But if felt
so very, very wrong. After all the battles he had fought and the
hardships endured, all the times that death had been beaten back. . .to
be his own undoing..... The instinct to survive had been too deeply
ingrained. He dropped weeping and bleeding on his face, writhing in
unquenchable anguish.
He still might have bled to death, but for the constant miracle that
lived on unnoticed in their midst: the blind desire and yearning of
youth, embodied in the new and emerging life of the pup. His elbow
landed hard on one of its paws as it slept, and knowing nothing of
hopelessness and death, it simply did what its senses told it to. It
cried out.
Roused by the sound the girl came closer, lifted aside the canopy, and
after a moment of helpless terror, turned Kalus onto his back and with
shaking hands worked to stop the bleeding.
*
But the damage had been done. With that last paroxysm of emotion, all
feeling left him. He was not only resigned to death, he believed the
process had already begun. As the girl watched helplessly, he became
like a critically abused child, neither eating nor speaking, without
expression or sorrow or movement. His spirit was already dead, and
waited only for the body to follow. The girl wept openly on his chest,
but the seeds of his heart refused to grow.
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