Wilderness
Survival – Day 1
They
move through the snow as the cold deepens, breath fogging in the dim
afternoon light. The forest here is dense, towering oaks stripped
skeletal by winter, pine boughs sagging under fresh snow, the wind
whispering down the mountain in long, lonely sighs. Their boots
crunch through the drifts, leaving a single narrow trail behind them.
Lucille hoists another
fallen branch onto the bundled stack tied atop her rucksack. Cain
mirrors her, snapping smaller limbs clean and slipping them beneath
the straps across his chest.
“Shelter first,” he
says. “Before sundown. Fire second. Then food.”
Lucille nods. “We’ll
need a windbreak. Somethin' with natural cover. A slope. Or a
deadfall… somethin'.”
“Nothin' so far,” Cain
mutters, scanning the tree line.
They walk in silence for a
few minutes, the kind of silence they’ve grown to recognize in each
other, the kind that means the mind is working, sorting, mapping.
When the path forks between
two narrow game trails, Cain pauses and looks to her. “Which way do
you think?”
Lucille raises her chin,
nostrils flaring slightly. She turns her face toward the chill
drifting in from the northwest. Snowflakes catch in her lashes.
“Northwest,” she says
with certainty.
“Why not just head west?”
Cain asks, adjusting the weight on his shoulders. “The lake’s
west.”
Lucille’s mismatched eyes
flick toward him, bright in the pale winter. “Because the lake
bends north around the ridgeline here. We’ll hit the shoreline
faster this way.”
“And you’re sure of
that?” he asks, eyebrows raised.
A faint smile ghosts across
her lips. “I can smell the water.”
Cain stops walking. Stares
at her. “Lucy… the lake is frozen.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She
taps her nose lightly. “It still has a scent, even under ice. You
can’t smell it?”
Cain huffs, equal parts
amused and exasperated. “No. No, Lucy, I cannot smell a lake twenty
miles away.”
“More like… maybe
thirteen,” she corrects without missing a beat.
He laughs under his breath.
“You’re unbelievable.”
She shrugs. “I’m
useful.”
Together they turn
northwest, following the direction she’d pointed. The sound of wind
sweeping across distant water, real or imagined, seems to hum faintly
beneath the forest’s quiet.
As they walk, the path
narrows and the incline steepens. The shadows between the trees
stretch long. They gather more branches, tugging down dead limbs,
shaking snow loose with quick snaps of their wrists. Their packs grow
heavier. The temperature drops steadily.
Cain glances at the dimming
sky. “We’ve got maybe two hours of light left.”
“Then we move faster,”
Lucille says, pushing ahead.
And as she does, the forest
seems to open, a small hollow between rising slopes, shielded from
the wind by a natural wall of rock and leaning trees. A perfect place
to build.
Lucille points toward it.
“There. That’ll do.”
Cain nods, already shifting
into work mode.
And together, in the
deepening cold, they begin the first night of survival.
The woods swallow the last
smear of daylight as Lucille hacks through another sapling, the
kukri’s serrated spine chewing through the wood with a wet,
grinding bite. She tosses the stripped trunk aside for Cain to
measure and cut. Their breath spills in thick white gusts, rising,
twining, fading into the skeletal canopy.
The cold is settling now,
real cold. Mountain cold. The kind that crawls into the joints and
stiffens the lungs. The kind that kills quietly if you let it.
Lucille doesn’t let it.
She drives the kukri down
again, the blade biting deep. Snowflakes cling to her hair and
eyelashes. Sweat steams from the back of her neck despite the
freezing air.
Cain drags another stack of
cut branches toward their chosen clearing, marking out the final
placement of the roof-supports. He’s slower than Lucille, everyone
is, but he works with practiced efficiency. “Angle those a little
more forward,” he calls without looking up. “Wind’s shiftin' east. Shelter needs the mouth turned further downhill.”
Lucille adjusts them with a
grunt and keeps moving.
By the time they raise the
third wall, dusk has surrendered to night. The forest becomes a black
ocean of unmoving trees and muffled sounds. Their breath and the
thunk of wood are the only signs of life.
Lucille drags the evergreen
boughs over, snapping the excess with quick twists of her wrist.
Resin smears her gloves, sap freezing on contact. She layers the
branches across the walls, weaving them into the frame until the
shelter resembles a lopsided, snow-laden burrow, ugly but sturdy.
