----
Tasha hauled him up, struggling to even lift the lifeless metal body up, and slid her back under him. Pulling him over her back, the wolf staggered around a few steps with an attempt to get used to such weight, and gritted her teeth with frustration at her weakness. A scorching street lamp fell to her right, and gave her the jolt she needed to race, to run for her life out of the streets. Kusy's limp body often slid off her back, forcing her to stop and tug him back securely with horrified yaps, but the constant fear gave enough strength to her. Racing across the scorching streets, Tasha lost all sense of direction she had always prided herself with. Every bend looked the same as the last, every street and building horribly mutilated by the fire, and no longer identifiable. Kuzimu City had burned into a deadly labyrinth, as though the Devil himself had finally possessed the city and engulfed it with his flames. Into Hell's maze.
She tripped.
He was thrown off her back.
They fell.
She smashed against the crumbling walls of a house along the street, landing on the sidewalk in a distorted twist of her body.
He slid further away, out in the open between the City and the Forest. Almost to safety.
Exhausted eyes dragged themselves open, and although unconscious for a while, she started raising her head with effort, the strength in her muscles pulled to its limit. Another falling lamppost smashed to her right, and the roof of a house crashed further behind her. Noises became numb echoes and only smoke could be seen around there now. With chocked coughs, darkness began to envelop around, temptingly sleepy. An eye still open was staring blankly at Kusy's still lifeless body, as though waiting for something to happen. For everything to freeze and vanish. Getting up didn't make sense anymore, she was so tired it just seemed useless to her now to even consider moving a muscle.
A flash of white woke her up. The figure darted past her and skid to a stop beside the numb corpse of Kusy, frantically grabbing him by the neck scruff and tugging him away from the scorching city. Tasha raised a paw, a faint whimper escaping her throat like a strangled complaint and refusal. But darkness was clouding her eyes, so tempting and inviting, to just fall into it with grateful submission, how could she refuse? As she began to fade into the numbing obscurity, Tasha could see the open arms of heaven's light outstretched before her with a welcoming embrace. Paradise?.. Was she ever allowed to Paradise..? The want to give in now, more than anything else, was overpowering. Everything would be over. A feeble smile grew on her lips at the wide arms, stretched out like the silky white veils of a boat. An angel's ivory wings.
----
"Tasha, must wake up! Must wake up, Tasha, right now!"
Groggily opening her eyes, with a chocked cough escaping her muzzle, Tasha raised her head at the familiar voice. Her lungs felt like lead, as though they had been stuffed with rocks and made every breath hard to gasp into her system. The figure's face was distorted and dizzy to see, twisted around like a ghost. But the white outstretched wings she had seen only seconds before were still opened up before her, the figure in front flapping them in a hypnotic rhythm, like the echo of a drum.
She blinked and tried to squint at the face. It wasn't an angel. Her voice came out as a hushed cry as her sight came back into focus, overwhelmingly thrilled to see it, to have it with her. H Lector.
---
Morning's light shone through the clouded sky with an early drizzle of rain, as though Heaven was crying out to the City that had been burning all night long, washing its tears from the sunrise sky down onto the land. All that was left of the city was rubble and ruins, everything so badly devoured by the fire that the streets were a simple waste and of coal black, ashes flying around with the morning breeze carrying them away, ashes of the trapped Bulus creatures that had burned to dust with their home.
"Lec found Tasha by outskirts of City. Thought Tasha was sleeping and brought Tasha back to Forest. Tasha should not take nap when City burning!" The chimera waved its massive paw angrily like a scolding parent, eyes narrowed to a fiercely worried stare at her, "Lec almost not recognise Tasha! Was black and burnt like coal. But safe now, in Forest again." It then padded around to lay beside her with a tired thud, its scorpion tail curled around its body. Tasha noticed it was in a state too; what used to be its ivory pelted fur and scales were stained with coal black marks and bloodied gashes, wings almost torn and eyes that could only portray exhaustion.
