NOVEL NEXT Epilogue
Wednesday morning, I think.
Before I even open my eyes, I can tell something is wrong, because I’m not lying on my roof. The surface under me is not level. My head is downhill, and I can feel rocks and knurls of dirt underneath me.
I can hear insects and the birds sound different. And there’s no sound of cars or people anywhere.
I’m pretty sure I came into consciousness hearing the sound of a receding helicopter.
When I crack open my eyes, I can see that it is well past dawn, and I haven’t heard any dragons calling out their morning songs.
The sky is absolutely blue from horizon to horizon, save for a column of smoke off in the distance, and I’m surrounded by mountains that do not have nearly as much snow on them as I’d come to expect. It is the end of summer in the era of severe climate change, of course. It’s still alarming and heartbreaking.
Looking out toward what I think is the West, I’m seeing a deep valley between sharp peaked mountains, and more mountains beyond that. And I can tell I’m pretty damn high up. I think I’m on another mountain myself, but it’s very rounded and covered in grass. It’s not one of the tallest.
A moving speck off in the far distance draws my eyes and appears to be the helicopter I heard.
And as my head darts this way and that, while I take in my surroundings, I feel something dangling off my left horn. And if I swing my head hard enough it swings briefly into my peripheral vision, but it’s too close for me to see what it is. It’s heavy, and I see a dark green, but I’m guessing it may be orange to humans.
I reach up with my claw to try to scrape it away. But it won’t come off.
I get sort of an idea of its shape from doing this, from feeling around with my foreclaw. It’s like some sort of puck attached to a thin metal cable.
And it takes me a bit to figure out how it’s attached to my horn.
Some asshole has drilled a hole through my horn and threaded the cable through that.
I’ve been tagged!
My purse and tablet are missing. I don’t have anything but this device.
I’ve been tranqed in my sleep, tagged, and then released into the wild.
Hearing my challenge cry echo off the distant mountain tops as it is currently doing would probably be a sublime and meaningful experience under normal circumstances, but I’m way too angry to appreciate it right now.
Maybe somebody else does.
To be continued…