Cain kneels at the
entrance, scraping a fire pit clear of snow with his gloves, fingers
reddened from cold. He arranges the tinder, then the splinters, then
the thicker sticks. Every movement is deliberate. Ritualistic.
Lucille watches him for a
moment, chest heaving from exertion. His hands tremble slightly, not
from fear, but from cold soaking straight through the soaked gloves.
She drops the last armful
of evergreen. “Need help?”
“Just keep the branches
coming,” he mutters, striking the ferro rod. Sparks jump, die,
jump, die again. “Cold’s makin' the magnesium useless.”
“Let me.” She crouches
beside him, her smaller hands enveloping his for a moment as she
takes the rod. Warmth radiates from her skin like a furnace, too much
warmth for the temperature, but Cain doesn’t comment.
Her first strike sends a
thick scatter of sparks into the tinder. It smolders. Catches.
Cain exhales, long and
relieved. “Show-off.”
Lucille smirks faintly as
the fire crackles to life, the glow throwing their shelter into
flickering relief. “I did all the heavy lifting. Least I deserve is
braggin' rights.”
He huffs a soft laugh,
rubbing feeling back into his fingers as flames finally begin to
grow. “You didn’t do all of it. I cut half those trunks.”
“Mmhm.” She tosses a
branch at him. “Sure you did.”
Cain pushes it aside with
mild indignation, but he’s smiling.
The fire rises steadily,
warmth pooling around their knees. Behind them, the shelter, three
walls, a low ceiling, evergreen layering, finally looks like
something survivable. Barely, but enough.
Lucille steps back,
surveying their creation with narrowed eyes. “It’ll hold.”
Cain nods. “And it’ll
keep us alive tonight.”
Lucille wipes the remaining
sap from her gloves, gaze drifting toward the distant treeline. To
the north. To where the lake lies frozen, still hidden but close
enough that she can smell it, cold minerals, stagnant winter ice, the
faint hint of deep water beneath.
Cain follows her stare.
“Still sure about northwest tomorrow?”
“I can smell it,” she
says simply. “The lake. If we follow the ridge, we’ll hit it by
midday.”
He gives her a long look,
half trust, half disbelief. “You and that nose…”
Lucille shrugs, stepping
toward the shelter’s entrance. “If it gets us through the Trial,
who cares.”
A gust of icy wind blows
through the clearing, rattling the branches overhead, sending snow
cascading from a tall pine. The fire sputters but holds.
Cain pushes himself to his
feet, brushing frost from his knees. “Let’s get inside before the
temperature drops any further.”
Lucille ducks into the
shelter first, Cain right behind her.
The fire crackles outside,
snow falls in sheets beyond the treeline, and night cinches tight
around the mountain.
The wind whispers through
the pines, brushing loose frost from their branches. Lucille hugs her
knees tighter, chin resting atop folded arms as she watches the fire
claw upward into the cold night. Sparks rise and vanish. The forest
is quiet, dead quiet, save for the occasional groan of ice shifting
under the weight of the mountain.
Cain sits close enough that
their shoulders nearly touch. Close enough that he can feel the heat
radiating off her and the subtle tremors of her body as she warms. He
isn’t shivering, his tolerance for the cold is legendary among
their year, but Lucille is half his size. That alone gnaws at him
until he finally reaches into his rucksack, pulls out a thick thermal
blanket, and drapes it over her shoulders.
She blinks at him,
surprised, but says nothing.
Cain doesn’t comment
either. He just busies himself with the MREs, tearing open the
pouches, activating the chemical heaters, and setting the packets on
a flat stone to warm. The hiss of the heating elements fills the
silence. The smell of artificially-seasoned protein slurry begins to
rise.
Lucille shifts slightly
under the blanket, pulling it tighter. Her breath clouds in front of
her lips before drifting away into the night. “Thanks,” she
murmurs.
Cain nods, but he’s
barely paying attention to the food. Instead, he watches her, the way
the firelight paints gold across her chill-nipped cheeks, how her
mismatched blue-and-green eyes seem to hold the flames inside them.
Out here, away from the Academy, away from the cadets who glare and
whisper, she looks… lighter. As if the wilderness has peeled the
weight from her shoulders.
He wonders, not for the
first time, if she was ever meant to live inside walls.
