Copyright © 2025 by Markovas & Candle

Editing by Joletsart

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C1 – Cindy

Disappointment: even a small mote of it could carry the avalanche of sorrowful surrender, as its qualities-unchecked are harder than cast steel. The more you leave something roaming free, the lesser the chance of stopping it, or of having the ability of apprehending that said object of freelancing chaos.

Of course, disappointment could come and go, but when it just stays and stays and stays, it is unlikely to be fixed just by waiting for time to take its course, because then, time would only cultivate that said thorn instead of calling forth decay: nature’s code of life.

That was what Cindy was going through as she stomped through a cropped field which was being illuminated by the subtle orange lights above, in spacing to the farming rows. Her small paws holding another weak light, while she sniffled with a deep scowl, something that resembled anger and agony at the same time. She looked incredibly hurt, and that she was.

Her day was supposed to be like every day: wake up, go to school, learn something, scuffle with bullies and go home. But exactly that normality was broken by a sudden sharp change. They finally got to her, as even when she knew not to listen to them, she just couldn’t block it all off. It was tiring, it was hard, it was bogly suffocating.

Because she was running on autopilot, while her cranked light flickered, she lost sight of her path and shortly after stumbled her foot into a hole that disbalanced her body to fall hard on her face. It ground against the damp dirt and short grass that served as a coloring pillow, as now the white around her muzzle had its tint andtexture, and the scruffy red shirt had mudded-up.

The crickets around the impact scurried away and continued their songs of love elsewhere, while she just lay there and sobbed through choked breaths. Why did she have to go through all this? Couldn’t they just leave her alone! She wasn’t hurting anybody… How could it be her fault to have been born this way? In this ugly, matted and scruffy black fur that could never be groomed.

It was that stupid fox Jerry, who just had put her in his sights after she stood up to him during that school presentation. He had mocked her for twisting her words, which had thrown her in a verbal frenzy at him. It’d been pretty humiliating for the fat fox.

From then on it was as if he wanted to prove her his point, that she should know her place, a point that she believed to be immature and dumb, until she finally felt the effects of everything that had been slowly draining her from day one. It looked as if he was going to be right, even some of her fellow prey mals would try and persuade her. Why were they so determined to prove to her that society was right? Wasn’t that hypocritical? Wasn’t that… evil?!

The smell of plants; the smell of yellowish-green, was flaring her nostrils with the mingle of dirt. Her paw gripped a small patch of grass and squeezed it so hard that it ripped from the soil.

She pushed herself up and sat, her gray whiskers with tints of discolor, twitching, while her head moved around the blackness of the night in search for the place she felt safe and at peace.

Her stumble had delivered her to the edge of the field, the plants a bit further from her consisted of pointy thorns and barkybushes of piny needles. Breath of exhale misted the air and she shivered to the cold that was. It’d been pretty toasty from all those crop lights, but once out of their baking, the ambient temperatures would greet without mercy.

Not wanting to end up sick again, she adjusted her coarse scarf and tucked her shirt in her similarly coarse trousers. Gray eyes squinted around in seek of her small source of light, something which took a bit of touching around, until its cold metal grip found warmth in her paw again.

She had to move because the more she stood there, with light bouncing around, the greaterthe chance of getting caught, being outside the allowed boundaries of public access, especially at an hour such as this. She was far away from home, and most mals knew each other here and she didn’t want to take the chance, especially at her current hollowness in her chest.

The flashlight was squeezed and she hurried to the nearby hill, passing a big mound of smelly dirt with some sort of bleak tarpaulins which were definitely to protect them from potential rain of doom. She was always told that outside at night and alone was the most dangerous time, that it wasn’t when one would go around if they weren’t searching for trouble, but how could she believe such when she was treated like rabble? How could she have faith in anything that was supposed to be for her own benefit, for her own protection, when all that she was being shown were contradictions on top of more depressing contradictions. Why should she listen?

And all was proven right, as she felt best alone and outside in the dark, because nobody could nag her about anything, or confront her about her dreams and motives. She was free to be herself, in the wild, like in ancient times. A seclusion from society that didn’t want her to be something more than a carrot-chomping hare.

