Sex: FemaleBelladonna, you must escape quickly as you're caught under an air strike of falling icicles!
All welcome!
All welcome!
The weather was warming up, another year crawling out of winter and into spring. Fresh young shoots of green were starting to become more common than snow, though flurries of white still sometimes covered the world during the night, only to be melted in the heat of the morning sun. It was cooler in the densest parts of the thicket, where the sunlight failed to penetrate too deep, and in those curious time-locked pockets the winter prevailed. There was no snow to be found, for it could never reach these places, but the air was chill enough that falling rain had frozen on the leaves and winding arms of the brambles, covering almost everything with a glassy sheen. Icicles hung from thick branches strong enough to support their weight, in some cases forming from the thorns themselves, the water droplets having run down to the lowest point they could - the tips of the downward-facing little claws - and then frozen solid before ever getting the chance to fall. They had only grown from that point on, many nights of deep chills and rains adding to the icy spears, until some of them were nearly half a foot long.
Frozen in time, she wondered how long this part of the thicket could continue to pretend it was still the dead of winter. Their time was limited; by their glossy surfaces she could see that their outermost layers were beginning to melt, and wondered whether they would wither away completely or simply fall free. Catching glimpses of her twisted and distorted face in some of them, entranced, Bella did not think twice when she lifted a paw to gently push aside a long bramble's arm which stuck out in her path. The skin on her paws were thick enough to protect her from the thorns if she was careful, but the thicket had a way of thoroughly entangling itself in itself. By simply moving that one vine, the entire bush shuddered, and she stopped, breath catching as the icicle-laden cane jerked sideways by an inch, the points of glass shivering.
Then the first one fell. It landed harmlessly on the ground in front of her, snapping in two at the impact, and then she felt one hit her rump and slide off. The icicles were too close to the ground and too small to be that dangerous, but to simply stand there was not an option - besides, while her first instinct had been for alarm, when she rushed forward to escape the tinkling and smashing of ice shards it was with childish laughter on her lips. It was a good thing she'd gotten used to living in the thicket, otherwise she would have stumbled over herself countless times, but as she dashed out of that densest part of the undergrowth it was with a more practiced set of feet. It was very much like mountain climbing, in its own ways - difficult and unpredictable and quite a thrill.
(This post was last modified: Mar 31, 2016, 04:09 PM by Belladonna.)