Months Later

Kip scooped the last pawful of soil from her latest excavation, accidentally splatting Fell in his face with flying dirt. The vixen dove inside the new den with an excited yip while her mate pawed dirt off his snout.

"This is it!" Kip said. Her tail wagged at full speed as she rolled around in what would be their new home. "This is the one!"

The silver fox poked his head inside the hole after her. "Are you sure, Kip?" he asked. "You said that about the last few dens, too." He pointed a paw outside at all the other shallow scrapes scattered amongst the wildflowers; all Kip's previous endeavors that she had abandoned for reasons only known to her.

The vixen slithered outside to join her mate. She rubbed the length of her body against him and rested her fiery plume of a tail under his chin affectionately. The red fox's coat was now lusciously thick, and it glowed like embers in the sunlight. No longer did her bones stick out. "This one feels like home," she told him with a smile. And she meant it.

The two foxes nuzzled together in the overgrown park they had staked out. Spring birds sang their mating calls. Crocuses were in full bloom; little purple and yellow specks of color that swayed in the breeze in the unkempt grass, and fat little bees were busy pollinating each one.

A monarch butterfly flitted from the wildflower it had been sipping from and alighted on the vixen's nose where it flapped its black-veined wings contently. Kip gently coaxed it onto a paw and placed it on Fell's head with a smile. She had long stopped hiding her blind eye from him, and he'd never once seemed bothered by it. Even with all her missing parts, this other fox made her feel whole.

They both watched the butterfly depart up into the trees where birds built their nests in anticipation of small creatures to come. Kip and Fell hoped, too, that their little den would be home to a family of their own. And Kip thought to herself, while she watched the white, puffy clouds lazily roll across the horizon, that she had never before seen a bluer sky.

Then, one by one, all the birds fell silent without even issuing an alarm call. The fur along Kip's spine rose at the sudden silence, and a chill ran down her spine despite the sun's warmth. A shadow from above blacked out the sun as something huge soared past. In an instant, Fell shoved Kip inside their den and stood guard at the entrance, snarling and bristling. Keening with worry, the red fox peered over his shoulder. Her heart stopped at what she saw.

A massive feathered beast dropped from the sky and landed in the tall grass yards away. A harpy eagle, larger than any bird the fox had ever seen before and bristling with feathers the color of smoke, stabbed at some poor animal hidden in the grass with her razor sharp beak. Every beat of her wings kicked up a cloud of dust. The terrified screams of her prey fell silent as the dust settled.

Kip growled at the intruder in their territory.

And, as if she could hear her, the eagle raised her crested head—turning it to glare at the fox pair with a piercing eye. A nictitating membrane slid over her constricted pupils. The fresh red blood of her kill stained her beak. Then, with a few powerful beats of her wings that leveled the grass, the eagle returned to the sky with a rabbit in her menacing talons. The foxes tracked her flight, watching as she roosted in a clock tower that overlooked their little park.

🦋🦋🦋

The birds never once sang again after the eagle's arrival.

Fell's city had gone deathly quiet. Creatures of all sizes—even the leopard—hid away in their holes or else they'd be the next ones snatched away by the eagle. With every day that passed, more and more bones littered the ground at the base of the eagle's tower.

As the weeks passed, Kip remained inside their den. Fell hunted as best he could for the both of them. He'd be gone for most of the day—always keeping to the shadows, avoiding both the eagle and the wailing, crazed rabid animals that grew more numerous—and would return only briefly to leave offerings of food for his vixen. No matter how much the red fox begged her mate, Fell would just nuzzle her and leave again.

Instinct was a cruel, compelling thing.

The days blurred together.

Kip let out a sigh. She'd been curled up in a ball, dozing in her den with her muzzle tucked beneath her tail, awaiting her mate's return. He'd been gone longer than usual, and Kip struggled to smother the anxiety boiling inside her. The sun was just beginning to set behind the skeletal skyscrapers. Surely he'd be back soon...

The vixen bolted to her paws when a scream echoed throughout the park outside. Her blood ran cold. Ears upright and every hair of her pelt standing on end, the fox limped from her home. She let out a bark of shock.

The eagle took wing from the grass with her latest catch in her claws...a wriggling silver fox.

Adrenaline burned through Kip's veins like a forest fire, forcing her body faster as she took off in pursuit after the flying eagle. The eagle, meanwhile, took her mate further and further away from her to the top of her clock tower. Kip didn't stop running. She barged her way through the open doorway into the dilapidated building, territory she wouldn't dare to enter until now, and limped up a stairwell making her way up the twisting steps. The whole while, she prayed she wasn't too late...

She let out a bark when she found the rooftop where the eagle had made her nest. And before her, a still alive Fell snapped at the eagle, nimbly dodging jabs of her beak. Half-blind, Kip had to keep her head turned to keep the eagle dead in her sights. She charged at the bird and clamped her fanged jaws shut at one of its wings. A few feathers coming loose and floating away off the rooftop rewarded her. The harpy eagle loosed an enraged war cry. She turned to the foxes, immense wingspan spread full in a challenge. Blood from her previous kills still stained her beak red like warpaint. Hatred ignited in her black eyes.

Kip immediately nudged Fell to his paws with her nose. "Fell," she said. "Run." She gestured with her muzzle back to the doorway she'd burst from—their only hope of an escape.

But the dog-fox didn't back down. The fur along his spine stood up straight and he bared every one of his glistening white fangs at the animal that had stolen his territory and tainted it. Instinct had him in its claws. With orange eyes gleaming bright like hot coals and pupils mere slits, he charged at the bird.

Kip had no other choice but to join her mate in battle. Scattered bits of bones crunched beneath their paws as the pair confronted the animal that had made their lives a nightmare.

The eagle unleashed another scream. She aimed a blow at the weaker fox first, beating her away with a flap of a powerful wing. Kip collided hard against a gargoyle and fell against the rooftop, breathless and willing her head to stop spinning and her ears to stop ringing.

Gusts of wind buffeted the stunned fox. She opened her eye in time to see two sets of gleaming black talons spread before her.

Fell rammed his body against the eagle, forcing her away from his mate. The eagle retaliated by snatching him in her claws again. She took flight, dragging the struggling silver fox off the rooftop with her. Kip struggled to her paws—to run after her lover. But her damned leg gave out beneath her. Her broken body would no longer obey her.

She could only watch in mute agony as the laughing eagle opened her talons and released her mate...

Letting him drop stories below.

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