The doe stood and craned her neck over her shoulder , alerted by the slightest sounds that did not belong in the forest clearing. Her nostrils flared as she searched for the scent of danger on the warm autumn breeze, refusing to abandon her fawn, its mottled back still wet from its birth. She stood motionless over her newborn baby, her ears pricked, defenceless but defiant. Nothing. She licked the birth fluid from her baby and ate the fawn’s placenta. Upwind, and thirty feet up a spruce tree, the hunter, Jon, held his breath, watching, waiting, squinting down the sight of his cocked crossbow, past the vulture feathers of the flight and the stubby bolt resting in its groove. The doe stood, alert. Jon squeezed the trigger. Before the doe could react, the shaft pierced her ribs behind her shoulder and lodged in her lung. She collapsed on top of her fawn. A moment late...
Fighting Entropy One Story at a Time.