The vixen followed after a flame-colored butterfly as it led her through some strange place. It was a beautiful Summer forest, but as she padded along, some bittersweet emotion came alive in her heart and made her yearn for something she couldn't quite place. Kip realized where she was.

These were the woods she grew up in and left behind long ago.

Kip trotted after the insect through the golden beams of sunlight, minding the twists of kudzu carpeting everything. She couldn't hear or scent any other animals. It was as if she and the butterfly were the only two living things in the world. But then Kip drew in a sharp breath through her fangs when the world changed around her. With every paw-step, her forest withered and rotted. Green leaves shriveled and crumbled away into ashes as if eaten by an invisible fire. Moss and grass dried up and dissolved in the dirt. And trees lost their grips in the soil and slowly sagged against each other, creaking in the wind like rusting skyscrapers. Everything turned gray and desaturated from the steady snowfall of ashes that trickled from the heavy sky.

The butterfly ahead of her just kept fluttering along, unbothered by the rot and decay. It finally descended from the air and landed in the dirt, waiting for the fox to catch up.

Clouds of dust followed the fox as she approached the butterfly on the ground. The insect flapped its wings, as if excited for what it wanted to show her. Kip's heart stopped when she paused at the mouth of a hole dug into the dirt—a pit just big enough for a terrified fox kit to hide in.

Kip swallowed.

A gust of wind moaned through the bare, skeletal trees. The vixen startled at a new scent carried by the breeze.

Where the butterfly had just been on the other side of the pit, a silver fox now stood, observing Kip with bright orange eyes.

Kip gasped. "Fell!"

Her mate said nothing, which was unlike him.

Kip flinched, about to move to be by her mate's side, but when she did, dirt around the edge of the pit sank and crumbled away. The hole between the two foxes widened and deepened. Kip froze, midstep, not daring to move another muscle.

Fell didn't even blink.

"Fell," the red fox said again. "I've missed you. I wish you could meet your cubs—"

Her heart pounded in her chest. Kip twisted around, searching around herself in a panic. Where were her cubs?

"Kip."

Kip turned back to Fell. She wished he would smile. He looked so...wrong just glaring at her like that. The pit between them widened some more. This time, Kip had to back away from it with a yip. The wind picked up some more, this time she could smell her kits. They were here, but where? "Neer? Vin? Where are you two?" she cried into the wind.

"Kip," said the silver fox. "It's alright. They're here with us." He dipped his head to point into the black void between the two foxes with his nose.

From within the dark pit, two tiny kit skeletons reached out for Kip with gaping jaws and boney paws.

Kip jolted awake and sprang to her feet at the sound of faraway hissing. Her babies still slept, snuggled together—getting along only in their sleep. The vixen pivoted her ears and placed her paws on the door of the car, peering outside the grimy window. Her tail twitched at the sight of rats and mice and other vermin all skittering in the same direction—deeper into the tunnel, away from the entrance. She hopped to the front of the car, paws up on the dashboard. Hissing echoed so faintly from the mouth of the tunnel, many hundreds of yards away. And in between the carcasses of cars, a slow-moving yellow-green mist hugged the ground, filling the tunnel.

Any skittering creatures caught in the fumes writhed in agony before laying still.

The steel shells of the aging rail cars outside had finally corroded away, spilling their contents of chlorine gas into the tunnel below.

Kip let out a panicked bark and shoved her cubs awake with her snout. They blinked and mumbled blearily, but at their mother's urgent command, they obediently snapped to attention. All three foxes leaped from the car and ran into the tunnel with a heavy poison fog creeping after them, suffocating any creature in its path.

Skeletons continued to lie about, peacefully watching the perils of the living. Kip shoved a rib cage out of her way, clearing the path for her kits. She glanced behind her, letting Neer hurry past her. Vin, who took up the rear, let out a squeal as she suddenly slipped and fell to the ground. The fog crept up on the kit hungrily.

"Mom!" Neer yelled from up ahead.

"Keep going, Neer!" Kip told her son. She bounded for her daughter, tripping over squeaking rats and debris. The smell of the gas burned in her nostrils, but she ignored it and gently lifted Vin in her jaws and ran off just as the fog was about to overtake them.

She didn't see her son anywhere. She didn't see the other end of the tunnel. How much further did she have to run? How much further could she run?

The dying squeals of suffocating animals echoed in the tunnel around the she-foxes.

"Mom!"

Neer's voice.

Kip looked upward, still carrying her other kit.

Neer peered at her from a crack in the concrete ceiling—the result of a partial cave-in long ago.

"Up here!" the kit urged.

Kit climbed up bits of rubble and braced herself at the top of the heap. Above her, a beam of morning sunlight illuminated her like a spotlight. She bunched her muscles and leaped, catching the lip of the opening above with her claws, and scrambled up through the crevice, just as the fog filled the tunnel beneath her.

🦋🦋🦋

Outside, where the air was fresh and clean and alive with the hiss of leaves in the wind and the creaking of skyscrapers, Kip examined Vin's paw. As gingerly as she could, she grasped the sliver of glass embedded in her paw pad with her teeth and pried it out.