Yes, she liked the seclusion but always sought a balance. She knew that such swings of moods were bound to happen, and that they were mostly dormant, yet this time, this time was like no other. It was the worst she had ever experienced, as her young body just felt weak and her mind was like a mess of mangled ropes, trying to make the link but failing somewhere along the complicated path of supposed righteousness.

She got to the base of the hill and that was where the short and soothing grass became jagged roots, thorns, angry stones of different sizes and pointy bushes-overgrown: a hostile unwelcoming.

Her small eyes couldn’t find the path she’d usually trek because the small moon in her paw was too anemic and it was only capable of showing her where to step right in front of her. The anxiety and impatience to feel at ease got her stomach to twist and whimpers to accompany it all, as she felt dreadfully scared and rather lost.

The end goal was lying patient up there, not that far away. But the way to it was obscured, and since she was greatly pressured from inside, she just dashed into the thick weeds and tall plants, as she just craved to get there, to make it all stop. The stems brushed against her clothes and fur, the leaves beat against her face and neck.

Some were getting through her coarse fur and rustled against her pinkish skin, which instantly got irritated inhospitably. Every step was hard and disorienting as well as fearful, due to her not seeing much, which could earn her a stumble of a broken ankle.

The end of the story of the delusional hare.

Her jaw clamped hard as she moved around a heap of rock that was a possible home for creatures-unwanted. That led her blindly into a thorny bush which instantly grabbed onto her greedily with its claws: large pointy maw of brown teeth and saliva of dryness. It cut into her cheek from the fierce momentum.

The flashlight fell from her paws and she quickly tried removing the solid twigs of the dangerous plant, but her fur was now entangled. Pain was sizzling everywhere. Her heart pulsated relentlessly as she couldn’t see anything.

This time the whimpers weren’t from emotional pain but the real bloody agony that stained her black fur on her muzzle, the scent of metal flickering her whiskers everso more.

She twisted and pulled but that got one of her ears to flop and tangle into a branch. Panic infested her blood and her breaths picked rapidness. Irrationality was the only thought that swam within her head: climbing up the hill no matter what. But she didn’t want to feel pain, she had had enough for the day. It had been enough!

But her ire wasn’t doing her any good, she was helpless and weak, the fear was acting like a steel chain around her decisions. She couldn’t make herself act against it, as she had failed to do so during the day, due to it having had full access to her inner faithlessness.

Hyperventilating, tears crawled out of her eyes, tears of crushing emotional baggage. She tried to sit but the thorns pulled on her fur to a desperate moan. This wasn’t going to work, she couldn’t see anything, and all the senses she had were of being struck with immobile claws.

Inaction was the death of action… fear, weakness, doubt: all cementing the opinions of everyone around her. She needed to, she must. Summit was in reach, just had to get on the right path. All she had to do was muster her remaining courage, even if its supply was cracking from dryness, even if she had become hollow, messy and bitter.

With a loud gasp that she couldn’t hold, she yanked herself and shrieked tormentingly as her ear pulsed with anguish.

She fell on the uneven ground and her paws instantly reached for the inside of her ear that was pumping out red. It streamed down her black fur and unto her brown paws. Her teeth were grit as she rolled around in anguish and sobs and hisses, with skin itching hard from the hostile plants that were all mockingly looking down on her misery.

Shock slowly crept away and her motions ceased to be, her final rest being in a curled ball with shivers of trepidation. She wasn’t capable of getting safely to a place she knew… And she wanted to become a mal who was wanted to protect others from harm, when she couldn’t protect her own self from it, when she was vulnerable to the world around her… yet she wanted to make a difference?

She was being false, a hypocrite, a dumb hare! Maybe she should just lay here and stay until she couldn’t, maybe surrendering to the world was the best thing to do, accepting what everyone was saying and moving on. What was the point of trying to be more than what nature had ordered it to be? She had bitten more than she could chew… look where it had gotten her… look at what she had turned herself into…

What was the point, who was she trying to impress? Herself? She had already done so in the length of dumbness-trailed, so much hurt and time wasted into thinking and learning… At least that way she’d make everyone happy because she had failed, that she had yielded to the majority, proven the point that a hare can be nothing more, nothing less.

