The journey through the forest to the caravan's next camp site was quick and easy, very few animals crossed our path, just the occasional rabbit or squirrel. With the amount of sounds the men and horses are making it was easy to see why nothing was coming close to them. That didn't stop me from foraging for everything that I could as we walked by from my place at the back of the caravan. There was even a squirrel that I managed to catch as it was busy barking with as much anger as its little body could contain at one of the horses. It must have been a younger squirrel to lose all awareness when trying to protect its territory. It never saw my claws coming.
It was quick and efficient, a quick death to the squirrel, the best kind of death for prey. Not like the stone glider I'm getting better at using my strength and weapons that adorn my body. It was so quick that I don't think anyone else in the caravan saw it happen, nobody else was looking at me or the squirrel. I don't want to think about what looks they would have given me if they saw the whole squirrel entering my mouth and nothing coming out. So I'll try not to.
Once we actually manage to find a spot to camp, I move away from everyone, they don't even try to call me over to join in with them. That stings in a way I never expected. Like a spear being stabbed through me. Briefly clutching at my chest like I was expecting an invisible spear to be stabbed into my chest but my hand finds nothing, but despite the pain and the looks they had given me i don't want to turn away, because who else would I speak to, know who else would help if I get injured. Would they even help if I was injured, I hope that they would but…
I snap myself back to the here and now, and not in some distant event I have no knowledge of when or why or even if it would happen. They didn't need to have me over there anyway. I've already eaten my fill, and if I listened to the bear I would be gorging myself on whatever food that they have, to gain weight for the coming freeze. Laying down on my stomach, I slowly retreat to the realm of dreams trying to ignore the pains in my chest and the conversations that can still reach my ears.
I walk forward across a snow covered mountain ridge. Leaving tracks behind me as I do so. I keep walking forward ignoring the chill that's slowly working its way up my feet, paws, hooves? I don't know as I travel my feet shift or do they, aren't they always what they are. I move from two legs to four, a more comfortable position for continual travel. Looking down at my limbs I see a hoof, foot, paw, and hand all working together to move me forward.
Has it always been like this? It must have been how can I walk so well if I haven't always been like this. As I continue forward I spy the small end of a needle sticking up through the snow. I attempt digging through the snow with my hooves but they're inaccurate, though shaped well, there isn't enough strength in my toes for digging. Next I use my hand but the more I dig the colder and colder it gets until my fingers feel heavy and frozen. The paw doesn't freeze but with a size too large to be used well, and lacking in the right shape for digging effectively that leaves me with no options but to use my mouth.
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Right before my snout? Face? Impacts the snow one of my limbs changes into a perfect tool to use in digging the snow. Why am I digging in the snow? It doesn't matter, the snow needs digging so I will dig. My limbs have never faulted me in the past or have they? I keep digging and digging, soon the rest of my limbs mix to become the perfect tools for digging. So I keep going and good. But the snow never seems to rise around me as I go deeper but I am deeper and deeper into it. Then my claws impact against something hard. It's ice, the pale blue catches the light from above me and I look deep into it, I keep looking deeper and deeper into it until I see something. I see me.
I see my face. One antler half my face covered in fur two eyes one of prey one of predator. My mouth pulled forward into a snout, looking stretched on my furless face, looking natural on my fur. One ear on the side of my head the other one top. The view keeps going to view my warped body skin stretched to fit muscles and bones, fur covering everywhere but also nowhere, feet like an elk and bear and firebearer, but also unlike anything. A destructive body that inspires fear, a grotesque warped thing to inspire disgust. I want to look away, I need to look away, I can’t, I can’t. Surging up all my strength and anger. my left forelimb, arm, it doesn't matter. Surging with strength the bones break letting out and echoing snap, as muscles grow tearing skin that rapidly grows back. Fur then covers the thing and I slam down. Breaking the ice.
The ice breaks. I see myself no longer but then the ice falls. I need to run and before that thought can even fully form in my head all of my limbs snap and break into thinner limbs with more upper muscles and I spring forward my hooves catching the ice easily. So I keep going, always just barely not falling into the abyss that lays below in the evening. Pushing with more and more strength using more and more energy moving fast doesn't matter, I'm always staying on the edge but I keep going forward right on the edge of the snow that I was on top of. I just about make it but my back feet fall.
Struggling forward trying to grab hold with my hooves but they can't now they're sliding no longer catching the ice. I keep trying over and over again but then my hooves break, they snap into four then five fingers and I grasp the ice just barely with all my strength being used to hold myself up but I'm alone with no one to grab hold of me. I cry out, I roar, I let out the loudest spike squeal that I can but that brings nothing and no one is coming, no one is coming. Then I see it, in the ice once again my reflection, the grotesque beast always shifting, always hideous, never what it is supposed to be. My hand slips and I fall deeper and deeper growing faster and faster until all that surrounds me is nothing and I keep getting faster and faster with no control I just fall.
Then I see it, the stone floor of this pit filled with snow, no that isn't snow, it isn't snow they're skeletons, bear, elk, firebearer. These three skeletons over and over again so many they begin to mix together forming abominations that should not be. The bones are shattered and broken from falls just like mine. I fall and I…
With a loud gasp I wake up.
