Note: This post has been included in one of the new Chapter drafts, please refer to the Index for the current draft of the story.

Please note, this is currently a very rough draft from NaNoWriMo 2007. There will be spelling and grammatical errors afoot as well as flat out bad writing, info dumps, plot holes, flat out contradictions, and uneven characterization and pacing. (Content is also subject to constant change as I take an editing chainsaw to the story.)

(skip!)

——————————–

There was something disturbingly peaceful about the aftermath.

The giant deer-thing has vanished the moment the kid had– Jon’s mind skidded away from the reality of the limp body beneath the shattered wreckage of the shipping crates. And now he was left, the only solid thing in the building. The Dogs had faded out again, wisps of shadow against the stuttering overhead lights.

They were waiting, but he wasn’t sure for what.

He looked back at the hints of moisture peeking from beneath the rubble and the need to be somewhere else was overwhelming.

So he left, slowly at first, then faster as he got away from the warehouse, away from the splintered wood and the smell of fish. But he’d never been a runner, rugby was a stop and go sport, a chase, not a flat out run away as far and as fast as he could go.

The dogs ran with him, shadows against shadows, fading in and out like flames. When he finally stopped, coughing for breath and curled against the ground, they ringed him in a whirlwind of nothing.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed, breathing in the smell of loam and crushed leaves, eyes shut against recent memory. And he could have sworn he heard them then, a sound like rushing water and the echo of belling howls. When the world final rewound itself, he sat up to find only one Dog remained. She tilted her head and smiled, tounge lolling out the side of her mouth. Like nothing had happened.

So he clung to that, that nothing had happened, because he wasn’t ready to face anything else.

She led him back through the woods, back to the car, and back to the house (though he knew the way). He left her in the yard, but found her by the foot of his bed. The shadow of a dog with yellow-brown eyes watched over him as he slept, and for some reason he wasn’t afraid.