Magpie Tales #7...Fox

The daffodils hang their heads, bowing to the ground. The early morning air is crisp and damp.
I pad toward them, sniffing here and there. My bushy, amber tail is suspended just above the dewdrops.
Crack!
I jump as I hear a loud noise. I lope into a hedge to hide.
After a few moments, I emerge; first my nose, then one paw - two paws - cautiously coming out.
I sniff again at the grass. I place one paw in front of the other carefully onto the ground, not disturbing the spiders' webs in the grass.
Bang!
I feel a pain in my side. I turn. My side is dark and sticky, gushing red blood. I try to lick at it, soothe it, clean it. The daffodils bend back from where they were hunched by the rush of air.
I falter, my legs weakening. They don't support me. Traitors. I collapse on the ground.
I try to yelp as I feel a presence, a shadow over me. All I can mange is a sickly gurgle. A trickle of blood escapes my lips.
He looks down into my eyes.
I look up at his; small and squinty, blue like ice, that stare indifferently down at me. His thoughts are unreadable.
I blink. The twin darkness of identical barrels on a shotgun press down in the air above my face.
Bang!
I feel a flash, searing my eyes. I close them against it and the pain. But now it stops hurting. I lie still.

The hunter kicks my body with a large dirtied boot, then picks it up by the feet and flings it over his shoulder.
The daffodils, straightening in the sunlight, are cheery yellow. Their false happiness is only marred by the spatter on each of their smiling heads; a faint pattern of death.