There was no more overcoming and they both knew it. There had been too many long months spent just hanging on and trying to survive the harsh realities of their lonely world. They were tired, she especially, for not only did she battle the physical odds but she carried the heavier burden of guilt at what she had done, that she had been unable to help him after all. Now they lay together, spent and shattered, in the graveyard of their hopes and dreams, hopeless, useless and defeated.
Silence and darkness gathered around them and, beyond ordinary realisation as they were, they barely noticed the snow that began to fall. She whimpered from time to time and shifted her position slightly, knowing only that she must not, even now, let go of him. She had, in any case, no strength left to wander far and he would not leave her any more now. She stretched herself across his prone form and gave herself to stillness. Steadily, the snowfall covered and embraced them, this the last blanket that they would ever need.
The noiseless night crept stealthily around them and watched in satisfaction the desolate scene that seemed to belong entirely in its knowing. From time to time, a night-creature called its lonely pronouncement across the shadows, heard only by the waiting trees and the yearning heart of the one who wished it could be different.
In the long hours and pre-dawn depth of darkness, the barely shifting shadows linked around their secret and, as the morning star made her tremulous way to her pinnacle, the faintest of laughter was heard. In spite of the unfolding tragedy of the lost ones, one tiny trill, one hesitant cheeping at a time, the woodland world took up the song.
The change came with the first rays of the early sunlight, scattering rainbowed diamonds across the snow. In the cover of the forest, he stirred at last, and stretched, just a little, hesitant and uncertain of his durroundings. Carefully, he slid from beneath her. Quivering, he examined her lifeless form and, grieving, turned away.
Against the odds, his life made possible by her death, the fox cub left his mother to her sleep and made his tentative way to face the dawn.
Copyright © 2008 Rob Richardson. All Rights Reserved.