[twwm] menri prompt 2 - cave

Sand kicked up behind:

Floating spices of crushed earth on the wind,

Cinnamon of dusty red rock and sugar made of pebbles and quartz and mica.

A rabbit’s tail dashes around the corner, fur tipped with black at the edges.

The sun dips and flattens, drips over the horizon;

Like a broken and cooked egg yolk.

The rabbit reaches with his front paws, grabbing the earth ahead of him -

Pulling himself forward and chasing those leftovers of sunlight.

Freedom, possibility, they all existed in the light that glittered ahead,

And his nose twitched to the beat of his paws thrumming against the solid rock;

The scent of sagebrush and baking clay, as the rabbit chased the sun.

It sinks, edges hazy against its own heat and the clouds that obscure it,

And the light is gone.

A honeyed glow seeps over the cliffs where the sun has disappeared,

Sweet against the sky.

The rabbit skids to a halt;

Wide, shovel-like paws stopping him from careening over the canyon’s edge like a stone.

He turns back, to travel home, and is greeted by the rising moon.

Its full, pale yellow light cascades down, battling the last remnants of the sun.

And with a huff, decisively -

The moon beckons him forward, back into the canyon.

It echoes, the light trembling through, covering the red-rock canyon walls in silvered glory.

He follows, scampering quickly now, no longer confident in his strides.

The howl of a coyote spills through the canyon,

Amplified, and his ears twitch toward the sound.

His instincts are torn in the two directions he knows he could take -

The way home is close at hand, a simple dash through the rock walls.

The way home, where his entire family is.

Where the coyotes, undeniably, would pick up his scent,

Where the coyotes would, undeniably...

A hidden niche, a quiet dimple in the rock face

The stone drifting away into a cave inside the canyon walls.

The rabbit wiggles his way in -

Earth patters down from the roof onto his pelt -

And he is in the cave.

It glitters with underground starlight, the wavering, watery light of the moon reflecting inside,

Bouncing away from the small specks of almost glass-like quartz,

And seeming to summon the howls of the coyotes.

They stumble upon the niche in the rock,

Nosing, gnashing, snarling.

Spittle splashes into the back of the cave, against the rabbit.

He crushes himself to the back wall, hoping against hope.

The coyotes never leave.

They stay, fur warmed by the sunlight that fizzles into the cave,

Panting, waiting for the rabbit.

It takes days before they leave.

It takes days before...

The rabbit was not alone for long after they left. A careful footstep from a silent, gentle behemoth, unseen before, called him from a sleep which the coyotes assumed he would never wake. Where once he had been torn from his family, lost, he now awakened found.