Lucille senses his stare
eventually. Her head tilts, brows knitting, and she turns to him. The
firelight flares in her eyes. “You okay, Cain?” She asks softly.
Cain jerks his head away so
fast he nearly snaps his own neck. His face heats despite the cold.
“Somethin' was crawling on my arm,” he says sharply.
A lie. A terrible lie.
Lucille stares at him for a
beat, then huffs a small laugh through her nose. “Right.”
Cain keeps his gaze locked
on the tree line, refusing to look at her again. The darkness beyond
their shelter feels suddenly vast, reaching, watching. He focuses on
the night sounds, willing his pulse to steady.
The MRE heaters crackle.
The fire pops. Snow drifts lazily down from the branches overhead,
melting as it nears the flames. And for the first time since the
Trial began, they are completely, utterly alone, just the two of
them, warmth shared between them, the wilderness swallowing every
trace of the world they came from.
Wilderness Survival –
Day 2
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Lucille
trudges down the last stretch of snow-packed ridge, boots crunching
through the hard surface as the trees finally thin. Cain is a few
steps behind her, breath fogging from the exertion of the climb.
Then, finally, the ridge breaks open to a sweeping white expanse.
Reelfoot Lake glitters
beneath the morning sun, ten meters of which is frozen over clear as
glass. Beneath it, the dark water pulses in slow currents, and
shadows of fish drift like ghosts; bass, catfish, bluegill, crappie,
gliding under the frozen ceiling as if the world above does not
exist.
Lucille pushes her
snow-goggles up onto her forehead, squinting across the vast, frozen
stretch. Her cheeks are red from the cold, her breath a pale cloud.
But there is something else there, relief, pride, the satisfaction of
having been right.
Cain steps up beside her,
hands on his hips as he exhales a long breath. “Finally,” he
mutters, letting the tension leave his shoulders.
Lucille points out across
the lake. “Now we break the ice. We’ve got fresh water right
under us… and fish.” Her voice carries the slightest hint of
excitement, not joy, but the sharp spark of a survivor seeing her
next advantage.
Cain perks up instantly.
“I’ve been wantin' to practice spear fishin' for months. Maybe
now’s the chance.” His silver gaze sweeps the shoreline, already
calculating. “I’ll need to make a spear first. Somethin' sturdy.”
Lucille nods. “You make
your spear. I’ll figure out how to break the ice without fallin' through.” She steps forward, scanning the edges of the frozen lake
for tension cracks, for where the ice thickens or thins, for signs of
danger hidden beneath the powdering of snow.
She inhales deeply.
She can smell the water
below. Cold. Clean. Metallic. She can smell the fish. She can smell
the life.
And somewhere beneath all
of that, the faintest, impossible scent of a wolf watching from the
distant treeline.
She doesn’t mention it.
Not yet.
Cain unslings his hatchet,
already heading toward a fallen hardwood branch thick enough to serve
as a spear shaft. Lucille kneels at the lake’s edge, brushing snow
aside with her glove to find the clearest patch of ice.
Their breath fills the
quiet.
Lucille finds a stone to
pry out of the frozen dirt. She throws it down into the ice. The
stone bounces, sending painful vibrations up her arms. Her second
swing of the stone does it.
A sharp crack
splits across the ice, a white fracture veining outward from the
impact point. The surface sags, groans, then collapses inward with a
hollow splash. A jagged-edged hole yawns open at her feet. The cold
breath rising from it bites at her cheeks.
She crouches immediately,
kukri already in hand. The sawteeth rasp as she drives the blade
beneath the slab and pries it free, flicking it up onto the snowy
bank. More chunks follow, thick, cloudy pieces tossed aside with
quick, practiced motions. Every chip widens the opening, turning it
from a fist-sized dent into a broad, workable gap in the ice.
Once satisfied, Lucille
leans down and plunges her canteen into the dark water. The cold
stabs her fingers instantly. She hisses through her teeth but holds
firm until the bottle fills, then yanks it out, droplets freezing as
they slide down the metal.
Behind her, the rhythmic
shhk, shhk, shhk of Cain shaving wood continues. He’s
knelt in the snow, spine straight, jaw tight in focus as he works the
length of a fresh-cut sapling with his knife. Each pass strips
another coil of bark, smoothing the shaft, refining the tip into a
lethal spike.