"How many di-- ... How many are still with us?" She asked in a whisper, resting her head on both paws with the growing worry, the absolute refusal to even know how many of the Kuzimunian Bulus were gone, as well as the growing need to know it. When you live to spend so much time in those streets, you start to feel a connection with those who have to endure the same horrors as you. A reluctant pull towards your fellow damned neighbours, regardless as to who or more precisely what they were. You would grow to love them, understand them.
"Two last ones found last night, with you. Desri dragging Kusy back to camp. Lucky Kusy."
-----
Tasha raised her dizzy head to the ash-colored clouds, looming above her head, covering the starry sky with a cloak of darkness and depriving the exhausted City beneath it from precious moonlight. With a roar of thunder, rain began to come crashing down, washing away the blood stained floor under her paws. The wolf reluctantly advanced into the city, crossing the streets she knew so well, an aching pain in her heart as her tired gaze followed the mangled corpses of her old friends.
She limped her way to a crumbled down house, her nose stung with the familiar scent of rusted metal, and the sight gave a stab to her poor heart. There was Kusy, her most hated enemy, a robotic metal wolf that lead the Bulus city inhabitants in their most glorious days, but here he was immobile and cold on the wooden floor. How she had loathed him throughout the past years, scorn and bitter disgust between the two had been deeply rooted from an early start, but now Tasha could only feel absolute solitude and even regret, seeing his twisted body lying alone where he had died there.
She turned her head away forcefully, wobbling out of the house and resting her side on the door's wooden frame, keeping her cerulean eyes on the streets. Her scarred shoulder rubbed on the side of the door, the bare skin from where fire had chewed her fur away brushing against the wood.
Eventually she walked away, into the streets again, where else could she go? Her paws mechanically thumping on the asphalt ground, dragging across the few puddles that began to form from the endless rain. The City was a sorry sight after the bomb, not much was left, in fact. The haunted houses that had seemed so frightening before, so menacing and dangerous in her eyes, were now mere ruins lined up along the rows of streets. Her gaze followed the tangled bodies of wolves, creatures but also humans, resting in an eternal sleep, enemies curled up together. The War had ended.
Tasha arrived on the borders of the city, and looked out in front of her at the Forest, worn out from the fight just as much as the City, yet still as magnificent with its tall and proud trees standing high and protective over the wolves' sacred Forest. Were any wolves alive? Tasha stared absent-mindedly at the oak trees as she thought of the possible survivors.
Yes, there must be. Somewhere. The livid, grey sky was now stained with golden streaks of light, scarlet and salmon colours slowly appearing in the sky as the sun began to rise, struggling against the heavy, gloomy ashen clouds. Her eyes darted up to catch a rare glimpse of the golden sun, her ears perked up at the unfamiliar warmth it brought as rain drops trickled down her cheeks with the remaining tears she never dried. This was what hope felt like. Warm, comforting, encouraging. Tasha shut her eyes tight and threw her head back, a long, melancholic howl soaring into the sky, drawing every last breath she had in her lungs, calling out to the survivors left in the City or the Forest to wake up, and fight back. Start a new life. Her howl was carried out by the wind across the streets, being cleared of their blood-stained puddles by the ever falling rain of Heaven, trying to let Its tears wash the blood and pain away from Kuzimu City. Her howl raced across the Forest too, brushing past the old leaves of the trees and letting them dance off the branches. Tasha lowered her head back down and gasped for air, staring at her paws with wide, astonished eyes. Between her scarred, scruffy paws was the small stem of what looked like the start of a growing flower, fragile and quivering in the wind, but illuminated by the sunrise's rays. Its tiny emerald green leaves shone in the golden light; hope for a new start. With a deep breath, Tasha narrowed her eyes at the marsh lands that bordered around the City and the Forest, and raced into the muddy plains, determined as ever to get away, to run from this damned city, to be free.
With the end of Kuzimu City, where Hell was a place on earth, the few survivors will find strength to detach themselves from the prison they called home, forced to move on. They just have to brush the dust and dried blood off their pelts and wake up to the morning sunrise. For in truth, concerning these blessed survivors, Hell surely must have handpicked these very few damned souls to struggle on, and they have a chance to taste a potentially better life. Or the misfortune of still being barely alive.
