Another Taste

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Bronchitis is a very unpleasant thing to recover from. Especially when you manage to catch a new virus before you’ve really started recovering at all. I’m finally not coughing like a loon, but unfortunately, I’m wicked behind.

That means you get a teaser of the current work because I don’t have the brain power to think of a different type of blog post.

Without further ado…

A Gazelle

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught shapes racing at her from the other side the plaza.

“Oh look—my new friends invited their old friends to the party.”

An entire pack was now chasing her.

Ember concentrated on running faster. After the plaza, she had the bridge. Tribute’s tower–and safety–waited for her on the other side.

She dug deep, the wolves’ howls lending her feet wings.

For one endless second, Ember was convinced she’d make it. The bridge drew closer with every step. The other side promising safety and a pain free future. She was a gazelle. Sure footed and quick with a grace and confidence she hadn’t felt since her twenties.

All that ended as a massive wolf crawled up from the underside of the bridge, trapping her on the wrong side with the rest of its pack nipping at her heels.

There was no time to think. No time to do anything but change course for the same set of stairs she took that first night.

Reaching the top step, she launched herself down them, praying that she wasn’t about to break a leg or twist ankle.

She hit the stair’s landing and kept going, her momentum too great to stop. She careened over the side. As the ground dropped out from under her, Ember cursed the Astra’s lack of safety regulations.

She fell.

Right onto the next flight of stairs. She rolled down them, landing on her back in the dirt.

“Definitely not a gazelle.”

A gazelle would have managed the past few moments with far more grace than she had.

There was one good thing. Her little tumble had bought her the time and distance needed for escape.

“This is why the Astra hate railings.”

They only slowed you down when you were running for your life.