Alright, folks. I may be really new to the whole Furry Scene, but I've been itching to write some short fiction. Warning, this is not happy, nor full of action. It's rather sad actually, but it's not necessarily a stand-alone work. I could add to it. Anyway...
ALONE
Grisli let go a deep breath, forming translucent white fog around his black nose. The air on the November afternoon was cold, and the sun was setting, sure to bring a colder night upon its departure over the horizon. He looked around as he stood there on his hind legs, over the endless pine forests, over the several other bare crag peaks that dotted the mountains' sides and tops, much like the one he stood on. Several nonmigratory birds flew back to their nests, but otherwise, there was very little life to be seen today.
Eventually, as the sun's yellow turned to golden orange, he turned around and dropped back to his feral four-pawed walking stance, and continued on back towards his cave. Loneliness, as it had so many times before, engulfed him. His solitude since his mate's death last summer had overtaken him and changed him. There was nothing left in this world for him but to live the life only a wild animal could.
Before his cave stood a clearing where wild grasses grew, and these had maintained their green color into the chill brought on by a creeping winter, but Grisli knew they would soon die off anyway. In the middle of the small field, he stood up and looked around again. He scratched his chest, and fell over backward into the grass.
The grass embraced him. He could feel moisture contained in the lower tiers of grasses on his back, the type of moisture that would have evaporated away on a warmer day. The sky above him shone with a brilliant gradient of colors. A dark blue fading into black gathered in the east. Directly above him was almost the light blue of day, and the sky to the west glowed with vivid reds and oranges.
As he looked to the west, he let his head rest into the grass as he watched the sun set. In the grass before him, a small insect climbed from the grass onto his snout shortly before taking flight into the evening air. As he lay there, he became aware of all the life around him, from the grass he was laying in to the trees that surrounded the small clearing. The insects, even in the autumn air, were transitioning from day to night. While birds settled in for sleep, deer foraged in the acres adjacent to him. He could even hear the flow of the stream, alive in its own right, where fish moved about in the cold water.
All this life, and nothing of it like him. Normal animals lived around here. To find another of his type, he'd have to go back to the town. The town that wanted him dead. The down that hated him. A tear broke from his eye and rolled off his face into the grass, joining the moisture beneath him.
Sure, there were other grizzly bears out here. He was sure of it. But he could never love one of them. They could never love him. He could never have a friend. He could never be part of a family. Those bears had lived their traditional lifestyles their whole lives. Simplistic, beautiful lives into which he'd never fit.
Anger grew from his sorrow and his claws dug into the earth and grass around him as he cried. Fed up with himself, he ripped a clump of dirt and grass from the ground and rolling over, pitched it at a nearby tree, spraying dirt into the foliage beneath it: an action the bears here would never be coordinated enough to do.
He lifted himself up off the grass and walked into his cave. In the darkest corner of the small, dark cave, Grisli wept until he fell asleep.
