This is the post for the contest-version of the short story. (It's about winter, by the way.)
A Visit in Winter
It had gotten colder again. Even though her short,
but dense fur protected her, she started to feel the cold.
Normally, at this time of
year, her favorite prey would have wandered up from the valley below
and she wouldn't be hungry now. This year however, everything was
different. First it was unnaturally warm, but there were still enough
animals to eat around, so she didn't care. Then the cold finally
came.
Snow and ice covered her
mountain forest and all the animals went into hiding or wandered down
into the valley, searching for better hideouts. Everything seemed
like normal again and she waited impatiently for the several small
herds of red deer to come up from the valley.
Every year, the red
deer would follow a small river up to the mountains and enter her
forest. She didn't know and didn't care why
the deer went up when most other animals went down, but for her it
always meant she wouldn't be hungry during winter.
But the red deer
didn't come and it still got colder. Then it got colder again. Even
she had to start
hiding in caves over night, or the biting cold would have gotten her.
For some time she survived by digging out frozen corpses from the
snow and slowly warming them with her body until she could eat them.
But after a while she stopped finding new corpses.
Now even the ravens and
crows had started to avoid her forest, as if the cold was slowly
smothering all life within.
She sighed.
“Enough of this. Waiting obviously doesn't work.
I'll just have to go and search for them.”, she
thought.
If her food wasn't coming
to her, then she would have to go where her food was. She decided to
go down into the valley and find out why her red deer hadn't come.
She climbed down and started the long way down the mountain.
Hours later, long after
nightfall, she finally reached the valley. In the darkness, she could
faintly hear the river flowing nearby. Down here, the river wasn't
frozen anymore, which had been a nice surprise for her thirst after
hours of traveling. Some smaller animals had turned up, too. But a
badger and a little unlucky blue tit weren't really filling her.
Where were the deer? She
decided to climb one of the high beech trees surrounding her to take
another look around. This was the first time she had come to this
strange area, after all. Carefully she selected the highest tree she
could see and used her claws to scale it.
When she finally reached
the treetop, the surprise nearly made her drop down anyhow. There
were a lot of lights! Close to a third of the night was full of
lights! That wasn't what she expected. It was also really bad for her
night vision, so after her awe had passed, she tried her best to
avoid the many lights. Blinking to make her eyes work properly again,
she tried to skim the area with lights as best as she could. “What
is that?”, she thought.
She couldn't wait to find
out. Her excitement nearly made her forget her hunger.
After a time she could see
the lights shimmer in the distance, giving the forest an otherworldly
glow in the darkness. Excited, she scrambled closer, trying to
use the trees to hide as best as possible. Finally the glow got so
strong, she couldn't even look directly into it without hurting her
eyes. The light seemed to come from a clearing up ahead. She reached
a tree trunk next to the clearing and peered slowly around it, using
a hand to protect herself against the light.
For a moment, she was
speechless. The light didn't come from mushrooms, like she had
expected. Instead, there was some kind of weird-looking square hill
with what looked like holes and caves inside. And the lights came
from several different sources: There was a chain of small, blinking
lights draped around the hill, a towering tree-like gray thing
without any branches, but a huge, blinding light instead of a crown.
Smaller, milder lights shone out of the holes in the hill. The lights
combined to illuminate a flat, hard surface made of some weird black
stone. She had no idea what exactly could make stone look that
polished. Maybe a river flood or something?
Na, that was stupid.
Someone probably had done this. She stopped herself. “If there
is someone, then there is something to eat!”, she thought.
Excited again she raced across the stone and slipped into a zone of
deep shadows below one of the holes. Suddenly she saw her bushy tail
sticking out in front of the hole above her head and moved it hastily
out of the way.
Now that her potential
meal didn't have a reason to run away or hide anymore, she tried
spying through the hole. It turned out to be harder than she thought:
The light from inside illuminated everything nicely, even though the
light from outside had destroyed her night vision somewhat fiercely.
But the unnatural light everywhere still made her nervous and the few
glimpses she made in-between ducking back under the hole just
frustrated her. She didn't understand anything she saw!
The only thing remotely
understandable were the few animals which looked disturbingly like
her, except not really, sitting calmly under a tree they apparently
had dragged inside for some reason. And the tree was almost bending
under the mass of lights and shiny stuff hanging from it! Those
things were weirder then crows, she decided. The rest of that cave
had been an almost incomprehensible mess of forms and colors. She
recalled sensing some movement deeper inside, so there were probably
more animals moving around somewhere in this den.
