February 4, 2009

  • A Little Magical

    I like mythical creatures. My dreams are littered with them. I like some more than others, however. I plan on getting a nifty dragon tattoo on my back once I graduate in May (I've held off on getting it until I have a very special occasion to commemorate).   I like dragons because they represent so many different things to so many different cultures, but mostly I think they represent the possibilities of imagination.

    I also have a thing for wolves. Not entirely certain why, and it is evolving as time goes on. I had a dream once, one the very vivid ones where it's like I'm somewhere else, but very conscious. This is what I wrote because of that dream. It was written a while ago, and I may have posted it to xanga before (if I have and you've already read it...err..hopefully you liked it. If not, I suppose you'll have to read it anyway). Enjoy :)

    Canines and Felines...

    The thing about having nine lives is that you have to know how to use them. Iodine lay on his side, his neck at an odd angle. The blood from the large gash in his neck had clotted and turned cold. His large amber eyes were open and motionless. He had been dead for at least two hours, and his legs and tail were now stiff. He lay in the middle of a forest long after the sun set. Now a pale half moon shone through the leaves of the trees. As he lay he thought about those trees.

    They rustled and whispered in their secret ways. They told each other the latest news, bounced gossip around like a beach ball at a graduation. "Sssilver hasss been here," they rustled. "Wassss in a hurry. Sssshouldn't get in hissss way. Cat got in the way and look at him now..." They twisted and turned, branches creaking and groaning as though they were trying to get a better look at the large feline sprawled beneath them. Iodine frowned inwardly while his body lay still. What a predicament, what a great night to be forgetful, said the voice in his head. His mind was awake and his brain worked furiously to remember how to get to his other lives. He had only died twice before, once when he had drowned in a river as a kitten (he had been coached back to life by his mother), and again when he was little more than a teenager after a particularly stupid dare by his then good friend Mervyn, a hyena with a bad sense of humor. Both experiences were so far removed from Iodine's memory that he no longer recalled the steps to make himself un-dead.

    Silver was an extremely large wolf whose fur shone with a sort of iridescent silverish color. Rumor had it that he was of mixed breed, a wolf with ancient ancestors whose claws and fangs were so long they scared off much larger predators upon sight. They say his eyes, the color of liquid metal, glow like the full moon when he is moved to anger. Iodine didn't think his eyes glowed at all. In fact, he thought, his eyes weren't so much silver as a watery gray. Furthermore, his fur was more white than silver. He wouldn't be surprised if the wolf was simply old. Truthfully, no one knew exactly when Silver was born or even where he came from before he began trolling this forest.

    Iodine had been looking for his dinner earlier that evening when he'd heard Silver's approach. The wolf was running quickly and barely made any noise at all but Iodine, being the cat that he was, had heard him coming long before he saw him, teeth bared and silver-white fur flying. He knew him immediately from all the descriptions he'd heard, and was more than mildly curious. Iodine stepped into the way of the oncoming wolf and intended to ask him where the fire was. He opened his mouth to speak, but a yowl of pain escaped instead. Silver had swerved slightly to the left of Iodine and, without slowing, twisted his head to tear a large part of Iodine’s flesh away from his neck. He kept running as Iodine fell, his momentum unaltered.

    So there lay Iodine, unmoving hours after his blood had left him in large spurts. A small rodent was crawling over his tail now, emboldened by the fact that the large cat seemed unable to move and strike. Iodine growled in the depths of his head, his frustration at his situation mounting. "Perhaps I'll lie here forever then," he thought, and could almost see his decaying body as the flesh fell off of it. "Perhaps my nine lives were all a lie. Maybe I've only got three." He would have whimpered then, had there been air left in his lungs. He hadn't done anything particularly spectacular with any of his lives just yet, and had taken it for granted that he'd have time to do so later on. He thought bitterly of all the things he'd have liked to have done, the places he still wanted very much to see. He lamented those hours he spent under the shadows of trees, lazily flicking his tail as he dozed. He cursed his inability to finish those things he started. He wished, without any shadow of hope, that he could get a second chance to be able to leave some mark on the world.

    His chest swelled just then, and a pain like a small fire erupted where his heart was. His throat burned, particularly in the spot where Silver's fangs had been a few hours earlier. There was a roaring in his ears, and his large yellow eyes moistened and teared up. Then suddenly, slowly, Iodine started to move his tail...

     

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