" ˡᵉᶠᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵈᵉᵃᵈ ▻ ᵖʳᵒˡᵒᵍᵘᵉ ᵘᵖ "

     tba

     tba

     In a world so large, it was easy to feel small. Insignificant. A little blot on the path that no one bothered to look at. Yet, as he lay on the hard and cracked thunder-path, he felt... large. Heavy and easily seen against the faded stone beneath him. His blood boiled in his veins and his fur felt as if it would fall off at any given moment, his sides rising and falling with each stuttering inhale that brought to him a slow ache resonating from hip to shoulder. Half of his face flattened by the boiling hot stone beneath him, only one eye was cracked open enough to see the world around. The sun was high and the path was silent, the thin and sparsely placed trees overhead offering virtually no shade to the cooking feline.

    Seconds ticked by like minutes, and minutes like hours. He was fading, alone in his own empty head with nothing but the feeling of ants and grit in his fur to keep him company. And then- a drizzle. Not rain, no, it rarely rained. But a cold dab of liquid on his maw that, for the slightest second, encouraged him to respond. He didn't. And then another spatter, this time right at the crease of his lips where it could dribble into the side of his too dry mouth. His tongue moved, seeking out the fluid and absorbing it on contact. Another few drops and- for the first time in nearly two days- he moved. A subtle gesture, but his jaws slowly parted to bare a small portion of his fangs and allow the stale water to dribble in. It came in a small stream now, pooling in his maw while he tried so desperately hard to swallow it, all the while spilling out the side and forming a dark stain on the ground that would soon begin to fade with the relentless heat.

    When the flow stopped, he wanted to cry out in protest. Please, don't stop. The first coherent thoughts he'd had since he had been hit, something he now tried to punctuate through meager words that came out more as a warbled squeaking. Silence answered his desperate and unintelligible pleas.

    Again, he was left to the overbearing sunlight and the wicked heat. His belly growled where he lay, mind roused by the water his parched throat had been wet with hours ago. There was absolutely no breeze, the air was dry, and the pulse of heat flared most violently at his back- west. The sun would be setting soon, and then he could get a brief reprieve before the sounds of the creatures coming alive at night would frighten him. Or so he had thought, until he heard the light trot of oncoming paw steps. Again water spattered on his muzzle, his teeth parting now to swallow greedily whatever he was given. Only this time he had drank his fill, the onslaught of water stopping now. Something cold and damp was laid beside his head, just within access of his tongue should he extend it and smelling of earth and mud. A short stretch of silence, a shuffle, and the overbearing heat on his spine ceased. He had been cast in shade- something his bent and broken body now thanked with a rush of relief.

     ...

    The most miserable part of his predicament, he'd decided the night prior, was the cold. Yes. The cold was worse than the heat. He could barely shiver when the temperatures dropped so suddenly, and even the slightest breeze chilled him to the bone. His toes and nose would go numb, he'd long ago lost all feeling in his tail, and he couldn't even ball up and attempt to gather body heat. What's worse is, during the day, he could at least see hazy black shapes through his partially opened eye. At night he was blind to what roamed, even if he heard it all.

But not tonight.

Tonight he had his guardian. Another cat, he had determined, but one that didn't speak and left him be for the most part. As the cold settled upon them, coarse fur brushed against his own thinning and scraggly pelt, gathering heat between the two of them and helping to keep the injured tom comfortable well into the night. It was one of his decent sleeps, one devoid of dreams and excluding the noises and weather about him. But of course, all good things came to an end. In this instance, it was the warming daylight that would leave hi scorched and drained for the third time- and now the absence of his guardian. His pale pink tongue washed over his whisker pads and lapped at the surely soon to evaporate water, one ear twitching where he lay to pick up the faint sounds of... a fight?

Yes, it was a fight. Nearby, too. He could hear snarling and garbled tones, accompanied by the thump of bodies landing on compact dirt and the scrabbling of claws for a proper foothold. His heart began to thump violently in his chest, a fear-struck rabbit that battered at the cage his ribs created and tried desperately to flee. Had he been able, he would've roused enough to pull himself away. Unfortunately, he lacked the strength even to open his eyes. The brawl, while in reality lasting only a few minutes, felt like a life time to him. A time in which he squeezed his eye fully shut, cracked it open, repeated the process, and continued to force it wider. At last his blurry vision began to clear, color and shapes defining themselves to his sight for the first time in days. The sounds had since silence, but now he could see a lone figure.

His eye darted about in it's socket, searching for the second party to the fight, but found nothing. So at last his pupil shrunk against the light and honed in on the one whom remained. Their pelt dusty and now colored by occasional splatters of scarlet, clumped by dirt and fur and twigs jutting from short coarse fur, he met pale yellow eyes and swallowed, trying to speak. In the end, all to emerge from his throat was a rasp. Those same yellow eyes stared harshly upon his prone figure, until- without a sound- his savior left. They kicked what the injured tom now recognized as a ball of shriveled moss away, leaving him devoid of any water yet again as they strode from sight. Panic flared in his chest, he staring after them with one eye bleary with exhaustion and a pelt that slowly began to roast in the early morning sunlight.

And now, he thought: Save me.

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