Some of the stuff she had
seen must have been unnatural, like the lights. Those animals somehow
had made them. She faintly recalled her mother sometimes using her
claws to make nice things out of pieces of wood. Maybe those animals
were just really good in using their claws?
Frustrated and hungry she
thought of maybe jumping really fast and snatching one of the smaller
ones. But if they had claws like her, this could be a serious fight.
Maybe if they were like her enough, they would share food with her?
Absentmindedly, she tried
climbing into the hole. “If it goes wrong, I can just jump out.
Right?”, she thought. But then her plan immediately derailed.
First, she bonked her head on something hard and fell back. “An
invisible wall? Man, those animals are smart.” Before
her dazzled mind could think of anything smart itself, one of the
animals showed up on the other side of that weird wall-thing. It was
a strange animal indeed. Fur only on its top, hairless hands and face
sticking out of wraps made out of the weirdest animal skins she had
ever seen.
The animal grinned at her,
showing blocky teeth. She immediately calmed down. Obviously they
weren't predators like her, so at least if they didn't want to share,
she could eat them without feeling guilty.
Some kind of gibberish
came out of the mouth of the animal. It did something with its hands
and to her astonishment, parts of the hill around the invisible wall
came loose and the entire thing moved. She could now see some kind of
mechanism made out of moving parts between the wall-thing and the
hole it was in. She was impressed. This was a lot more than just
making a small wood-deer. She wondered so much about what kind of
fine motor control would be necessary to make those small parts just
with your claws, she nearly missed the animal pointing some kind of
stick at her.
Surprised she looked
closer. The stick was part wood, part the same gray stuff the
light-tree outside was made out of. When the large animal moved some
other part of that thing with a finger, she decided there must be
some deeper meaning behind the stick and threw herself sideways.
A loud thunderclap shocked
her momentarily, but she regained her balance pretty fast. A funny
smell hang in the air and the animal was apparently furious. More
senseless noise came from it. She dashed back to the hillside next to
the hole, just as another thunderclap pummeled the air. This time,
she saw a small flame burst from the end of the stick and she could
have sworn something fast was moving out of it. She suddenly felt
very lucky she had trusted her instincts.
The angry animal stuck his
head and hands out of the hole and tried to level his stick on her.
She decided she had enough backtalk from prey for today and just
grabbed his head. The animal started struggling to get free, but it
turned out to be astonishingly weak. Even with both hands he couldn't
get her hand off his face. He tried to slip out of her grip, but she
just pressed down to embed her claws deeper in his skull and dragged
him out of the hole, down to her. His weird stick had fallen back
inside. A lot of agitated sounding noise came from inside.
A bit torn between the
urge to flee and her hunger, she paused a moment. The animal in her
grip started flailing and screaming like mad and a sound like wood
and stone banging together came from the other side of the hill like
an answer. Suddenly furious, she smashed the animal against the stony
hillside until its body went limp, then she cracked his neck with a
bite, just to be sure. In the sudden silence, she heard hurried foot
steps. Apparently the sound earlier had been some other animal
opening the hill and getting out.
And now it was coming to
her. Well, now it was easy. She just had to avoid those strange
sticks and she would have enough food for weeks. In a hurry she stood
up on and moved away from the hole, deeper into the shadows. Close to
the edge of the hill, she leaned herself at the stone and waited.
Another animal looked out
of the hole, seemingly agitated. But she was too deep inside the
shadows now and the light everywhere wasn't strong enough to expose
her. After a while, the animal went back in again. More loud noises.
Could it be some sort of talking, like a language? “Now this
would be weird, seriously.”, she thought.
Finally the footsteps
stopped, just on the other side of the edge. Did the animal notice
her? She held her breath. Suddenly, the creature jumped around the
edge, wildly flailing his stick around. But by leaning back against
the stone of the hill, she wasn't where she had been expected and it
was incredibly easy for her to just grab the dumb thing and wrestle
it around for a killing bite. It didn't went as easy as she had
planned, of course. The creature evaded her first rush by blindly
stumbling sideways, then it tried several thunderclaps to shock her
into submission, followed by using the stick like a club to cave her
head in.
Now it was her who
stumbled blindly out of the way, just barely avoiding a really
painful death. Incensed she rushed around him and jumped on his back.
She got a good grip with
her teeth on the creature's neck and chomped down until she felt the
bones splinter. The neck broke with a satisfying crunch and the
animal under her suddenly went silent. Its body twisted around one
last time and fell, forcing her to hastily jump off.
Her heart hammered fast
and her blood was boiling. She remembered the third animal. That
creature also had looked rather hostile. She decided to be proactive
in self-defense and hurried to the edge of the hill. If she was
lucky, whatever opening the creature had made in the hill to come out
was still there. Time to get the third one and be done with it.
