Scavenger Lessons
The world was louder outside.
Ash crouched beneath the porch, his tail coiled tight against his belly. The wind carried voices—groans that rattled like stones in a tin can, whispers that were not whispers at all but the scrape of dead leaves on asphalt. He missed the closet. He missed the moth. He missed the warmth. He missed his Mother.
But hunger gnawed at him, sharp and insistent, a predator he couldn't outrun.
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The neighborhood was a carcass picked clean. Houses sagged, their windows shattered into jagged grins. Gardens had erupted into jungles of thorns and weeds, clutching at rusted bicycles and skeletal swing sets. Ash crept along the edge of a cracked sidewalk, his white paw glowing like a beacon in the moonlight. Every shadow pulsed with danger.
He paused beside a trash can overturned in the street, its contents spilled like guts. Rotting food, shredded plastic, a shoe. Ash sniffed, his nose wrinkling at the stench. *Not food. Not food. Not—*
There. A scrap of meat clung to a bone, half-buried under newspaper. Ash darted forward, claws scrabbling on pavement, and seized it. His teeth sank into gristle, and he nearly gagged. Cold. Sour. *Wrong*. But his stomach screamed, and he swallowed, the taste coating his tongue like oil.
A low growl sliced through the silence.
Ash froze.
Across the street, a shape emerged from the ruins of a garage—a dog. Its ribs jutted like blades beneath mangy fur, one eye milky and swollen shut. Foam dripped from its jaws.
*Run*, hissed a voice in Ash's mind—his mother's voice, or his own? He couldn't tell.
The dog lunged.
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Ash bolted, the meat forgotten. His paws slipped on gravel as he veered into an alley, the dog's snarls echoing off brick walls. Trash cans toppled behind him. He skidded around a corner, heart hammering, and leapt onto a fire escape. The dog's teeth snapped shut on air, inches from his tail.
Higher. He climbed, claws scoring metal, until he collapsed on a rooftop. The dog circled below, barking hoarsely. Ash pressed himself to the roof's edge, trembling. The moon stared down, indifferent.
When the dog finally slunk away, Ash uncurled, his breaths shallow. Below, the alley teemed with movement. Shadows shuffled—not dogs, but *things*, their limbs jerking, their mouths slack. One paused, its head tilting upward. Ash flattened himself, but the thing only groaned and shambled on.
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Dawn stained the sky the color of bruises. Ash slunk down a drainpipe, his belly hollow. He found a backyard overgrown with dandelions, their heads nodding in the breeze. Something moved in the grass.
A mouse.
It nibbled a seed, unaware. Ash's muscles coiled, his tail twitching. *Pounce. Kill. Eat.* He sprang—
—and missed. The mouse darted into a hole, vanishing. Ash stared at the empty ground, his ears hot with shame.
A scent hit him then, sweet and metallic. Blood.
The mouse's nest.
Ash dug, claws tearing at dirt, until he uncovered it—a pile of dead mice, their tiny bodies stiff, eyes clouded. Freshkill, buried for later. His stomach lurched. He backed away, fur bristling.
*Not food. Not food. Not—*
But it *is* food. The mouse was gone. The trash can was rot. His mother's milk was but a memory.
Ash retched, bile burning his throat.
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He found shelter in the hollow of a dead oak, its trunk split by lightning. The air smelled of sap and decay. Ash curled into himself, licking his sore paws. Hunger carved him hollow, but sleep came anyway, fitful and thick with dreams.
*His mother's tongue rough on his fur. His sibling's mewl. The moth, always just out of reach.*
He woke to a voice.
Human voice.
Ash peered through the tree's cracked bark. A figure moved in the distance, their shapes blurred by rain. Ash's saw a red backpack. their words muffled.
*"Cold. It's cold"*
Night fell again. Ash stood at the edge of the oak's hollow, the wind plucking at his fur. Somewhere, the dog still prowled. Somewhere, the shadows moaned.
But the red backpack glowed in his mind, bright as a wound.
He stepped into the dark.
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**End of Chapter 2**
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