Run. Her legs pumped endlessly, propelling her forward across the lands: Step, step, hop, drag. Step, step, hop, drag.
Run. Her breath came hard, each inhale sending shards of lightning pain through her form, chest aching with the effort of simply breathing.
Run. Her head hung low, tongue lolling out of her mouth, curling between sharp teeth, nearly scraping the ground.
Run. She panted, her mouth dry, throat begging for even a single drop of water to quench her thirst, her stomach growling for something to fill the raging emptiness inside. But she didn't stop. She couldn't stop. To stop was to give in. To give in was to fall. To fall was to die.
Run. The sun beat down on her hard, attracted to her deep black pelt, like vultures to a fresh corpse.
Run. Her tail hung low, spending more time scraping across the ground than not, the tuft filled with brambles and small twigs and leaves. It took too much energy to hold it aloft in its usual graceful curve, energy she no longer possessed, and hadn't for some time now.
Run. The world around her had blurred, to the point that shapes were now indistinguishable from each other, her vision reduced to one big mass of colors all jumbled and shoved together. It hardly mattered anymore though. Whenever she bumped into something, she simply began fumbling around in a clumsy attempt to avoid it, often bumping in to the same thing repeatedly until she either found a way around it, or got so turned around she ended up heading in another direction entirely. Left, or right, forward or backwards, it didn't matter, as none of it was done consciously anymore, that same urge to keep moving no matter where she happened to be going, and no matter what she may encounter, driving her forward. To what end though, she did not know.
Run. Her path was no longer straight, the earth seeming to roll and tilt wildly beneath her paws, her body swaying and stumbling side to side, left and right, her legs trembling, scrambling to stay underneath her, to keep her upright even as gravity fought against her, fought to bring her down.
Run. Much like her tail, her fur was littered with sticks, leaves, mud and streaks of blood, her body covered in scratches, cuts and all manner of bruises. Everything ached, though it had all coalesced in to one giant pain, the individual causes hardly distinguishable from each other by now.
Run. The pads of her paws were shredded, cut through with rocks and thorns and bits of debris, leaving bloody paw prints in her wake, which she would never see, her entire being far too focused on continuously moving forward, no matter the cost.
Her mother's words echoed through her mind, "An injured lioness is a dead lioness." Though now those words had become less a conscious thought and more of an unending drive, pure instinct, a need. Keep moving or die. Keep moving…or be eaten.
Keep going. Don't stop. CAN'T stop. It was the only thing keeping her moving, however, the next step she took was unexpectedly interrupted, not by anything getting in her way no, in fact it was the opposite. Her front right paw shuffled forward as it had been doing all this time: mindless, route, symmetrical to every other time…and found nothing…No ground was there to meet her paw, and her body did not know how to react to that. For a moment, she teetered precariously over open space, her paw searching for support, before the instinct to move forward, still urging her on, and the shifting of her weight sent her tumbling forward out in to nothingness, her limbs flailing. It wasn't long, however, when her body hit the ground hard, a pained growl leaving her lips as she rolled, hitting the ground again, and again, and again, aggravating her wounds each time, even as she was vaguely aware of rolling downhill.
Each time she hit the ground, she growled in pain and distress, the blurred out world around her spinning past rapidly. If she had, had anything in her stomach to lose, it surely would've been rising up to greet the day once more.
Finally, her momentum came to a halt as she hit the ground harder than before, letting out a yowl of pain, ending in a drawn out groan. Her head felt as if it was stuffed with cotton, and her body ached beyond her ability to cope with. Even as she watched, her blurry vision began to darken, her tongue beginning to lick the air repeatedly, her panting breaths rocking her frame, every inch of her body crying out in distress.
She lifted her head weakly, vocalizing her distress with a keening whine, her legs twitching, that same instinct to move forwards still driving her body…to no avail however. Her body remained where she had fallen, energy waning fast, her legs kicking pathetically, even as her eyelids grew heavier and heavier, before finally…closing, her head dropping, and she was dead to the world.
A/N: So here we are in another new story. :P I swear I'll finish all of these one day. Either way, what do you guys think of this so far? I know it's just a short intro chapter, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. Should I continue with this? As always, Reviews, Favorites and Follows are all appreciated and encouraged! Enjoy!
