Juna

Juna ran through the trees, and every few steps she had to force herself not to look back because her head still could not make sense of what had happened.

'I was dead,' she thought, feet hitting dirt and roots too fast for her mind to catch up, 'I remember dying, so how am I alive right now?'

The memory came back when she reached for it, blood on her fur and pain tearing through her body while voices shouted around her. She remembered the last part most clearly, that horrible moment when her body stopped listening and the world went dark, so waking up by that camp should not have been possible.

'I just don't understand it,' she thought, vaulting over a fallen branch without slowing down. 'What did that human do?'

Just thinking about him made her chest tighten again, which made her annoyed because what she was feeling was not fear or anything, just this strange pull that kept following her no matter how far she ran.

She pressed a hand against her chest, 'why can I still feel him?' she thought, tears already stinging her eyes. 'What is wrong with me?'

Humans were the ones who killed her family, and the moment that thought hit, her steps went sloppy because the rest of the memory came with it. She saw her mother on the ground again, smelled smoke and blood, heard men shouting while blades flashed through the dark, and this time when her breath broke it did not recover cleanly.

'Humans did that,' she thought, wiping at her face and only smearing tears across it, 'humans took everything from me, so why do I feel tied to one of them now?'

That question made her feel sick, and the sick feeling only got worse the longer she ran because the connection never faded no matter how much distance she put between them.

By the time her legs started to shake, she realized she had not been running anywhere, just away, and those were not the same thing once the panic started wearing thin.