Graceful Assassin

A twisted fork of lightning lit the sky like a match faster than a blink. Thunder rolled in waves across the prairies and around the trees, crashing in a foamless wake upon the ears of the sleeping and arousing them from their slumbers. The rain free-fell from a dense mass of clouds, the premature droplets crash-landing into the thirsty soil, and the drying foliage supped upon them gratefully through extenuous roots. A shiver ran down the spine of the earth; another storm had come.

Hidden beneath the mask of noises from the torrents, a large wolf paced through the underbrush. He was colored the typical gray that most of his kind possessed, a trait he had inherited from both parents, and his sly, careful movements were comparable to those of a hunting panther. Each velvet paw was placed softly in front of him, treating the solid ground with as much respect as he would eggshells, so gentle were his footfalls. His triangular ears were standing tall, though he himself was crouching, and their large depths easily caught any noise that happened to rush past him, whether it be the explosive thunder from the raging storm or a trickle of water as it trailed off a branch.

His sensitive nose told him the way, slender nostrils always wavering for the slightest scent. Hoof prints were matted in the grass, a sign that he was close to the hiding spot of a poor ungulate who did not sense his presence. The wolf snuck his long tongue across his white, malnourished gums, ready and impatient for the bloody flesh that might or might not become his desirable prize that evening.

A thin, auburn neck stretched in front of his path suddenly. A deer, doe to be exact, was laying in her nest, and her stickly legs were snuggly tucked underneath her massive frame. The mound of her back rose and fell peacefully with each dainty sip of air she took through her butterfly wing nostrils. Two leaf-shaped ears flattened against her skull and her long eyelashes fluttered ever so slightly, revealing that her sleep was genuine but light.

The wolf encroached his prey with sleek silence, creating just as much noise as his shadow. Like a good hunter, he walked on tiptoe, feeling the fragility of each stray twig as he placed his paw upon it, knowing just how much pressure to apply so as not to make it snap. He was five years old and well-learned in the art of killing. Surprise was a key element; his weapon of choice.

Slowly, he unsheathed the blades of his teeth and let them hover around the doe’s neck. He readied himself to close them, just behind those leafy ears where he would have a good grip, but her acute hearing had managed to pick up his bated exhales. Her coal black eyes, each the size of a golf ball, burst open, and the wolf seized her with feral quickness. She screamed in terror at the abrupt pain and tried desperately to scramble to her feet, but she was ensnared in his lockjaw of a grip. The deer frantically swung her head, grunted angrily, dragged the beast with her for several paces but fear easily broke down her confidence as blood bubbled forth from under the fangs. All the while, the hungry carnivore refused to release his victim. Eat or be eaten; that was the rule.

She staggered with his weight, bleated for mercy, so desperate to live. When he felt she was weak enough not to run, the wolf rapidly switched his bite from scalp to throat. Immediately her cries gurgled into nothingness. He had broken through the most important vein, the one that meant life, that signified death. The luster of her marble eyes dulled with each passing second. A streak of hot pink lightning punctuated her final agony, freezing predator and prey in a primordial moment in time.

The wolf tore away with a ragged growl and watched with blind curiosity. There was a brief hesitation as reality returned to the battle scene; then, a finite hiss of breath, like a lasting curse upon her lips, and the deer crumpled to the forest floor.