When he finally speaks, his
breath clouds in front of him. “Perfect visibility,” Cain says,
glancing toward the open water. “If I time it right, I might land a
bass. Maybe two.”
Lucille caps the canteen
and rises, blowing on her freezing fingers. “If you don’t fall in
first.”
“I won’t,” he says,
indignant but smiling faintly. He tests the spear, gives it a final
scrape for good measure. “Besides… you’d just drag me out.”
She huffs as she steps back
from the hole. “I’d consider it.” A lie, she’d dive in
without hesitation, and he knows it.
Cain approaches the bank,
spear balanced in his grip, eyes on the shadowy shapes drifting
beneath the surface. He crouches low, studying their patterns, the
way they move, how they circle back every few seconds. He draws in a
slow breath, steadying himself.
Lucille stands behind him,
arms crossed against the cold, watching him with that small, secret
mix of fondness and concern she never lets him see on her face.
“Remember,” she
murmurs, “wait for the spine to pass. Aim for the gills. It’s
cleaner.”
Cain nods once. “I know.”
He does. But it still surprises her when, in a single sharp motion,
he lunges, silent, precise, and the spear punches into the dark water
with almost no splash at all.
Cain soon steps back from
the lake’s edge, boots sinking slightly into the slush where water
has splattered up across the bank. He holds his crude spear upright,
the writhing fish still skewered through the gills, its blood
trickling down the wooden shaft and steaming faintly in the frigid
air.
Lucille can’t even
pretend to look away in time.
She’s
transfixed. The world narrows down
to the sight of him standing there, snowflakes clinging to the ends
of his dark lashes, breath coiling in white plumes around his face,
shoulders rising and falling with excited breaths he tries, and
fails, to contain. His winter gear clings to him, dusted in frost,
and that shock of silver in his eyes glints like a blade catching
moonlight.
And Lucille just stares.
She forgets the cold. She forgets the ache in her fingers, the
weight of the kukri still clenched in her hand. She even forgets the
trial itself.
All she sees is Cain,
alive, flushed, triumphant.
In
her mind, he’s radiant. An impossible, brilliant
thing shining in a life otherwise carved from loss and violence. She
watches the water droplets arc off the fish as he lifts the spear,
sparkling like shards of glass. Watches the way his hair, usually so
perfectly kept, falls into his face, disheveled by exertion and
winter wind.
It makes her chest ache.
It makes her feel… warm.
Too warm.
She swallows hard, unable
to stop the tiny, helpless smile tugging at her lips as she watches
him.
Cain turns and the moment
he faces her, holding up the fish with that proud, bright grin, she
feels her entire body jolt.
Her breath catches. Her
heart slams once, hard, against her ribs. Her face flushes instantly,
heat rushing up her neck and into her cheeks so violently she feels
lightheaded beneath her snow-goggles.
He beams at her, her,
as if she’s the only person in this frozen wasteland worth
showing his victory to.
The pride in his expression
nearly crushes her.
Lucille’s knees almost
buckle.
She forces herself to stand
straighter, gripping her kukri to stop her hands from shaking.
Cain’s grin widens when
he sees her reaction, though he misreads it entirely.
“I got it!” he
announces, breathless, delighted. “On the first try! Lucy, look at
this thing!”
Her throat tightens so
sharply she almost can’t speak.
But she manages a nod, her
voice cracking faintly when she answers, “Y-yeah. I… I see it.”
Cain doesn’t notice the
way she stares at him like he hung the stars. He notices the way
Lucille suddenly sways. At first, he assumes it’s the cold finally
getting to her. He drops his spear into the snow and hurries toward
her, catching her by the shoulder before she can stumble.
Lucille snaps her head away
from him, nearly flinching out of his grip. One hand flies up to
cover her own face, hiding the blooming heat across her cheeks.
“I’m fine,” she
blurts, too fast, too defensive. “I just… feel a little hot.”
That only makes Cain’s
worry spike. Out here, in conditions like this, the last thing they
can risk is illness.
“Hot?” he echoes,
already pulling off one glove by hooking it in his teeth and tearing
it free. Snowflakes melt instantly on his bare palm. “Lucille, if
you’re gettin' sick—”
“I’m fine,”
she insists, but her voice cracks.
Cain hesitates, his bare
hand still hovering where Lucille’s forehead used to be before she
jerked away. His brows knit, silver eyes narrowing with worry that
refuses to leave him so easily.
