Lost to the Hunt

‘Easy now, don’t strain that leg.’ She helped me gently onto a dry cot of branches, hair wreathing her face in the golden sun. I protested, as was required, but her smile held. She had never wavered in all our years together. Even now, home long behind us and our final borrowed Realm Card exhausted, she held fast. ‘You’ll look after him, while I find us something to eat?’ She nodded toward the grisled man behind her, prodding our pitiful fire with empty eyes. ‘Don’t be long, please.’ ‘He’s not so terrible.’ She laughed, deflecting, but I knew she understood. I could see the sweat on her brow, how her hands clenched tight. What lay outside this camp was far beyond either of our meagre imaginings. One gentle kiss graced my forehead, and she left.

To keep my anxiousness at bay, I put my feet to work. My leg ached where the bone was fractured, and I cursed the mud shifting beneath my weight. I made it only metres to a crop of mangled trees. Branches broken, they lay splintered in a wide trench dug through the mire. Fickle winds, perhaps. Far too great a swath to be an animal. Any Earthly animal, at least. My mind reached to follow such thoughts, so I hobbled onward. That night, her father sat, still as I had ever seen him. ‘Eyes, like a man’, he whispered to the darkness. I thought to stand, peer out, shout away some lurking danger, but my heart betrayed me. Braver than I, my darling would have risen. I felt thankful for the fire’s blinding glow and the refuge of ignorance.

Three nights now since she had gone in search of food. I gave our final scrap of dry bread to her father, who cupped it in shaking hands. Knives in the pit of my stomach, I needed to see where we were, where she had gone. Dragging my leg behind me, I threw myself at a rocky outcropping, collapsing at its peak. Gazing down, I saw, finally, the paths dug with intent around our impotent shelter. Realisation dawned with a thunderous roar. As if summoned from the void itself, a wave of foetid water enveloped the camp far below. One ragged scream, cut short. As the water receded, only the beast remained. Fangs slick and red. Its eyes met mine, mirrors of my aching hunger. I could think only of my love and the reunion soon to come.