But she didn’t want that to be true, it didn’t have to be!

Pulsing pain, burning skin, cacophony of thoughts: all were telling her otherwise. They were mocking her abilities and choices, it was as if they were the oppressors of decisions, the constrictors and walls to the future.

They were not letting her act, they were not letting her think, they were not letting her exist. Maybe she should just go back, go back and accept it all, accept the reality and truth, even if gulping it down would tear everything she had believed in being…

Yea, that sounded nice, it sounded sweet… it appeared reasonable… Why had she been so blind… so stubborn… so… naive?

Her shivers stopped and she slowly rose from the coldening soil riddled with pebbles and tiny insects, disturbed by her body. She dusted herself off and felt part of her shirt go limp, exposing her chest and belly. Her trousersprotruded gashes of tear and grit.

She tried to piece together the ruined red cloth, but it wasn’t working out, which got her to sigh sadly with a quiver and to slowly reach for her still-blinking mote of light that lay underneath the bush that had told her the truth, had given her a greater picture.

But when she got it and turned around, the late-night wind gently blew across her bloodied face and the sight before her took her breath, with sudden re-invigoration of focus that the air carried.

The sky was aching oceanic with thousands of stars blinking at unknown distances. The unreachable by paw void glowed and sparkled endlessly, bathing her world in wonder and awe. It was not a view-unseen but a view enthralling. It got her to gawk childishly and just stay still, occasionally scratching herself where the plants had assaulted her body. Air was so nice to breathe, so craved as it gave a sort of clarity to her mind that the usual air would not.

Always so beautiful, always so peaceful and endless. Unconstrained by anything or anyone. Firm, yet gentle. All of that above, looking down and watching over the fields of green and yellow, over the hills of pines and rocks, over the villages that sometimes glowed like distant bulbs, over the big city filled with mals from all kinds of different walks of life.

It got her muzzle to point down and her mind to rethink her choice, made in the hustle of pain and fear. She had allowed weakness to tell her what to do, but the world around her managed, yet again, to stop her from taking an irreversible turn that would’ve dictated her then-certain future.

With a gulp still heaved of anxiety, she hugged herself in needed reassurance and decided to finish what was started, to at least be true to herself and climb up the hostile hill. The light managed to show her another shrubbery next to the one that had captured her and this one wasn’t hostile and dangerous, thus steadily she pushed through its pine twigs, until she managed to get through and step on dry dirt.

What a glad surprise! There it was: the mark on the rock, a mark she herself had done. It was the path she had been looking for! It had been behind the thorny piece of wall all along and she had thought about quitting, when it was just within reach, within grasp and touch?

How could she have been so short-sighted by wanting to quit so effortlessly? How could she have thought that the easy way was the right way? But then again, maybe it was… maybe it really was… The weight in her belly came back and she remembered what she had to do, thus with a readjustment of her ruined red shirt, she carried on up to her destination where she hoped to find solace and an end to her torment.

Now she was inside the pine forest and the sky was not as visible anymore. The breeze was gone and the air again caught that usual heaviness. It was nothing new, but after having had that nice breeze to enjoy, it felt like quite the downgrade.

It didn’t matter though, as the path from her was known and walked on. If only her cranking light would manage to glow a bit more, it would’ve been of great help for her not to stumble on root and stem. A few stops demanded her to reach under her bare foot(feet) to remove sharp needles that were coating the ground. Long and prickly things they were.

If only she wasn’t a hare and had nocturnal eyes. If only she wasn’t a hare, she wouldn’t have had to climb through so much anguish and… rubbish…

With her stained paws huddled to her quickly-pacing chest, she tried to think of something that would prevent her feet from getting irritated. She’d remember using cloth or leathery bits, but that was always a short-term solution and would just rip away at the material. Not to mention that she had brought only herself and her light… quite dumb to do so.

Having found the way, she could just go back… no-no, she didn’t want to go back, not today. Her eyes were widely opened and she glanced up, where the contrast between the hill and ocean of sky was. She was near and every crawl taken by paw and foot was bringing her closer to the end of the journey.

