The Bones Below | ONC 2023 | ✔️

EIGHT

The vixen followed after a flame-colored butterfly as it led her through some strange place. It was a beautiful Summer forest, but as she padded along, some bittersweet emotion came alive in her heart and made her yearn for something she couldn't quite place. Kip realized where she was.

These were the woods she grew up in and left behind long ago.

Kip trotted after the insect through the golden beams of sunlight, minding the twists of kudzu carpeting everything. She couldn't hear or scent any other animals. It was as if she and the butterfly were the only two living things in the world. But then Kip drew in a sharp breath through her fangs when the world changed around her. With every paw-step, her forest withered and rotted. Green leaves shriveled and crumbled away into ashes as if eaten by an invisible fire. Moss and grass dried up and dissolved in the dirt. And trees lost their grips in the soil and slowly sagged against each other, creaking in the wind like rusting skyscrapers. Everything turned gray and desaturated from the steady snowfall of ashes that trickled from the heavy sky.

The butterfly ahead of her just kept fluttering along, unbothered by the rot and decay. It finally descended from the air and landed in the dirt, waiting for the fox to catch up.

Clouds of dust followed the fox as she approached the butterfly on the ground. The insect flapped its wings, as if excited for what it wanted to show her. Kip's heart stopped when she paused at the mouth of a hole dug into the dirt—a pit just big enough for a terrified fox kit to hide in.

Kip swallowed.

A gust of wind moaned through the bare, skeletal trees. The vixen startled at a new scent carried by the breeze.

Where the butterfly had just been on the other side of the pit, a silver fox now stood, observing Kip with bright orange eyes.

Kip gasped. "Fell!"

Her mate said nothing, which was unlike him.

Kip flinched, about to move to be by her mate's side, but when she did, dirt around the edge of the pit sank and crumbled away. The hole between the two foxes widened and deepened. Kip froze, midstep, not daring to move another muscle.

Fell didn't even blink.

"Fell," the red fox said again. "I've missed you. I wish you could meet your cubs—"

Her heart pounded in her chest. Kip twisted around, searching around herself in a panic. Where were her cubs?

"Kip."

Kip turned back to Fell. She wished he would smile. He looked so...wrong just glaring at her like that. The pit between them widened some more. This time, Kip had to back away from it with a yip. The wind picked up some more, this time she could smell her kits. They were here, but where? "Neer? Vin? Where are you two?" she cried into the wind.

"Kip," said the silver fox. "It's alright. They're here with us." He dipped his head to point into the black void between the two foxes with his nose.

From within the dark pit, two tiny kit skeletons reached out for Kip with gaping jaws and boney paws.

Kip jolted awake and sprang to her feet at the sound of faraway hissing. Her babies still slept, snuggled together—getting along only in their sleep. The vixen pivoted her ears and placed her paws on the door of the car, peering outside the grimy window. Her tail twitched at the sight of rats and mice and other vermin all skittering in the same direction—deeper into the tunnel, away from the entrance. She hopped to the front of the car, paws up on the dashboard. Hissing echoed so faintly from the mouth of the tunnel, many hundreds of yards away. And in between the carcasses of cars, a slow-moving yellow-green mist hugged the ground, filling the tunnel.