Kiba and Howl (A Short Story For Steemit)

The wooded hollow was a milling mass of black and white, ribboned with deep fur-less scars.

Kiba stood atop the tree stump at the edge of the clearing, her brother Howl perched alongside her. She surveyed the tufted faces, bald patches, bitten ears, mauled snouts, they may be few, but their strength numbered many.

The dappled moonlight shifted through the autumn leaves as each badger settled down, and sat facing the tree stump.

"Thank you for coming,"

Kiba began,

"I am Kiba, daughter of Saba, beside me stands the last of my clan, my brother, Howl, son of Claw. The last cull came hard, and though they fought to the end, they couldn’t stop the dogs. Our mother barred the entrance to the set, she fought with bristles and blood, but it was not enough, they set upon her, they turned her pelt to bloody ribbons, and then they came for us. Our father stood his ground deep inside the set, he ripped and tore at those devils, he hid us with his dying body, growling and snarling to his very last breath. You know this all too well”

Her voice was filled with pain, as she looked around the waiting faces,

“For this story of one, is the story of many, as I have lived, so have you, in fear and in anger. Today, under this new moon, we will chose another way. Those dirty sneaky mink attack the livestock, raid the storehouses, they carry the sickness, the mange and rot of fur, and who are the hunted ones? Who does man turn and blame? Badger and Fox! This land is our land, we were here long before the mink, long before man, and today we come together to say, we will be here long after they are gone. We cannot win if we stand and fight, for the humans set their dogs upon us"

She paused, spitting in disgust,

"They trap us in our sets, corner our cubs, and then they turn their death-sticks upon us. They are too cowardly to face us themselves, but there is hope still to be found"

Kiba looked around the weary faces, the oldest among them had seen many a cull, as cantankerous and vicious as these old badgers could be, they would not last another. Old wounds weakened bones, sapped strength from the soul, until the fight left them. Just the year before, she had seen the great Smasher fall to snakey little dogs. They had cornered him deep in his set, and though he lashed out with serrated claws, tearing flesh, smashing their small squirming bodies into solid earth, he had been overwhelmed. No more! She would not see another year of this.

"There is a place," she cried, "Where the hunts and the culls are stopped by a single man, and the badger may live in peace"

The clearing was filled with the snuffle and grunts of near twenty badgers.

"There is no such place" came a shout from the crowd, "There is no safety, only dirty dogs and human tricks"

The murmuring rose as many grunted agreement. Kiba waited for a few minutes, as the anger of the badgers grew before her.

"This place isn’t real," came another shout, "We need to train, dig; fortify for the coming cull, not waste our time on the daydreams of girl barely out of kithood"

Howls hackles bristled at this, and he snarled, "She is not just dreaming," The anger in his voice rising at their scathing faces, "I have been there, I have seen for myself"

The older badgers rolled their eyes at the nativity of youth, all but one. She was in her sixth year, her fur patchy and flakey. She had fought through many a cull, hiding, slashing, whatever it took. The years had left her hard, but she’d learnt not to judge,

"Tell us young Howl, son of the fearless Claw, where is this place you speak of?"

Howl described the few acres of woodland across the farming plain, where great birds and even foxes sought refuge. The old badger nodded,

"He speaks the truth, two moons ago I saw a kestrel of my youth. He had been injured in the sharp wire that divides the grasslands of the farming plain. He was taken in a box to a place where the people tended his wounds, fed and protected him. He spoke of others there, a fox who did not want to leave, a great hawk slowly recovering. A single badger, old in years but sharp in mind who declared the whole woodland there safe from the cull"

"Safe from the cull…?" the words seemed to echo from every tree as each badger dared to whisper of the possibility.

There is a place safe from the cull, where one man will stand before the plunging hoofs of the hunt, will fight with all he has to stop the cull. A place where all fawn and fowl, all beasts of the wild can seek refuge, where wounds are treated, and second chances can be found. But he cannot do it alone.

This was inspired by the man who runs https://www.lowermosswood.com/ and a post he made about badger culling, his passion in defending them, I imagined the word spreading between the animals, and this is what I ended up with. I wrote it last year, probably nearly a year ago, culling time, and haven't done much with it since. I have left it too long and no long can edit it.

Photo Credit by Pixabay user monicore

_{I know this isn't perfect, and yeah, I could have edited it, and edited it, and work shopped it, and got it some degree better, but i'm never gunna be a full time author. it's just pointless heartache, I write for fun, and yeah, for a good long time I did hope that maybe, just maybe. I will always be grateful to the professional community here, who say the hard things to say, and stop you wasting your time. Deep down, I have been annoyed at myself for the vanity of thinking it could maybe be a possibility. Now I can say it has been a liberating experience, now I only write for fun, for my own entertainment. And now, I feel like I could vanity publish, for fun, which I never would have done before.}

A huge thankyou to @blacklux who's support has made me dig out this old story and share it.