"I'll Find You, I Promise" (Patreon)

“Day 3,” Lauré sighed into her voice recorder as she sat by a small campfire she had set up. “And I still haven’t found her.” The wood that the red panda had gathered for the fire cracked and snapped as the flames chewed through them hungrily. The fire managed to light up the small open area she had set up camp, overlaying everything within its radius in a soft orange. 

“I told her not to leave, to stay put, but she didn’t listen to me… She never does..” The red panda put a hand over her furrowed brow and let her chin fall. Her eyes closed shut as she used her fingers to massage her temple lightly. 

She grunted, “She should have stayed put... It was safe... But the infection was spreading, she wasn’t going to listen to me. She was going to get hungry; she was going to want to feed.” 

Pulling her head back up, the panda opened up her eyes again, staring into the flickering flames as she held the voice recorder in her shaky, yet death-gripping hand. She got teary-eyed, and visibly grit her teeth to try and stop herself from crying out audibly. 

It worked for a while, but eventually, sobs came through. After the first few, she wasn’t able to stop herself very much. 

“I should have put the restraints on her, I should have!” She slammed a fist into the dirt, making a fist-sized hole in the semi-soft dirt. 

“But I couldn’t.” 

Lauré began to sob more, her teary eyes turning the fur at her cheeks into wet streaks. She sniffled and wiped her face on her shoulder and sleeve. 

She went silent for a few seconds, still staring at the flickering fire. The voice recorder picked up the crackling and burning sounds when she wasn’t speaking or sobbing. After maybe half a minute, she resumed. 

“I couldn’t bear to see her struggling to get free, screaming and snapping at me… I didn’t want to see the hatred in her eyes, the hunger… I didn’t want her to see me as just thing to feed from... So I didn’t tie her down.” 

“I just… Hoped that she would still be in there when I got back, that she wouldn’t have become what we were hunting, not that soon anyway..” She let out a dry, sarcastic laugh. “I’m an idiot, thinking that she’d remember who I was during her first hunger.” 

“I’m a fucking idiot..” 

She sniffled again and sighed through her nose. “I’ll find her tonight..” 

“I will.” 

Lauré’s thumb pressed the red button on the voice recorder and it stopped with a click. Her hand slowly dropped down to the ground while her eyes still stared into the fire. 

Shaking her head and blinking to get the glare from the fire out of her vision, she sniffled again and put the recorder away in her pack. She then stood up, grabbed her crossbow from the ground and slung it over her shoulder, and secured her belt with her blessed silver dagger and wooden stakes. She let out a heavy sigh and grabbed the lantern she had and switched it on. 

“I’ll find you, Alex…” She mumbled to herself. 

She kicked dirt and sand over the campfire to put it out and walked away from the campsite.

“I promise,” 

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Art by Reaper3d