A Rising Fall

by C. Sean McGee

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  Ruff sprang forward, letting the scraps of food drop from his mouth. The vile beast ran through the field darting left and right. Ruff had its scent and kept its trail, turning on a coin trying to keep up with the agile creature. The soil turned beneath his paws and he found it difficult to keep a firm footing. About him, clouds of dust sifted through the thin air and settled in his eyes. He stopped his chase when all about him was dark with the hissing and contorted screeching of the vile beast having stopped. Silence played through the brief pauses in his panting, his tongue hanging from the side of his mouth, his stomach heaving in and out.

  When the dust settled Ruff pitched his snout to the dirt and looked for a scent. It would only have been a minute or two before his senses were overwhelmed and his instincts heightened. He kept his body low to the ground, his fur upon his neck standing on end. His ears were pinned back on his head and his focus on his scent trailed by his nose.

  His front paws stretched out slowly, peeling back the air and they touched ever so gently on the overturned soil, digging deep and urging him forward. He moved through the field like a slow moving bullet. His limbs collected energy and were itching to unleash and thrust him forward into a manic finale.

  The scent brought him to the end of the field to a line of giant metal containers. There were twelve in total and most were nothing more than iron obstructions with no entries on any points, their great hinges turned and held in a locked position keeping a secret of whatever was kept inside. Ruff made his way past each container sniffing hungrily into the infinitesimal gaps at the base between the doors and the frames.

  The first had been food of some sorts. The smell was not appealing to Ruff so he continued. The fourth and fifth containers had a pungent aroma, but it was not food. Ruff sneezed and blew out the scent from his sensitive nose and moved on. The sixth container was open slightly. He bowed his head to the floor and sniffed; the same pungent aroma but within it, a familiar scent. He pinned his ears once more, arched his back and moved quietly past the hinged doors into the container and into the blanket of darkness which enveloped it.

  His eyes failed him even in the brightest part of the day. Age had been becoming him and started to make wreckage of his senses as of late. The first sight for Ruff had been a great snarling beast whose ferociousness pierced the twilight in an unhinged look from its eyes as he parted from his mother.

  That same beast, Shadow, would shelve its ferociousness at the moment of his mother’s death and take him into shelter where his tenderness would help the young pup to fall into sleep and survive the cold of the night on his first day of life. The look in his father’s eye served him now and he snuck upon the scent and dived through the voided light and latched onto the wailing beast.