Atlas and the Fox
Atlas watched the afternoon sun dance across the changing leaves of his forest, the tangled mess of yellow and red before him painted colorful with decay. It had been two years now, since he had last crossed the creek into the unruly woods beyond. Since he had last navigated the uneven tangled dirt and roots, listening to the calming breath of the rustling trees. Since he had been attacked by a fox.
The water roared and sputtered as it ran past. He liked to watch sometimes, hidden beneath the great and orderly pines that lined this side of the shore, but still drawn to the magnificent expanse that he once wandered. He had been younger then, he would remind himself. Following the whims of a boy still too small for his shoes. The shoes he wore still, now battered and tearing. And in them, here he had walked, nearly every day since. Gazing past the roaring water and into the wood that had filled his chest with moss and birdsong. His chest was full now of a dull ache, though. Along with his arm and jaw, reminders to himself why not to cross the once calm waters. Gashes that couldn’t close, poorly hidden out of mind by willing ignorance and a spare bit of fabric he kept tied hastily around his left forearm.
Gravel crunched beneath his feet as he turned, walking a routine path through the rows of towering evergreens, until the oranges of deciduous forest were far from view. Lines upon lines of strikingly tall pines passed him by as he wound his way back to somewhere to sit and rest, finally pausing under a tree just like all the rest, with a small dip in the dirt next to it where he had sat the days prior. He sat with his back to the cold bark, looking out at the orderly grays and dark greens surrounding him. It was all a bit boring, he thought wistfully, but it was safe nonetheless.
He felt the warm breath of a creature to his left and turned quickly, pulling his arm away and to his chest. It was only a rabbit, frightened by his movement at first but then leaning back towards him, sniffing wearily. Atlas took a deep breath and slowly moved his arm back towards it, allowing it to familiarize itself with him, and it smelled intently along the fabric wrapping his forearm, pausing at where he had tucked the ends to hastily secure it in place. The rabbit drew back from his arm, almost contemplative, and then in one swift motion took a loose end of the fabric in its small mouth and hopped back, unwinding his wrap.
“Hey! Give that-” Atlas grabbed towards the cloth now hanging from the creature’s snout, sending a stinging pain down the gash of his arm. He gasped, cradling his arm back to his chest as the rabbit simply turned and hopped a few feet from where he sat. He slowly pushed himself up with his right arm and stood, calculating. Creeping forward, letting his foot hover just above the forest floor for a moment before slowly allowing his weight to shift, he managed to not immediately alert the rabbit, as it continued sniffing and surveying the ground around it. As he took another step, though, it finally frightened and lept forward on light paws, pausing to sniff about again just behind the trunk of the next tree in front of them.
He followed the rabbit like this for what could’ve been ages, finally sighing to himself and realizing that there was no way the creature would give up as easily as he hoped. He paused his trailing behind as the rabbit hid behind another tree, sure he was out of sight. He darted to one side, scaring the rabbit opposite him, then turned on his heel to meet where it had ran, hoping to catch it off guard. It ran back to the other side again, barely skirting away from Atlas’ outstretched hand. Eventually it ended the back-and-fourth that Atlas had begun, and sprinted directly through his legs, jumping nimbley away.
He was running now, his heart drumming in time with his shoes on the dirt. Rows of woodland passed by as Atlas chased the rabbit, gaze only focused on the cloth it held, waving in the breeze. It bounded on nimbley still as the gravel and dirt below it turned to mud and sand, keeping pace through still and shallow waters. Atlas followed close behind, locked in on the rabbit ahead of him, paying no mind to the now calm flow of the creek soaking into his shoes as he splashed forward.
He had just broken through the treeline on the opposite bank when the rabbit began to slow down. He was gaining on it, finally. But something wasn’t right. The rabbit darted underneath a tree root arching into his path where Atlas’ feet caught, sending him falling onto a layer of leaves and undergrowth, yellow and orange and smelling of autumn. This wasn’t right at all. I can’t be here. Atlas felt a panic rising in his throat, I can’t be here.
He wanted to scream, pain spreading through his arm and chest and up his jaw, the world seemed to zoom out around him. He shouldn’t be in this forest. He was unsafe here, the leaves fell and died and animals lurked about, no way to tell their intent. No way to know if they would trick, or maim, or steal a piece of cloth you needed returned immediately.
He caught sight again of the fabric, held in the gentle jaws of the rabbit that had led him here. It scurried down into a den, dug out slightly into the dirt, and Atlas crept forward to gain a better view of where it had hidden, just able to peer under what covered the burrow. The rabbit he had followed nuzzled through a huddle of its young, passing by the kits to access a patch of the den not yet covered by sticks and fuzz and bird feathers. It began to pass the fabric through pieces of the flooring, weaving and tucking it between what he then realized could only be bone.
The young rabbits were cradled in a ribcage. Encased entirely besides a gap below the sternum as an entrance to the burrow, sheltered from above by the remnants of torn pelt left stretched across the bones. Atlas felt the tenseness he held from his chase begin to wash away as he registered this, his breath coming softer as he crouched back again to see the familiar carcass that lay in the leaves and mud before him. What had once been the fox.
Its torso was left a ribcage with leathered skin protecting the new life growing within it from the wind and rain. Moss was beginning to grow over patches of fur, leaving it a mix of green and orange and red-brown stains near the edges of the pelt where it must have once torn. Its head lay to the side, only scraps of fur clinging onto a graying skull, its vicious fangs now growing mold and sprouting mushrooms from its jaws left agape. It looked almost peaceful, Atlas thought.
The fox was gone now, and his history with it years away, and finally he felt the aching from his jaw and chest, and from his forearm slip away. For now, finally, the gash had closed itself. A long scar remained in its place, something Atlas was certain would not fade. But it no longer stung in the fresh air of the forest. It no longer left a constant ache he fought to ignore. This piece of a story now forever etched in his flesh. A story he would finally let his skin tell, he thought.
“The fabric is yours now,” he remarked quietly to the rabbit, now nestled amongst its kits, its breathing slowing into a slumber. Maybe the fox lurking this forest had been worth it in the end. He sat beside the now decomposed remnants of it, collecting himself and letting his gaze wander the colorful leaves surrounding him.
Atlas watched the setting sun dance across the changing leaves of his forest, the tangled mess of yellow and red before him painted colorful with decay. It had been two years now, since he had last crossed the creek into the unruly woods beyond. Since he had last navigated the uneven tangled dirt and roots, listening to the calming breath of the rustling trees. What had once been was no longer. The fox that had left him wounded had died. And in its chest grew a new life. And in his forest he stood again now, where the leaves would rot and fall but then grow again as they always do. And still, he was here. He was here, after all this time. He took a step forward, then another, headed deeper into the undergrowth. Maybe, he thought, I could grow again too.
