The Bronze

She came home tired and huffing, having run a great distance, carrying all that she had.  Her belly hung heavy - low.  Her lips and teeth covered in the catch, feathers clinging to the crimson crusts around her mouth.

She placed the catch on the dirt floor of her little hovel and wondered about the single dwelling five feet from the surface, until her feet would no longer support her.  She bent her legs and lowered herself down onto the bird, placing her head gently on its neck. 

It was covered in blood - still warm.  Not for long.  She waited as had always been the case for it all to become cool. 
Inside, the little one moved.

Soon, the Bronze - Blacksock, would be the only provider.

Above her, the Domestic - with their snarling and their unnatural lust of obedience to a species that believed itself superior to all others.  The oddness of them wanting to kill her and her kits rather than savor in the natural desire for the bird or the rabbit, which in their own world was abundant enough for her and her entire clan - the fabled Bronze of the Netherwood.

Inside her belly, the young stirred.  The Bronze would grow.
"Thunder."

She smiled coolly.  The Domestic would go soon, losing interest in the Bronze.  Their yelling and screaming cum madness.  Fear of the explosions and the light-flashes and the rain. 

The rain frightened them.  Their coats drizzled wet.  Masters - cowards with black-magic sticks producing death, wait with weak eyes, frustrated by the hunt, by the water, by each other.

She licked her lips and then her paws and chest.  Smiling through her sharpened teeth, she set to tearing gently the bird apart.

Through the great hollow he came, father, hunter, protector. 

The great Bronze males, just short of a Domestic, but lighter, stronger, smarter and deadlier.  Unforgiving jaws. 

The Domestic, once dogs proudly held in the great line, forewent the underground and the hunt above, for companionship with the "TwoLeg", a criminal, selfish species that devoured all it carelessly possessed.  They listened and forgot the language for the sake of scraps that the two-leg provided - granted their bidding was done on command. 

The Domestic rather endured slavery in creature comforts than live in service to instincts.
 

The male, Blacksocks a lovely creature of celebrated fidelity with his mate.  His paws far greater in proportion compared to the slave Domestic, he makes a noise when tired as though the very ground was shaking with each pad.  His tongue hangs low and his mouth like hers covered in the catch. 

He does not possess it, having left it in the middle of the wooded glen above for the Domestic, should they come to their senses - one of their own, left shaking for dead.

"Thunder."

He sniffs the air, finding her over the bird and waiting for him to rest.

She would live and so would the kit in her belly.

The world above now weary and wet, with no sound but the servants, laughing to one another.  They speak beautiful tones as music while the wind and rain breath through the Netherwood and through them.  

He would go out again but not before the birth of his pride.  In rain, snow, wood rotted death, and forage and hunt for the blood.

The slaves, would eat their scraps in the dry cells to stare out of the magic nothing - secretly pining for a chance at his Bronze flesh - and the master's.

As he travels in and out of their pen, with fresh catch, the blood making the great Bronze darker, and more mythological, the Slaves cry.  Their masters - the TwoLeg sit on their honches around their great weapon, drinking the sleeping waters, and staring dead into the moving light bark orders for their silence, all the while stoking their apathy for the Way with poorly processed shreds of food.