“Lucille…” he starts.
“I’m fine,” she
insists again, sharper this time, as if the firmness of her tone
might grind her own embarrassment into dust. She holds out her hands
instead. “Give me the fish. I’ll clean it. You keep goin', we
need at least three more if we don’t wanna starve tonight.”
Her voice wavers only once,
barely, but Cain hears it. He always hears it.
Still, he relents. He looks
down at the fish on his spear, then back at her flushed face. After a
long, reluctant beat, he nods and carefully slides the fish free,
handing it over.
Lucille’s fingers brush
his, bare for an instant, and she feels the heat spike up her neck,
her ears, her chest. She snatches the fish quickly, turning away,
pretending she is studying it for the best place to cut.
Cain watches her for a few
seconds longer than he means to. He can’t place what’s wrong,
exactly. She said she feels hot, but she is always shivering
first in winter, always the one he has to force to bundle up.
Something doesn’t add up.
But he doesn’t push. She
asked him not to. And he trusts her.
So he steps back toward the
hole in the ice, the spear braced in his hands again.
The sunlight, weak through
the winter haze, glints across the water. Cain positions himself
carefully, body steady, posture perfect despite the cold. Every
breath comes out in a pale cloud. His gaze sharpens as shadows move
beneath the surface, fish circling in the frigid flow.
Lucille forces her own
breath to steady as she kneels in the snow a few meters off, the fish
resting on a flat stone. She withdraws her kukri, the curved blade
still gleaming faintly with frost along its edge. She sets to work,
slicing with practiced movements, trying to focus on the task and not
the fact that she nearly collapsed from… what?
Not cold. Not sickness.
Embarrassment.
Or worse...infatuation so
strong it threatens to tear her ribs open.
Pathetic.
She clenches her jaw and
works faster, pushing the heat down, drowning it in iron
determination.
Behind her, Cain’s spear
cracks through the water again. A second fish flops violently at the
end of the wood. Cain lifts it, triumphant and glittering with
droplets of lake water.
Lucille keeps her head
down. She doesn’t dare look at him. Not again. Not while her face
still feels like it’s burning under her goggles.
Cain, oblivious to the real
cause, calls over his shoulder, “Two more should do it!”
Lucille nods, voice tight.
“Good. I’ll have these cleaned by the time you’re done.”
And for a long while, the
only sounds are the delicate scrape of blade on bone, the crunch of
snow under Cain’s boots, and the distant groaning of shifting
winter ice, surrounding them, isolating them, swallowing their warmth
into the vast, indifferent wilderness.
Wilderness Survival –
Night 2
Lucille and Cain sit at the
fire in front of their makeshift shelter. The four fish Cain had
caught, cleaned and skewered on a pair of sticks each by Lucille, now
sit against the flames, the ends of the sticks shoved into the snow
to hold them up. The water they gathered is in a pot, freshly boiled.
Lucille takes the steel pot and sets it down in the snow next to her
to help it cool faster.
She folds her legs beneath
her, leaning slightly forward to warm her hands in the firelight, the
smell of charred fish mingling with the crisp, icy air. Cain sits
close, his gloved hands folded atop his knees, eyes scanning the
surrounding darkness even as the warm glow of the fire casts soft
light across Lucille's face.
The forest around them is
silent, save for the occasional crackle of the fire and the whisper
of the wind against the trees. Their breaths mist in the freezing
air, mingling with the rising steam from the boiling water and the
scent of smoke.
Cain steals glances at
Lucille, noticing the faint flush on her cheeks, the way her
polychromatic eyes reflect the firelight, and how she seems smaller
and yet entirely unbroken.
Lucille watches the flames
too, but she’s aware of Cain beside her, the quiet presence of him
grounding her after the exhausting day.
She shifts slightly,
brushing a lock of hair from her face, and Cain watches the movement
like it holds some secret he’s not privy to.
For a long moment, neither
speaks. The wind howls over the ridge, the trees sway, and the snow
glitters like shards of glass in the moonlight.
Finally, Cain shifts to
better face her, tilting slightly to catch her expression. “Are you
okay?” he asks again, voice low, cautious.
Lucille looks up at him,
her eyes meeting his silver gaze, and she smiles faintly, brushing a
hand over the edge of her coat. She nods, “I’m better now.”
