Empty Silence

         There once was a fox,and as foxes go this fox was not that unusual.He foraged food in burrows and got his nose nipped at by the disgruntled inhabitants,and sometimes he was quik enough to catch a stray rodent,but he regularly found himself behind the local towns fast food stores and restaurants competing with cats and dogs and racoons and squirrels .

         "Hey!Why don't you go back to the country where you belong!",they would say,but he didn't pay them any attention and scoured along.

         One day on his way back to the deep forrest a fox with large bright eyes,super long dark eye lashes and fur of a most lustrous course took notice of him and was curious."Hey you!",she called out from the cover of a raspberry bush and stepped out ever so slightly.He recognized her."Where are you going?",she asked."Ah,well I was gonna go to the water pond on the meadow's grove and," ,but before he could finish his answer ,she went on,"Ive seen you before,your with the Treanti pack.My mom goes foraging with your aunt,Foxy-Carmela sometimes."He knew this of course,because all of his two years of life ,which is 14 years in fox years,he has always had a gigantic crush on this very fox.

         Born of the Treanti tribal pack just one month before her, he was raised on stories passed down,folklore divulged and gossip to the hilt and from what he remembered his mom was there at her and her several siblings birth, acting as a midwife second to Seeva their tribal caretaker.He had only seen this beautiful fox standing before him on occasional gatherings,but never got up the courage to speak to her.And now he was stuck in the middle of not knowing what to say and running full speed into and trough the nearest shrubbery.Heart pounding he stayed cool."Yea,..well,"he replied hesitantly and continued,"small forrest,I guess,huh?" 'what am I saying?',he thought to himself,and put his nose to the ground and snuffed at a large maple leaf and kicked at it with his front paw.

         Suddenly there was a howl in the distance,than another. Soon the air around was filled with wild sirens of alarm.Scipio's ears perked at this and he lifted his head.Alandra had already taken flight towards the animal music when Scipio, called out,"Hey,wait for me," and ran after her but all he could see was a flash of red and white from her tail dissapear into a cover of low and luminous ferns.

         Scipio,ran then trotted,and then ran some more.He considered this unusual because what he was hearing was the call for a meeting of pack elders of all tribes and council of the most important kind.Never in his lifetime had he actually ever heard this call outside of what he was taught to listen for as a babyfox from his caretaker.But he knew it to be what it was.Immediate and urgent!As he ran and trotted his way east over the hills and through the streams he remembered how when he was littler his uncles and father Alpha-Aloof fox,speak of the last time all fox tribes and packs were called for a meeting of elders and council and the war that followed it.A war of hate,malice,death and destruction.A war fought on many fronts and of bitter consequence by those who still lived to remember.A war between Beast and Man!



                                                                    "EMPTY SILENCE"



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