Page 61 of Found in Obscurity

A stumble in the dark. Just a split second of fear-laden paws tangling. And then arms around him. Cold and rough.

Yanking him back as he screamed after his family.

Stuffing him into something where he no longer saw anything. He wanted his parents to come back for him. He also wanted them to just keep running, to leave him and get to safety. He could take whatever was happening, if he just knew his family was safe.

Then the waiting. For what felt like hours before the unknown people came back. Empty-handed if their anger was anything to go by. Even directed at Kit, it calmed him down. They hadn’tcaught them. His family was safe. His skulk had managed to escape.

He could deal with whatever they wanted from him now.

He’d closed his eyes and let darkness swallow him.

The rest of the memories were even hazier, flashes like photographs in his head.

A small, dusty room with no windows.

A flurry of people coming and going, their faces blurred and unrecognizable.

So many questions he didn’t have answers to.

He was hungry.

He had no idea how much time had passed.

And then a clearing. A beautifully cold night with a clear sky and the moon hanging low, nearly touching the tips of the trees.

The scent of herbs and the crackle of power carried on the wind.

An itch under his skin, familiar but unwelcome at that moment. He didn’t want to shift into his fox form. He needed his human side to figure out what was going on and where he was, what he could do.

A pull in the pit of his stomach.

Falling to his knees as voices around him rose. Like a prayer. A chant.

No.

A spell.

Hurled at him. Sticking to his skin. Prodding beneath it. Circling his bones and settling in his veins. Forcing itself inside him and pulling at the parts he wanted to keep hidden.

Faces looking at him, arms lifted into the air. White dresses billowing around bodies.

Eyes dark and menacing as they stared at him.

His human side losing the battle, the fox taking over.

Then a blur again. An empty space he couldn’t fill.

Daylight. Woods around him, dewy and cold. His paws pounding the ground as he ran. Footsteps following after him for hours until he finally lost them. But by then he’d lost himself too.

He didn’t know where he was or where he was going.

Time passed in strange little bursts. He felt like he’d lost mere minutes, but the seasons had changed in the meantime.

And he was alone.

He found his way back to his den, but his family weren’t there, their scent completely erased from what was once a home to Kit.

He remembered the desperation and the ache of emptiness inside him.