As the leaves beneath his feet crunched a solemn melody, the pads of his tenderized paws ached in a dull sea of waves. But pain was the way of the world. Over his puppy years, he'd learned that the best things in life were the easiest, but now that he were older, he'd flip-flopped. It was only the hard things in life that were worth working for.

Suddenly, he found himself an inch from the dirt and realized that his legs had buckled under him. With a grunt of effort, he rose to standing, an adrenaline rush tainted with screaming aches. He took a moment to examine it and dismissed the rock that had penetrated his left pawpad as a mere effort of love. His thoughts began to drift off into the forbidden zone. He shook them away with a mighty shake, pulled the rock out, and continued trudging on, his footsteps now accompanied by a maroon red that followed him wherever he went.

Looking up, he saw another figure. At once, his face contorted to that of an excited devil, his tongue lolling out far more than it should, with his tail beating a steady rhythm. Trotting forwards, he reached the other and proceeded to stand behind him. Dipping his head, he eyed the figure's undercarriage. Male. He had reached wolf country. Had he been here before? The trees had a twinge of familiarity but the same overall vaugeness that melded into the memory of all trees. He wasn't sure.

Skittles moved from the man's side to in front of him, stopping a comfortable distance and then inching his neck further and further towards him, as if he were going for a tortoise-paced kiss. His eyes widened each inch until they appeared to bulge. His expression was vacant, almost as if he were waiting for something.

As Skittles studied the male with all the powers of vision that he could obtain, there was suddenly a voice like thunder. He whirled around to face it, his tail instantly careening towards his underside, his ears pinned back in apprehension. More words were exchanged, angry words, with outside voices full of mean things that were never to be said. He began to lick his chops even more nervously, as if his whiskers had something perpetually caught on them.

He lowered himself into a laying position. "Please no...", he whimpered, mostly to himself. He placed both of his paws on his snout, his body trembling with nervousness. Realizing there was nothing he could do for two strangers who insisted on using outside voices and angry words and unspeakable things, he knew at once what his destiny here at these lands were: burial grounds. He squinted and watched, convinced that he would be the one stuck with the figurative shovel grave digging.

His thoughts turned to other things, his mind simply unable to take the atrocities of spilling blood at face value. The sky, ever so high above, careening, towering, so large. Tree tips stretched towards it, ever yearning for more light, as if it were power, and themselves thirsty for more. From above, a bird flew from here to there, an opaque shadow among the passing egg whites of clouds. Leaves were strewn casually upon branches, dabs of paint on the vast canvas of the sky. Here and there they fell when it was their time to die.

He wasn't sure if things had gotten better or worse, but they did grow different. Suddenly there was a female, also speaking in outside voices with angry, mean words that were not to be said, ever. For whatever reason, he simply couldn't admire their boldness in saying these forbidden words and sayings. But now that the tide had shifted from equal to inequal, perhaps the angrier man would be less inclined to fight. Or perhaps he was so angry that it didn't matter. He had no idea why this was happening, only that it was and that he didn't like it. He doubted that either of these wolves would bury the mean one if he died, so still, Skittles stayed. His ears pointed backwards, not wanting to be here, but not having the fortitude to go elsewhere.

He rested his head on his paws and winced his eyes, waiting for it to all be over. He tried to study the birds in the sky but it began to make his neck ache, so he settled for counting leaves. One leaf. Two leaves. Three leaves. On look, a caterpillar. He began to wonder what caterpillars were like, what they did all day. How did such a simple thing as a caterpillar fit into the grand scheme of the universe? What if caterpillars didn't exist, would the ecology of the world collapse? Would the creatures grow into different creatures that his mind couldn't imagine? Perhaps feathers would sprout from eyes at the ends of their claws. But then how would they dig? Would they need to dig? How would these exotic creatures feed themselves, or walk even? Perhaps having eyeballs at the ends of their claws wasn't really supportable in nature and that's why it didn't exist? ...