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THE RUN She had only recently returned from the last fruitless round, and had just fallen into an exhausted sleep; when the persistent prodding was pulling her back into this warm, don't want to move, half awake daze. The probing became more urgent, more demanding, and she rolled away from it to face the entrance, a soft grey against the black surround. Slipping from under the cover, she stretched her legs, shook the mist of sleep from her head, and moved wearily towards it. The frost lay heavy on the ground, the puddles like glass littered the yard, and the drainage gully sliced through the centre of it all like a stream of silver. The stillness that had allowed the hoarfrost challenged her hearing for the slightest sound - silence. She launched herself across the cobbled stones, skirted the frozen cow pats, leaped across the gully, lost her balance on the other side, with a scramble of feet regained it, and head thrust forward, streaked for the entrance to the run.
The run was reassuringly dark and dank, her body fitting its space, with the surrounds lightly brushing against the fur of her back and sides. Thrusting her front feet forward she drummed them rapidly on the hard ground. The sound disappeared into the distance - there was no echoing return - the way ahead was clear. She moved forward over the slightly concave ground worn smooth by thousands of feet, her feet, on a hundred passages before.
She searched the darkness ahead, sensing familiar, comforting smells. The feeling of security, coupled with a nagging urgency drove her ahead at an increasing pace. The momentum slowed as she neared and rounded the concrete obstruction and increased again on the downward slope leading to the long lazy bend. It was the grains of earth clinging between the toes that first indicated a change. She slowed - stopped.
Here, not yet halfway round the long bend, a disturbance had dislodged the earth from overhead. The fall was slight, nothing to impede her progress, but unexpected and of more concern - recent. To return would be slow, with an almost total loss of senses. There was no space to turn until the entrance - dawn before it was reached - and the yard would be all noise, movement and danger. The probing mouths would be waiting, and again she would have little or nothing to give. She inched her way ahead, gathering confidence as the loose soil was left behind and she felt again the smooth, almost polished earth underfoot.
She gradually increased her pace as the slight incline became more pronounced. The long bend straightened out on its reach upward to the place of light and the dangers it held. Gradually the blackness ahead lightened. Instinctively she slowed, stopped, and crouching low, ears forward, eyes closed, she slid slowly into the light and stood stock still - her forelegs braced like coiled springs for the shunt backwards should the need arise.
The first sheet of light struck the ground just in front of her. The glare penetrating the thin skin of the eyelids, dilated the pupils, but still there remained an instant of almost total blindness, as her eyes, exposed to the fullness of the light, fought to adjust and focus on the way ahead. The shuttering effect of light between floorboards stretched before her revealing the run clear to the darkness beyond. The sweet sickly smell ever present in this space and always associated with danger, was slight.
Reassured by the silence and steady unbroken sheets of light the tension in her front legs relaxed, she sank back exhausted; expelling the air out of her body in sheer relief. She rested. The move through the light would be arduous and frightening. The light would help. To have light was to see, but to have light was also to be seen.
The space beneath the floorboards was constricting, requiring a crawl, when all the instincts were to run through and out of the revealing glare. Crouching, ears pinned back, legs all but folded, belly brushing the ground, she moved forward. The first sheet of light moved slowly over her body, the uneven lay of the timbers creased her back, warm compared to the coldness along her belly. A conveyed belt of light enveloped her, moving down her back, along the length of her tail, and rolling off the tip. At last her face found the darkness. The run opened out welcoming.
The last bar of light falling off the end of her tail acted as a release to all the tensions in her body. The restriction above her disappeared, allowing a freedom to stretch out the legs, a freedom that spread throughout her body as the danger, like the glow, faded behind her. The run broadened, as she neared its divide, and keeping the wall against her right shoulder, she bore away into the wider of the two tunnels ahead. Raa had warned her against this run and at another time she would have heeded his warning, but hers was a desperate need. The late spring had left her unprepared, unable to satisfy the dozen demanding mouths.
The safer split was longer, but the pickings were poor, and a hundred keepers of 'livings' like her own, suffering similar scarcity, scoured the safer runs. Again the run inclined upwards. She lost awareness of size and shape as it opened up and out. The ground was becoming increasingly strewed with loose soil, bricks and stones. She moved over, pushed aside or skirted the obstructions, feeling her way forward until the soft rotting timber stake barred it. Instinct, knowledge, the trace of her own smell, turned her to lay her left side against the wooden board.
Inching along its length she searched for the soft, spongy rotted place that would allow access through to the other side. Her head pushed through the rotted timber into the grey gloom of the barn, the strong sweet sickly smell that met her, held her rigid, alert, and every sense straining forward. All was still, her ears found no sound, no lingering odours other than the stench of man stung her nostrils. She drew her front feet forward, pulling with these, and pushing with the hind legs she forced her body through the narrow opening. The sudden release as her body broke through propelled her forward. The wooden step startled her.
Its collapse under her weight shocked her. The dull metallic click as the spring was released stunned her. In the short second before the steel trap slammed down smashing her backbone, she thought of Raa and that she had failed the living... Her long hairless tail twitched - once - twice - and was still. 1116 Bibliography:
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Research essay sample on Sweet Sickly Smell Front Feet Forward Light