Her words are simple, but
enough to make Cain’s shoulders ease. “You do look better now...”
Lucille’s blush deepens
at his attentiveness, and she tilts her head, letting a teasing smirk
play across her lips. “Does that mean,” she murmurs, “I didn’t
look good before?”
Cain freezes, caught
between shock and embarrassment, his own blush creeping across his
face. He stammers, trying to defend himself, fumbling with words, and
Lucille laughs, the sound carrying warmly through the frozen night,
breaking the tension and drawing him into a reluctant grin.
They sit together, the fire
crackling in front of them, the cold night pressing in from all
sides, but for these few moments, the world beyond their small,
makeshift shelter feels distant, inconsequential. And in that
silence, broken only by laughter and the occasional snap of wood in
the fire, they simply exist, together, unguarded, alive.
Lucille and Cain talk
softly, letting their voices blend with the pops and cracks of the
fire. Idle things; what tomorrow’s weather might be, how many fish
they should try to catch at dawn, whether their shelter will hold
through the night. For once, neither of them worries. They have food.
They have warmth. They have each other.
Day 2 is nearly over. Three
more days. They can make it.
Lucille’s words stop
mid-breath. Her head lifts. Shoulders tighten. Eyes sharpen.
Cain notices instantly. He
always notices her stillness first, the way her body goes
rigid long before danger makes a sound.
“What is it?” he
whispers, already certain of the answer. If it were a person, she
would have said so. She always says so.
Lucille doesn’t reply.
Her nostrils flare, breath soft and slow. She tilts her chin toward
the darkness just outside the fire’s reach.
Then she hears it
first. Not one sound. Dozens.
Light, rapid steps.
Crunching snow. Circling. Repositioning.
The hair along her arms
rises beneath her coat. Cain freezes as he hears it too: the faint
skitter of paws, the low growl carried by the cold wind, the whisper
of breath from multiple throats.
Lucille’s pupils narrow.
“Coyotes,” she murmurs, barely audible.
And then Cain sees them.
Eyes. Everywhere.
Glowing yellow-white, darting in and out of the treeline. Some low,
tracking. Some tall, briefly rising as the animals brace their
forepaws on roots or buried rocks. Some vanish entirely as the
coyotes shift positions, others never blink.
Fourteen… fifteen…
maybe more. Too many to count before they slide back behind the veil
of shadow.
The fire crackles
uselessly, a small barrier in a ring of moving predators.
Cain’s pulse climbs.
“They’re... It’s a whole damn pack…”
A massive one. Future
generations bred by harsher winters, scarcer prey, and boldness
rewarded by survival.
Lucille’s fingers close
around the handle of her kukri. She doesn’t draw yet. Her eyes
track every flash of fur, every darting shape. The coyotes cling to
the dark edges of the firelight, pacing, circling, assessing their
chances.
They know humans mean food.
Either stolen food…
or food that walks and bleeds.
Cain swallows hard. They
both know what the Academy textbooks said: Shout, throw rocks, make
yourself big.
Neither moves. Startled.
Cornered. Outnumbered.
One coyote edges closer,
thin black shape low to the snow, paws silent, body coiled. Its eyes
reflect the flames as two small, gleaming coins. This one is bold.
Experienced. Scarred along one flank, ribs visible beneath thick
winter fur.
Lucille shifts, barely an
inch.
The pack reacts to that
motion, several shadows ripple outward, others lean in, testing
angles.
The bold one steps in
behind Cain, slinking to their flank where the firelight is weakest.
Its nose twitches. Its lips twitch back just enough to show teeth.
Coyotes are smart. Distract
the danger. Let another slip in to steal food, or flesh.
Lucille’s whisper is
sharp and low: “Don’t move.”
Cain tries. He tries.
But the coyote inches close
enough that he feels its hot breath on the back of his hood.
Then...A sudden nip. Fast.
Violent.
Teeth clamp down on the
fabric, jerking Cain backward hard enough to rip snow loose beneath
him.
He chokes out a startled
gasp, a reflexive, helpless sound.
The surrounding coyotes
explode into cascading yips and snarls. Lucille is already moving.
Her kukri flashes free.
The fire pops. Cain
stumbles to his hands.
The pack surges at the
edges of the dark. And the quiet night collapses into chaos and
teeth.
