through my flaxen hair . I took a breath of the still air , noting the silence . There were no birds left to sing colour into my journey . All hunted or starved .
A shallow path had been stamped into the bracken . As I walked along it , gazing overhead , I recalled the lushness of these branches when I played in them as a child . When my cheeks swelled with childish health , and I could run and run and never tire . Now , I imagined I appeared as a sort of wraith haunting the trees , as hunched and perturbingly willowy as I was . Such creatures existed to me . I liked to think that there was more to this world . Needed to know there was more than this pitiful human existence .
My lethargy soon found me sitting in the frost against a thick tree trunk . I closed my eyes , surrendering to the hollow scrape of branch on branch overhead and the weak thrum of blood in my ears , lending the impression of a wooden , sap-clogged heart beating from deep within the tree .
A crunch sounded to my left . My eyes were slow to open , my head slower to loll in the direction of the disturbance . The wolf standing mere feet away shook me from my exhaustion . I sucked in a sharp breath , meeting the eyes of the predator who was all too aware of my quiet existence in its even quieter home . The concaves of its torso were painfully sharp , its fur a muted grey . Its dark eyes were gilded with the reflection of my golden hair . I swallowed dryly , the basket I still clutched my only weapon . I had not considered this , had not considered that any animal had survived alongside us . But here it was , its maw wet with liquid hunger . Its ears pricked , acknowledging me , acknowledging the pain we shared and what it was about to do . My lip quivered , the rest of me locked in place by terror so potent I was certain the wolf could smell it .
Not even once had I thought it would be this , with tooth and claw and an insatiable appetite . My body would not be recovered . Not even a splinter of bone would be spared . Perhaps it was a small mercy , to be eaten by this animal and not one with much blunter teeth .
My pulse hammered as he sank onto hunger-bowed haunches . He whined when I clenched my eyes shut . It would be agony . He would rip at my skin and crack open my veins to drink . He would prise open my ribs , splintering them to swim in the delights of my chest cavity . Bones would sunder and my screams would reduce to gurgles when he blessed me with the relief of spilling my throat , my blood thawing the hoar of my grave . His muzzle would be stained scarlet for days .
But the pain did not come . The Weaver 70