at a crossroads

Skoll Haskel · 12-13-2011, 03:01 PM

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307 words

Normally Skoll was a good, obedient boy. He did his best to follow his caretaker’s orders and would ease their natural worries by staying in sight and not wandering off. Of course, he did forget sometimes when something interesting grabbed his attention, and now that his body was getting a little bigger and his mind sharper and more curious, those lapses became longer and more frequent. He would wander away from the familiar landmarks of Cour des Miracles territory to investigate the coast or the hills or the forest’s edge as he was doing now.

While there were trees within the territory, the small Prince hadn’t seen so many as this, and so close together. The branches crisscrossed in the sky, leaving Xs on the ground that he pounced on, his golden body framed by shadows. He rolled around in the snow and the dead leaves underneath, tumbling against the root of a dead, hollowed-out oak tree and kicking his hind paws against its trunk. The resulting drumming sound echoed through the woods, and it was then that he realized just how quiet this place was.

He flipped over on his white tummy and perked up his ears, a little more uncertain than he’d been when he first found the tree line. There seemed to be nothing here at the border to the neutral territory, and yet, even in his curious and adventurous mind, he knew that venturing further would be too dangerous for a kid like him.

Sighing, Skoll wiggled forward and dropped his pale muzzle into the snow. All of this traveling seemed to be for nothing. He could only lay and listen for the sound of the last birds chirping in the barren trees, his white-dusted golden coat shining under the sunlight that filtered through what had been a great canopy in the summer.

Image courtesy of blmiers@Flickr; table by the Mentors!

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