above her head, expecting it to hit the sharp wall of rock, and it would be over. However, her paw broke the surface of the water and was surrounded with humid, warm air, and her eyes snapped open. Athabasca's gaping maw pointed upward and she kicked once more, eyes wide as the full moon. Her head broke the surface and she gasped, a mixture of water and air filling her deprived lungs as her legs began to flail and splash. Athabasca coughed and sputtered until most of the water was ejected from her chest as she dragged herself onto the nearest surface she could reach, and fainted.

[rainstar]

"What's the deal with this one?"
A tall, pink-skinned creature draped in a white pelt of some kind nodded toward the cage as it spoke, two of the same beasts, all draped in white, walking over to it on their hind legs. One of them, shorter and fatter than the rest, crossed its hairy arms and grunted, looking intently at the young wolf sleeping behind the cold metal bars. The wolf wasn't really sleeping; her glassy blue eyes were half-closed and she lay on her side, breathing so softly that you might have guessed she was a mass of dead fur lumped into the corner of the cage. Tubes jutted from the thick black fur along the female's neck and forearms, trickling sedatives and drugs and other things that made her 'manageable', as another one of the pink creatures explained.

Suddenly, a furless paw was shoved between the bars of the enclosure and grasped a tuft of the wolf's fur and pulled it off harshly, and the creatures began to laugh. "See, harmless as a puppy!" one of them squawked, sending guffaws of laughter throughout the room. "Now, let's get this over with. She's useless to us now." One of the white-pelted beasts walked over to a metal table and picked up a long, pointy object and held it for the others to see, brandishing it like some sort of sick trophy. The others nodded and grunted as the object-bearing beast made his way to the cage, his eyes fixed upon the panic-stricken blue eyes of the wolf in the cage. The female began to shiver as a shadow covered her, the pink creature's face twisted with a grin.

Athabasca woke shivering, her teeth grinding together painfully and her body covered in a thick sweat. Pain pulsed through her paws and the smell of blood lingered in the humid, warm air. The hollow sound of dripping water echoed all around her.

plip.

plop.

Atha opened her eyes. Darkness immediately filled her senses ans she closed them again, panic beginning to overtake her like before. Where am I? Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes were open once more, darting from one dark feature to the next, unable to make out her surroundings at first. But gradually as her eyes came into focus, she could see faintly that she was in some sort of cave. Stalagtites hung like icicles from the jagged roof of the grotto, drops of water rolling of their tips and landing with a small plip an the ground below. A trickle of green-tinted light was shining from a crack in the roof somewhere, reflecting off of a puddle that sent a few shimmering rays onto the jutting cave walls like an aura of veridian.

The femme, black fur blending into her surroundings like a shadow upon shadows, lifted her head and turned her body so that she was resting upon her elbows like a sphynx, her back legs still splayed out limply behind her, throbbing and bleeding where they had been scraped raw. Immediately her stomach lurched and Atha turned her head and retched onto the rocks, and she let her head rest upon her forepaws with a groan that echoed sorrowfully off the rock walls of the dark cavern. Her eyes closed and she slipped back into an uneasy sleep.

[rainstar]

{about a month later}

Darkness, or the assumption of what seemed to be darkness to someone who had just opened their eyes, engulfed the humid grotto like damp black velvet. Gentle currents of hot, musty air flowed and bounced off the jagged walls of the cave as something moved in this darkness, silent as death stalking upon its unsuspecting prey. The eerie sound of a drop of water plummeting into the warm pools below, the only audible noise except for the distant scufflings of tiny animals in the world far above, echoed and faded intermittently. All was quiet and still, so to seem from a bystander's point of view. What one would not have known if they were to reside here was that they would not have been alone; there was another living, breathing tangle of blood and emotions that hid in the black absence of light that was the ever-winding tunnels and caves beneath the island of Edanna.

A pair of faintly luminous orbs of a bluish light suddenly fluttered into view, shining dully in the dark for a moment before dissappearing again. There came a sickening crunch and the warm stench of blood filled the grotto like wildfire. The eyes blinked open again, their icey blue glow a chilling apparition in the enveloping darkness. The creature hidden in the shadows sighed heavily, the noise echoing softly like a distant howling wind. "Nunya." came a hissing, feminine voice from somewhere in the dark, the sound of tumbling bones not giving much compliment to the morbid tone as the wolf swatted them aside with the back of her paw. The raw bits of carcass skidded to a halt at the edge of a tiny ravine, teetering there for a moment before dropping into a deep abyss of the same menacing blackness. Approximately ten seconds later, a distant splash could be heard if you had listened carefully enough.

Athabasca rose quietly to her paws, ears twitching as the remains of her meal plunged into the warm water. Her eyes were closed as she fumbled around for a moment with her paws, familiarizing herself with her surroundings before slinking away with a well-practiced stealthiness. It was a skill that meant life or death in the grotto- one misstep and she could be joining the carcass in the dark abyss or plummeting to her death, or finding herself impaled by one of the sharp stalagmites that leered from seemingly nowhere, traps for the clumsy-pawed. The femme had been wandering through the maze of tunnels for weeks now, and was well-acquanted with every rock and puddle. She moved like a ghost through the endless caverns day after day, propelled by curiosity and something else that she could not explain. There was something in the grotto that she could feel drawing her toward it with her every hollow heartbeat; something dark and sinister, darker than the lightless cave itself and deeper than the many bottomless abyss' she came across in her listless wanderings.

Everyday was the same; Athabasca would wake at nightfall to either return to the surface of the earth to hunt or embark upon another long day of wandering her new kingdom in the bowels of the earth. Each day she would journey further through the tunnels, inch by inch, mile after mile. What else did she have to live for but to seek this dark thing that drew her nearer to it with every passing day? Athabasca had nothing; no family, no friends, no real reason to keep living except for her lust to discover what secrets lay in the damp darkness of these twisting, turning, unpredictable caves.

The pitch-black femme drew in a shaky breath as she padded cautiously into the gaping mouth of a tunnel, ducking and dodging the spikes that hung like sinister teeth from the low roof of the cavern, her echoing pawsteps eventually fading into silence.