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It was a cool, quiet night over the canyon. Not even the song of crickets could be heard. The only sounds that anyone could possibly hear were the sound of wind whistling through the air and the whisper of the water in the river as it swerved past the giant rocks that made up the canyon, moonlight glowing down on the soft ripples. New Grand Canyon, it was called.
To the naked eye, it was an ordinary canyon. With big orange plateaus and lush green plants growing here and there. But dear reader, this canyon had a very grim, tragic secret. But we’ll get into that later.
A small, furry figure suddenly poked its head out of a cave in one of the many large rock formations that made up the canyon. Its earthy green eyes gleamed through the darkness as it glanced from side to side, taking in a whiff of the air before it casually padded out of the cave, and turned to stare back as if it was waiting for something.
Not long after, two other fuzzy creatures, one noticeably smaller than the other two, emerged from the cave and stopped to stretch and yawn as they shook off their pelts.
The largest one, the one that had come out first, flicked his ear as a signal for the other two to follow, to which they obeyed. They padded past the many plateaus that stood in their way until they made it to the large river, and stepped into the moonlight, revealing themselves to have pale brown coats with some hints of gray and black, long snouts, bushy tails, pointy ears, and obscure tufts of fur on their heads.
They were coyotes. Coyote pups, to be specific.
They didn’t look to be older than a year. Although for the bigger ones, that was very much not the case.
The small one suddenly bounded up to the river and started to splash around in the shallow end, wagging her tail vigorously as she pounded at the ripples with her front paws.
The two bigger pups sat down next to each other as they watched the small one play.
They sat in silence for a moment, smiling blissfully as they watched on. Suddenly the shorter one, the female, twitched her ear as she suddenly felt a strange tension fill the air. She took a whiff, and her smile faltered as she turned to notice that her companion’s expression was creased with…worry. And sadness.
She nudged his shoulder with her snout gently. “Are you alright?”
The bigger male tensed up at the notion, and whipped around to face the female, but he relaxed quickly and sighed. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”
The younger female rolled her eyes with annoyance. “Oh, c’mon! I’m not a newborn! You don’t have to hide anything from me.”
The older male grumbled and shook his head. “I’m just…worried. About….y’know. What if we never get to truly leave here? Ever? What if we’re stuck in this damned canyon for the rest of time?”
The female sighed. “I…don’t know, honestly. I think it’s impossible that we’ll be here forever. We might be, I guess. But if we are, at least we have each other.”
The male groaned and slumped down until he was lying on his side. “That doesn’t make it fair! We didn’t do anything to deserve to be stuck here. The incident was entirely you-know-who’s fault.”
The female growled and glared at her companion. “Stop referring to him like that! Like he’s dead to us! He’s not. He just…needed time to think about his decisions.”
The male snorted, but didn’t reply, The female softened her gaze and turned her attention back to the river where the small pup was playing.
“We’ll sort it out. Someday.”