The storm challenged me as I strode through my forest. Rain pressed down, attempting to flatten me and all else. The dirt below turned traitor and sucked softly at my paws. Thunder boomed in defiance for all the creatures to hear, echoing off the trees and hills. Above and around the lightning snapped down like an aimless spear, searching for something to consume. The wind was my ally though, combing its way through my fur, down my snout, sides, and through my long tail. It raced like a pack of my own between the trees, calling out shrill cries of an intense hunt.
She would be out there too, black of fur to match my white. Her tracks and smell drifted like shades through the forest, carried as news by the wind and muffled by the oppressive rain. We both sought some fight that the storm would never truly give. I felt alive in it, feeling the intense glee of running towards danger. Yet my mind, if not my instincts wandered like this, wondering what I was really doing, what she was doing. It was on the hill ahead that I caught sight of her form in a flash of lightning. She would be the only other one to prowl the woods at night, even if her size served as a distinctive indicator. Others of our kind might stand to our belly, the largest of them. They played and nurtured us in our youth and slowly grew frightened as we began to tower over them. She became a tyrant, then an outcast. I left before I was driven out, not by their power which was less, but by my own instincts and isolation. I could do nothing but follow her tracks up and over the rise. If I moved too quickly, I might catch up and be forced into a more real combat. If I slowed, I would lose the scent. Her fur scraped off on tree-trunks. Broken flowers were smashed into the ground where she ran. Down the slope and through a deep ravine where deer would sleep in lighter weather. Through a copse of trees that held deep markings of the bears that made their home on the sunward side of a small hill. We toured my domain at rapid pace, snaking across the forest as I hid my presence in her wake. I had enough experience avoiding her, of course. She was the constant danger that loomed on my mind as I lived my days. If I did not avoid her, we would fight, and she, bigger than I, would in her crazy-eyed fervor strive to kill me. I always imagined I would win, but I never wanted to test it. I never wanted to find that result.
My fur was becoming drenched in sweat and rain as I ran. I had spotted her a few times on the higher points when the lighting fell, and some in the ravines where she slipped like a shadow. She seemed driven by the storm in the same way I was, chasing some invisible prey. snapping out at the light and the rain. It gave me a comfort in my loneliness that there was someone out there, similarly alone, similarly driven. She reached the top of the tallest hill, barren of trees or anything else. Just slabs of rock piled high up toward the offending storm. Her howl pierced the wind and the rain. It carried through the forest in a way that mimicked the rain's own oppressiveness. The end was drowned out by thunder, though it almost seemed to pierce that too. The lightning that came down was the answer she waited for, though. It stabbed towards her head, towards her open mouth. It was aimed in a way it had not been before. She bit down with her teeth, sinking her canines into it deeply, ripping it down from the sky. It was dazzling, brighter than any lightning I had seen before. It was also longer. My eyes saw white in the seconds and minutes thereafter. When I could see again, she still stood, but now over a glowing form that dripped its blood across and down the rocks. The lightning itself was her hunt, and she had killed it there. From where I stood in the shadows of the trees, I could see the shape had legs and horns and a grand tail. It would stand taller than us, if it could have stood. That grand beast was her prey and she started to feast, now ignoring the storm that fizzled around her, going through the motions as it dwindled away to nothing. I would return later. It pained me, somehow, to see a beast so tremendous brought low.
Two suns passed and I returned, climbing up the sharp hill. The area had been deserted, it smelled like lightning still, sharp and cutting. The corpse of the thing was stripped clean of meat, her voracious appetite put to test and found victorious. The bones were scattered around, and the pelt still shone with white light. Its horns seemed to pulse, vaguely, as I paced through the scene. The blood had hardened into streams of clear rock that filled cracks in the stone. I found myself picking the bones up, stacking them together at the center of the peak. I draped the hide over it and stacked the skull and antlers at the top. Then I waited. It was the rainy season. Two more suns passed. I hungered, but I knew another storm would come soon. My nose told me, and the wind carried it to me. The second night grew clouds and threw down wind and rain. It ran off the pile of bones I sat beside, chilling me through my fur. I did not have to wait long for the lightning and thunder to make their way to the hill. It happened much the same way. The lightning came down, the thunder boomed, and I was blind. My nose stung with the lightnings scent, more powerful that it was before. When I saw again, another of the creatures stood there, overlooking the pile. It was taller, larger. I would have reached to it's chest if I had stood. Through the glow it put off I saw its legs tense. It lept up, thunder booming as the stones cracked below it. The lightning ascended. The pile was still there, glowing more intensely than before. I stood, walking towards it. The sound rang out again, thunder.. Lightning flashed. I felt the smell of lightning all around me. It smothered me in a way the rain might dream to. When I could see again, the glow was gone from the bones, from the hide.
I turned to make my way back down the hill, and somehow in she shadows I saw her. Around her seemed a cloak of darker black, like an angry storm cloud. She bared her teeth at me, a low growl rumbling from below me. I could see a light shining down towards her, radiating from the hill. I cast no shadow as I walked to meet her. To kill her.
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