Interlewd: Too Long

Such strange dreams.

Couldn’t remember. But strange. Odd.

Something old, something new, something wrong, something grew.

Why did she hurt? Not a harsh hurt, but a lazy one. An ache. From her nose to her paws to the tip of her tail, everything was strained. Stiff. Trying to move just made it hurt more. But the pain was less. Less than it had been yesterday when she tried, which was less than the day before, and the day before that.

It hurt, but not as much as it used to.

Not enough to stop her this time.

Bones felt like brittle glass and fur felt like needles carving through her skin as she shifted one leg. Not far. She needed to stop anyway. Then continued. Then stopped. Then started another leg. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. Stop.

Stop.

She gave a weak, squeak-like groan while panting. Breaths felt like wind carving through a canyon, pulling the dust from her surroundings into her lungs. That was fine- there was still less outside than there was inside. As much as each breath took in, there was more being coughed out.

Not enough, though.

She could still feel it caking the inside of her lungs like plaster, each weak exhalation barely carving off a sliver of the mass. It had been a long time.

Too long.

How long had it been?

Though her frail ears were filled with dust and matted fur, she could still hear the world around her. Not well. Muted. Muffled.

But silence.

Still, stale air of her sanctum. No movement. Nothing but her. She opened her one remaining eye.

A man was sitting in a large chair, bent over a worktable at the far end of the room. He was old and weathered, but kind. Just like the woman also sitting in that chair decades later. And the woman before both of them. And the man after all of them. And the one before that, along with the one after. And another, with another and yet another.

In the corner was the large cabinet. That always held so many trinkets and fun baubles. But the cabinet was also destroyed. Just as it was being built. In pieces ready to be assembled, all put together, and caved in from centuries of erosion.

Centuries.

She blinked, long and slow, giving another wheezing cough that sent brittle whiskers fluttering.

She didn’t want to see anymore. Didn’t want to look. It was too confusing. Too much to see, and not enough to know.

But she had to know. Know how long.

She opened her eye again. The other eyes didn’t even try. They weren’t there anymore. Carved out long ago by the wolf. That was a pain she could still feel. Through her one eye, she could still see the blood splashing from her face. She looked past it, back around the room.

One friend. Another. Another. Another. The one before all of them, the one after the last. All at the same time, all one after the other. The last one she could see, she remembered. Vo. Kind. Leaning down to give her a scratch behind her ear. A scratch she couldn’t feel, because it was happening long ago. She was the last one. But still long ago. The table and chair and cabinet were still intact. Not now.

She shifted the eye painfully to look over at the collapsed cabinet. One leg had rotted away, making the entire thing topple. Focusing closer, she could see the cracks and rot building over time. Ten years. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. Two. Three thirty.

Snap.

Snap at three hundred and thirty.

It fell, scattering the items within across the floor.

Already too long. It wasn’t supposed to be this long. Vo said it wouldn’t be this long. Twenty. Fifty, maximum.

She blinked again, the inside of her dusty eyelid feeling like sandpaper rubbing across the surface. A teardrop tried to form but there wasn’t any moisture there. Instead, it was just an ache. The eye opened again, turning to glance at anything else that had fallen out of the cabinet that could help her learn. Nothing. Not there. Somewhere else, maybe?

She saw it. Just barely in the corner of her eye- at the very edge of her vision. She couldn’t see it properly, but she knew it would help. The trough.

She took a moment to prepare herself, then strained her neck.

Ow.

Ow.

Hurt.

Hurt.

Ow.

Stop.

She paused, barely having shifted a quarter of an inch. Not enough. Not enough to see.

A moment of rest. Then, she tried again.

Hurt.

Hurt.

Don’t care. Keep going.

Hurt.

She panted, being forced to stop and groan through her stiff joints. Still, when she opened her eye, it was just enough to properly catch the glint of water. She saw the carved inlet in the wall allowing the water to run through as their plumbing. She saw the fixture that was added as a sink, and then the new one after that. Knobs to stop and start the flow, redirecting it.

The sink had fallen after two hundred, after water had leaked and eroded. Water continued to leak through. Not as much as she could still see from before, but enough. Enough to form channels on the wall and a buildup of minerals on the floor, leading all the way to the drain that was rusted over. Even now, there was still the tiniest flow of water trickling down through the divots it eroded through the stone ground.

Erosion she could use to count the years.

Too many.

Too many.

Two hundred and eight plus two hundred and thirteen.

Four hundred and twenty-one.

Over four hundred.

Too many.

Too long.

Wrong.

Not wrong. She could see it. Count it.

Something went wrong, then. Vo couldn’t lie. Vo said fifty. It should have been fifty.

But it wasn’t fifty.

More.

Much more.

She closed her eye, letting the world fall into the silence of her partially-deafened ears. She was tired. She was tired, but she didn’t want to sleep. Strange dreams. She couldn’t remember them, but she knew she didn’t like them. She didn’t want to fall asleep, but she was so tired. Too much movement today. Last week were her first breaths. They hurt. The week before had been her heartbeat. Pain.

She didn’t want to be slow. She needed to know. But everything hurt. Everything was tired, and everything was wrong. An attempt to move her paw again failed. No more strength. Not today.

Not today.

Kadu let out a pained breath and prepared for bad dreams.

She’d just have to try again tomorrow. Maybe next week, she could try walking again.