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(Trigger warning for depictions of death and decay. If you’re only interested in replying to the immediate RP skip to the last horizontal rule- most of this is just setting up backstory to be referenced in the future, yay!)
The sun was setting before the yearling realized it would be dark by the time she made it home and so her last choice was the race through the tangled thicket and hope she made it back before her mother did. She would, without a doubt, because she was quick and mother was big and slow. Aeon wasn’t even worried how her mother would react to her tardiness; it was more the fact that the youngling missed the big cat and was poor at expressing it. She pictured her destination in her mind like a perfect painting; rock jutting out of a hillside, half-shadowed by massive trunks, but during the hot afternoon the sun hit it perfectly and mother sprawled out across its warm surface letting the sunlight slowly rust her fur. There was no den to return to, but there was that, and mother always came back so that rock became her home.
When she saw the rock for real she barked triumphant—breathlessly—and scrabbled up its dark smooth surface. Mother was nowhere to be seen. Yet. Which was good because Aeon’s pulse was still throbbing in her veins, heart defeating her ears, and she struggled to catch her breath. If she seemed calm and rested when Metka arrived the cat might think she had been patiently waiting here the whole time and then the yearling girl could hit her with a crack about how she had been waiting impatiently, c’mon mom! The pup slid down to her belly and took a deep breath, giving her heart a chance to return to its normal rate, and hoping her mother would appear soon; the cold was getting into her thin fur and she wouldn’t mind getting a proper meal into her belly. The girl was perpetually starved and cold but Metka always had something to ease that.
The sun fell from the sky and the only starlight Aeon saw was from the silent sky hanging cold above her head.
Aeon woke when she heard a heavy drag-shuffle against the frozen spring earth. Ears pricked, body following, rising to her paws to pin the source. Her brain was still muddled from sleep (when had she fallen asleep?) and didn’t think that noise could be her mother; the big cat always walked so quietly. The smell of fresh meat would have woken her first if Metka brought back a kill but—wait, she could smell it now. Blood, meat, salty and metallic, something soft to sink her teeth into and it never smelled so fresh before. The yearling was about to hop down from her perch to collect her meal when Metka finally came into view, her form half-blended in the shadows, and something uncharacteristically bumbling about her gait.
There was blood in her fur. Her blood. The dark cat carried herself carefully as she could on heavy, fractured limbs. Her ear was missing, a tear from the top of her scalp that ran down the back of her jawline to a jaw that hung crookedly on her face. Aeon froze, then flinched violently back as the shock of her mother’s injuries came at her suddenly.
Metka collapsed a few yards from the rock. Aeon rushed to her side, sniffing and licking the oozing wounds. The blood was slowing. She wouldn’t die from blood loss at least but it was of little comfort. Even then the yearling knew what was about to happen. This story was predictable and always horrifying no matter how many times it had played out before.
“Mum?” The word didn’t come out sufficiently concerned, did nothing to express Aeon’s shock, sounded no different than any time she spoke to Metka. She should feel something. More than this. “What happened?”
“The danger’s gone,” Metka’s words were warbled with the anguish of moving her jaw and throat muscles. “You’re safe now. Aeon, when I d-“
“No,” Aeon cut her mother off. “It’s okay. You saved me. Again. I’ll take care of you, mommy. You’ll be alright. You just need rest. See? Just rest. I bet it hurts to talk. You don’t have to. I’ll take care of you.”
As if repeating the phrase over and over would make it true, would keep Metka here fighting to live and save her from the miserable end to her story, and the sordid beginning to Aeon’s. Metka’s head drooped with exhaustion, bright eyes staring into the voids that were Aeon’s, brimming with the sort of deep sadness of a person who could never say all the things that they needed to say. Metka didn’t need the words, but Aeon did, and they both knew those things would die in her throat unfinished as they do.
“Aeon. Fight on, little one.”
The words would have been especially poignant if they were last words, but they weren’t. They were other words the following days. Those were just the words Aeon would remember, sharp as a blade in her mind because she would learn quickly that the world was abundant with things that needed to be fought.
