A/N Inspired by the song by Bryan Adams.
Can't take me
All his life something had been driving him, urging him onwards. A purpose far greater than his own existence called him to persevere, to fight until his last breath, all for the ever pervading, ever evasive scent of a lunar flower.
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Now the snow drifted around him and settled, blending into the white of his fur. It had long since ceased to melt. White on white. White like the lunar flower.
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Something…something…he couldn't quite remember…but there was a wrongness about his search…like he was going in the opposite direction. He had to turn around. He had to go back, yet each path felt the same and somehow he didn't feel like he was moving at all.
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The tracks had been covered, devoured by the blizzard. There was no way to tell where he had come from. His almost still body was an island in a seascape of snow.
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There were glimpses of thought, pictures he couldn't place. Other wolves surrounding him. He'd invited them to come with him and they'd helped push him forward. He'd been going somewhere then, never quite reaching it, but always the right way. He didn't feel like that now. But he couldn't remember…why did he feel like he had lost the only thing worth treasuring?
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A faint whine attempted to cut the silence but didn't get far before it was suffocated by the snow.
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There was a girl…who was a flower…no…a spirit…or were there two? Two girls. One he was with…it felt like an eternity at the time…but he'd never been peaceful. He'd felt much like he did now, unable to remember something very important, trapped, as if he were being prevented from getting somewhere…
The other girl, the flower maiden, she was so precious, so important. She glowed like the moon and smelled of lunar flowers. Cheza. The key to paradise. But now she was gone…gone, gone. They were all gone and he couldn't remember…
A yawning sense of loss echoed inside him and he couldn't place what had gone anymore. Was he looking for Cheza? He had been once…or was it Paradise he searched for? Why couldn't he think straight? If he could move faster then maybe he would outrun this sense of disorientation.
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Beneath the snow a frozen limb twitched feebly, no strength left to move. The wind ripped across the plateau of ice and cut deep into the prone body. The creature seemed unable to feel it.
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Cheza, Tsume, Toboe, Higea, Blue, Paradise, Darcia…they all made sense somehow but he couldn't place where. He felt so tired, so tired and he just needed the moon to shine on his fur and touch it with silver so he could run again. His thoughts came slow and sluggish. Thoughts were no good. They did not show him the way, nor guide his feet. If he could just let go then he could be free…
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Alone in the white darkness the stricken wolf with fur the colour of the moon and snow shut its dimmed eyes and gave up its final breath to the blizzard.