The Tree Trunk

Cody lay cold in the window. Crystal stared at him for hours some days, her nose quivering from sadness and from the cold. Winter was going to be rough. Crystal held her eyes shut until the door opened. The shiny sharp thing winked in the sunlight and Crystal bolted. The giant cursed in a foreign tongue.

She saw the evil in the giant long before he got to Cody. Cody was too good, too trusting of the giants. There was nothing to trust. They live in large cages that host foreign smells and lights too bright. They fight among themselves, and feed off of Crystal and their neighbors.

His trust got him hung in a window. Crystal could smell the rot coming from him. She wondered why no one would eat a good kill. Cody was a good kill, and yet there he hangs, wasted.

Crystal scurried to the burrow, hidden beneath the rotting evergreen the giants killed. They did that a lot, the giants. Crystal couldn’t understand, and didn’t try.

The last of her litter lay shivering when she entered. Ignoring her kits, Crystal nestled, sniffed about, and went to her own little corner only to discover that it had caved in. Crystal, stressed and anxious now, turned once more to her kits.

Crystal was hungry.

She stared at her kits.

Crystal was hungry…

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A minute later, or maybe less, a giant found her, her teeth red with blood, her eyes holding no remorse. The kits lay warm on the ground, Crystals paws still wet with their blood. The giants couldn’t understand the senselessness in this bloodshed, and didn’t try.

There was a bang.

In half an hour, Crystal can be found hanging with her husband.