Humankind has long since perished.
But life goes on.
Nature is slowly reclaiming the planet. A fire forces a young red fox named Kip to flee her den for the first time. Now alone and left half-blind, Kip must struggle to find refuge for herself and...
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The suffocating heat of mid-Summer fell upon the forest without even a whisper of a cooling breeze.
Cicadas sizzled up in the canopy amongst the tangles of dried kudzu that strangled every tree. And below, while every other creature dozed in the shade, a skulk of fox kits wrestled with each other in front of their den.
The squeal of a kit rang out as the smallest of the litter was pinned to the ground by her much larger brother. "I give up!" she said, wriggling underneath her brother's paws. "Get off me already!"
But the larger kit didn't budge and laughed instead, tail wagging.
His laughter abruptly ceased when the young she-fox reared her head up and chomped hard on his ear.
The rest of the siblings rolled around in the dirt, howling with laughter at their brother as he released the runt with a pained yipe. He scurried a few paces away and hid underneath a fern to nurse his tender ear and his sore pride. "That was a dirty trick, Kip," he said to the runt, pawing at his ear with his face all sour and pouty.
Kip just giggled and bared her fangs at him in the smuggest of grins. Then her ears pricked upright when a scent caught her attention. She turned to the thicket of kudzu that surrounded their little home. "Mother and father are back!" she announced to the rest of the litter.
Sure enough, a proud dog-fox and a slender vixen padded forth from the vines. Their fiery red coats were ablaze in the midday sunlight as they chortled for their children.
The cubs all surged as one to greet their parents. Still grinning, Kip bounded for them. But her siblings trampled over their smallest sister without a care and left her in their dust. The runt of the litter blew a stray leaf out of her face from where she sulked flat on the ground. The cubs mobbed their parents, tails wagging and licking at their mother's muzzle. In response, the vixen dropped a single vole at their paws—a meager morsel.
The cubs didn't yet have the vibrant pelts of adult foxes, their coats were still sand-colored with bright red guard hairs only just beginning to grow in. The biggest and strongest of the kits all tore into the carcass. The smaller ones went without, as was the way of growing foxes.
Kip's stomach gurgled, which only made her frown deepen. Her parents had been returning to the den with less and less food each day. She sat up and looked to her parents who were now resting at the mouth of their den; a humble tunnel dug into a vine-covered knoll. Her father panted happily with his eyes shut, enjoying the shade. Her mother, meanwhile, fixed her amber eyes on Kip.
The vixen flashed a sly smile and rose to her paws. She left her dozing mate and slunk off toward the trees. She paused and looked back over her shoulder at Kip, then flicked an ear, beckoning the kit to follow.
Kip looked from the squabbling kits to her mother, considering taking her chances against her siblings for a scrap of meat. But with her stomach empty and her curiosity piqued, she scampered off into the undergrowth, following her mother's white-tipped tail. Together, they traipsed into the forest through the green sea of kudzu that had killed off most other plants and covered every tree.