She was lucky. After
rushing around the edge and along the porous hillside behind, she
found the opening the creature had made just on the other side of a
second edge. It was another strange hole in the side of the hill,
this time covered with wood instead of invisible walls. Of course,
more of the smaller holes with those things in it were also there,
but by now she had gotten some routine in avoiding them.
The wood stood at an
angle, revealing more mechanisms inside. And also a large cave
entrance. She smelled blood from the inside and the everlasting light
had been switched off somehow. The creatures knew she was here, and
they thought the darkness would help them. Determined to prove them
false, she jumped inside as fast as she could.
Annoyingly, nothing
happened. The creatures, or maybe just the third aggressive one, were
hiding somewhere inside the hill. With careful consideration she took
a good look around. Inside the cave was a maze of tunnels, everything
seemed to be made either out of wood, stone or stuff she couldn't
identify. Large pieces of worked wood were everywhere, even blocking
off some of the tunnels. In awe she tried to understand how much work
must have been necessary for all of this, and failed miserably.
The lingering blood smell
brought her mind back to the real world. Cautiously she moved through
the maze. Luckily it turned out to be a lot smaller then her
over-awed mind had thought at first. Most of the tunnels ended up
being just weird square rooms filled with weird stuff. Some of the
weird stuff was understandable, like the caves with cozy looking furs
and animal skins on top of sturdy looking pieces of wood. Probably
sleeping places.
At last she entered a cave
she was already familiar with. She had seen it from the outside. The
tree was there, the opened invisible wall was there and the
irritatingly incomprehensible stuff was also there. What surprised
her were the creatures still sitting under the light-tree. They
looked fearful at her. After some time, she noticed some of them were
bleeding. Weird.
Now that she had the time
to look at them for a while without getting attacked, it again
disturbed her how close those beings resembled her, just hairless and
wrapped in ersatz-fur instead of the real deal. She thought she could
even discern which of the four creatures before her were female and
which were male. Which was impressive, considering she would have had
trouble telling female and male deers apart if the males hadn't had
horns growing out of them.
Suddenly she stopped her
train of thought. Those creatures weren't looking at her, they
were looking at something behind her. She whirled around. That
stupid blood smell had masked the scent of the animal she was
hunting. The light suddenly went back on, blinding her for a second.
“Now I got you,
asshole!”, the man said. He walked out of the corner he had been
hiding in and waved his rifle in her direction. Then he stopped and
went pale. “What he hell are you?” Instead of the armed woman he
had thought he was hunting, he saw some kind of lanky, lean thing.
Covered in short, but dense fur. Dark green fur. It almost towered
above him. Suddenly it leaned forward with unnatural speed and
grabbed his rifle with incredibly long, thin fingers.
Startled he tried to press
the trigger, but screamed in pain instead. The thing had used its
thumb like a spear and pierced his trigger finger with a nasty
looking claw. Panicking, he tried to get away from it, but the table
was suddenly behind him and he awkwardly fell to the ground. A bowl
filled with gravy toppled over and spilled its contents over his
jacket.
The monster was leaning
over him, that almost human looking face peeking curiously at him. It
still had his rifle in it's left hand.
Cursing he pulled out his
revolver. He wouldn't fucking die this day, with this stupid
family looking at him like stupid sheep. His last thoughts were about
wishing they'd just killed all of them right after breaking into
their house, then his own rifle came back down on his head like the
end of the world and he never had any thoughts again.
She looked at the other
four creatures. They still looked scared, but a bit calmer now. She
felt exhausted. With a last look at the creature she had killed, she
decided to leave it there for the other four. It was obvious now they
were a different tribe or even a different kind of animal altogether.
But there was some bird-meat on the table, so they probably could
digest it.
Besides, the creature's stick was still stuck inside it's
head. And she really didn't want to know what that weird not-wood
stuff on it would do to the meat.
Now the two smaller
creatures under the tree started with that mewling noise, too. She
told them: “I think I'm getting a headache. I'll take my food and
go.”
The four creatures got a
bit agitated, but it didn't seem like they understood a single word.
Lost in thought, she
walked back through the small maze and to the larger hole leading out
of the cave. She went out and carefully shoved the big piece of wood
back on the cave's entrance.
Afterwards, she collected
her food and dragged it into the woods. She was pretty sure there was
some perfectly normal cave close by she could use. And who knows?
Maybe tomorrow she would find a herd of red deer. Staying here seemed
like a good idea for now.
She carried the bodies
into the night, quietly humming to herself.
Word count: 2996 words.
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