It kept the hope from extinguishing. Her muscles carried and carried until her feet and paws were dusty and grimy. Her ears were high up and she was panting from the excessive heat. Losing focus frequently occurred. Her body was screaming at her to stop, but her mind had overridden the instinctive code and had placed itself in control.

She had to reach the top.

The jagged rocks and roots became soft earth. She could feel that she was nearly there, as the pines had receded to a surround of thorny bushes and distant lights in the dark away.

Sky of guidance and freedom, renewed breeze of fresh air and disappearing fuzziness. It was meant to be. She dug her claws into the earth and went on all fours at the slope of hardship. The ground would slip and she’d fall on her knees, scraping down in moans and grunts, but it didn’t matter. She pocketed her light and followed the way up in partial blindness, using the silhouette of the hill against the sky as the compass of guidance.

She had to reach, she had to prove to everyone that she wasn’t a failure, she had to do that for herself! Her face smacked against a rock, piercing her skull and clogging her sinuses, but she only yelped and grit more dirt without any stop.

What was the point of all this crying, all this dreading, all this fear and doubt, when she could just do something about it, when she could stop allowing her impulses to carry her to safety, to let those impulses be a driving compass of actually makingthe right choice, to bring her in the eye of the storm so she could face any demons trying to puther down.

This thought, this excitement, this neural clarity that was flooding through her mouth and into her lungs, gave her so much strength. It dampened her pain and gave her energy she never knew of having. Saliva streaked off her mouth as phlegm was coughed to allow for air. She could’ve slowed down but that felt like betrayal and surrender, and both those words sounded vile.

Just a mere another moment, just a mere another step and the silhouette would be…

Conquered.

Lights in the very distance shone down from tall walls of stone and dirt, in a long stretch across the city’s borders. Dark silhouettes ebbed weakly from within in countless shapes of homes.

Hm, the wide-crowned tree caused her path to change as she smiled in satisfaction of having conquered her pain, dashing quicker with her renewed reserves of youth. The ancient lord of the hill was waiting like it’d always done.

But the quickening resulted in her tripping over an exposed root and rolling over, unguided, finally stopping at the base of the leafless, deciduous tree. The colder air howled above her with a chill, but so did it carry freshness that got her mind to swim in focus. She couldn’t even be cross at her mistake, as now she could take a breather to relax and also enjoy the renewed clarity of the fresh air that drifted in her lungs.

Again she stared at the sky, the dome of the entire world, seen through the thick branches of the old tree. She wanted to cherish the moments after this extensive adventure, the moments when her body would finally be rid of the tension and would recuperate slowly, thus resulting in euphoria that no substance could ever give, not that she had ever tried any substances, but she trusted her gut feeling about it.

The melting effect ceasedto be and the drain of warmth from the earth managed to snap her out of the trance of rest. It was time to move to that box of metal with seats. There had to be some edibles inside. If only she hadn’t forgotten to bring something with her she wouldn’t be thinking of scavenging.

Slowly she got on her feet in a wobble daze and trailed to the old tree’s trunk, where she roamed her paw to its sense of coarseness. Just around that bark of mass was the rusted frame of what was sought.

With quickness she found its door and opened it with a click and unoiled rattle, stuffiness and aromas flooding out of the abandoned car.

Whirring the crank faster, she made sure there was nothing on the seat that would make a mess. Nothing but dust and brown pine needles and cones. With a quick brush off, she sat down and closed the door with strain. The whole vehicle was rather oversized to her, so opening or closing anything was expectedly a hurdle. The softness was pretty nice to have under her rump, so she did lean back to enjoy that, including the lack of chill breeze.

Windshield before her was nowhere to be seen, fragments of shattered glass surrounding the edges of the rusted frames. At least those shards were nowhere to be seen on her seat or the dashboard.

The whole engine compartment was overgrown by those pine bushes, having eaten the whole front of the two-door vehicle with their thorny branches. It looked as if the car had once crashed into the tree and was left abandoned and forgotten: rumpled and uneven.

It made Cindy wonder: why were they so rare to see?

C2 – Sam