"Ow!" Vin cried. She licked at her hurt paw.

"Baby," Neer teased. He sat by himself a few paces away, staring at a butterfly resting on a dandelion.

"You'll be okay," Kip murmured to her daughter. She gave her a lick on the velvety fur of her forehead for comfort. "Neer, how did you find that crevice?"

Neer looked up from the butterfly and shrugged. He answered, matter-of-factly as always, "That sick lady from before showed me. You were right. She looked better."

A chill creeped down Kip's spine like spiders. She knew, deep down, that no animal ever survived the water fear. "Come," she said to her cubs. "We must continue."

Neer led the way while both vixens limped behind him, though Vin hummed to herself as she hobbled along beneath vines strangling tangles of telephone cables, nearly blocking out the blue sky.

"Hello," something squawked from above.

Kip jolted at the sound. A bird watched from, but not a menacing steel gray bird. It was a bright red creature with friendly yellow eyes and a curved beak. It shook its plumage that was accented with beautiful azure and gold colors. Even more colorful birds did the same, all chattering, "Hello. Hello. How are you today?"

"Oh, wow!" Vin exclaimed. "Look at those!"

"They make weird noises," Neer said, looking unsure about the strange birds.

"Lovely weather. Pretty bird. Wear a mask. Stay indoors. Pretty bird!"

The parrots bobbed their heads, mimicking honks and beeps, and raucous industrial noise. The occasional recreation of a blood-curdling scream would sometimes sneak out in between all the chatter.

Neer turned to his sister. "What are they saying?"

The young she-fox had her orange and silver face scrunched up while she listened to the parrots. "I don't know. I've never heard those sounds before."

"What are they saying? Hello," the parrots repeated back to her.

She laughed when the parrots imitated fox-speech. "They're not talking, they're repeating words from other animals! But I've never heard those words before. I don't think the animals that made those sounds are here anymore."

The closest parrot bobbed its head in a little dance and chattered, "Not here anymore. Hello. The end is here!"

"They just repeat things?" Neer said to his sister. Then a crafty grin spread across his pointed muzzle. He barked up at the bobbing parrot. "Say 'Vin is dumb!'"

"Vin is dumb! Vin is dumb! Vin is dumb!"

Vin gasped, offended. She ignored her pained paw and stood on her hind paws, yipping, "Say 'Neer is dumb! Neer is dumb!'" up at the parrots.

"Vin is dumb!"

Vin's howl of frustration rang from every building. Neer rolled around on his back, forepaws holding his sides as he laughed like a bell. "Okay, I like them," he said between cackles.

Kip revelled in the sound, and it nearly broke her heart to say, "Let's move along, you two."

"Aw, Mom." Vin sulked. "You're boring."

"Mom is boring. Mom is boring. Mom is boring."

Both kits laughed even harder at Kip's drooping scowl. "You hush too," the vixen told the chattering birds. The parrots all squawked and many flapped away from the scary she-fox, but not before repeating their last last message some more just for good fun.

Kip's ears went lopsided while her two kits continued to cackle at her. She gestured with her head back to the path. "Come on, little ones. Say bye to your friends."

"Goodbye!" Vin and Neer called as they followed their mother.

"The end is here! Hello!" answered the parrots, speaking in voices borrowed from long-dead people.

They left the parrots behind. Slowly, the sunlight dimmed and a trickle of rain began to spatter. The world grayed.

The lull of the rain broke when another red bird soared overhead, screeching frantically. This time, it wasn't using repeated words. It yelled in its own tongue. Vin went stock still.

"Eagle," she whispered, translating the parrot's warning. "Eagle!"

Silhouetted against a flash of lightning, an eagle snatched the parrot from the sky and carried it away. Another eagle dove for the foxes, claws outstretched.

This time, Kip didn't freeze. She was running on no sleep and fiery adrenaline. Already, one of her babies had been hurt. She'd be damned if anything else hurt her cubs. She met the eagle in battle, in a tangle of claws and fangs, and barks and screeches. She bit at anything and everything. The eagle's son did the same, ripping knots of fur from her pelt with his beak.

The fox caught their reflections in a rippling puddle in the street. Her eye widened at the sight of the other eagle—the eagle's daughter—swooping from her blind side to aid her brother.

Kip clamped her jaws around the bird's throat and yanked him backward, knocking him into his sister. The siblings screeched and pecked at each other, struggling to untangle their limbs from each other.

Kip shook her pelt, feeling the sting of fresh cuts.

Just beyond the squabbling birds of prey, a pair of fox siblings watched fearfully from underneath a car. Kip stepped toward them, ready to coax them to flee, but something crunched beneath her paw—a dagger of glass.

In her mind's eye, she saw the piece of glass she'd pulled from her daughter's paw. Tasting her iron-tinged fury in the back of her throat, Kip picked up the glass shard in her teeth. She turned away from her wide-eyed cubs, toward the birds.

The male eagle dodged a blow from his irate sister's wing and managed to free himself. His head swiveled on his sinuous neck, and the white flash of nictitating membranes rolled over his eyes as he noticed the she-fox.

And that was when Kip pounced and drove the dagger through the bird's throat.

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