There were many things neither mother or daughter got to say. Metka was not going to be alright because the only one fighting for her to live was Aeon. Aeon wasn’t old enough to learn about hunting and bring anything bigger than sizeable insects or mice to her mother. Water was a difficult challenge as well. It didn’t matter because she never ate anything Aeon brought her or took any water. She just laid there, stretched out in the cool spring grass, looking all the queen she had ever been in the peak of her health despite the dried blood and twisted limbs. For a while.
Then she stopped lifting her head when she woke, laying sprawled on her side, eyes becoming dull and uninterested in what lay beyond them. Her lips were cold when Aeon forced them open, trying to make her eat and drink with no success. The cat’s breathing became shallow and within a few days she died, the very act of it so quiet and imperceptible it was difficult for Aeon to process. She didn’t even know the exact second that it happened, only that her mother’s body had become cold and stiff next to her own when she woke in the night.
In the end Aeon did not shed a single tear for her mother and knowing that was a unique, acute form of torture. Metka could have hid from Aeon, disappeared and never let the child know the fate of her adoptive parent, but she came back to spend her final days with her daughter and now Aeon couldn’t seem to properly mourn her. She should be howling, screaming, crying. Throwing herself at the earth from the agony of loss, the knowing that she would wake up in the morning all alone, the vast existence (no matter how short) that lay ahead of her knowing Metka would never be a part of it once more. All she felt was hunger, cold, and emotional numbness that settled over every part of her heart and suffocated whatever complex feelings she wished she could be having right then.
She couldn’t bring herself to leave Metka’s corpse, even when the body was stiff and the smell of her innards were leaking out of her, a scent that wouldn’t put off a carnivore but disturbed Aeon for the fact that it cloaked the once familiar bodily scent the cat’s fur held. Aeon paced the area, growing weaker, hungrier, and knowing that the growing smell would draw in scavengers. Others who wanted to eat the body, so they could live on.
Metka hadn’t only returned here to be with Aeon though, did she? She wanted Aeon to live. She wanted her to fight. A yearling with little hunting experience was off to a bad start on her own, even if she did leave the corpse to be consumed by ravens and coyotes. Once the hunger overrode all else it didn’t take much prompting for Aeon to rip into her mother’s carcass and make good use of what was quickly becoming only meat. Metka was not there anymore but she had one last gift to give.
A growing child has got to eat.
Collapsed bones supported a tarp of dried leathery flesh and the scent of the great hellcat faded away with the decay and the weather. The loyal girl lay near it, filthy and flea-bitten, scrapes from coyotes she had pummeled into the earth when they came for the marrow. She barely recognized what was left here. Attachment to the corpse drained in the weeks it had taken for sustenance and resemblance to rot away and Aeon was now left as hungry as ever but still alive and burning with a sort of anger to which there had been no response to soothe her. She shifted uncomfortably and finally pulled herself up onto her slender mud-crusted legs.
Why did you die? You weren’t supposed to leave me. You were supposed to protect me. What was the point? WHAT WAS THE POINT OF SAVING ME IF YOU WERE ONLY GOING TO DIE?
The screaming in her head felt passionless in her heart and that left her feeling stunted. Anger could be a powerful tool in grieving, but she still felt…numb. She was being driven by more primal things. She needed food, water, a safe place to sleep. It was time to move on, haunted by thoughts that she somehow did everything wrong and she would live to regret not being able to cry the way she was supposed to. Something in her was broken, she was sure of it.
Go to the river, her mind commanded and her tired paws obeyed. She was so filthy her coat was mostly brown, the silver-blue and white of her fur caked with dust. She smelled like undeath and the fleas were probably going to be a much longer lasting problem. The girl was also dehydrated. She picked her way through tangled roots and trees and waded through meadow grass taller than she was until she came to it. Wide and shallow she could almost cross it without getting her belly wet. For now, she only needed a drink.
Watch out for others. They need water too.
Others. Strangers. Bigger, better beasts who could hurt a young hellhound striking out on her own. Bullies. She would run if they came, but for now she kept her ears pricked as she lapped up cool relief.
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