Fallen

Incandescence shimmers through the thicket—fur glistening heavenly in the starlight. Canine paws imprinting on the dewing topsoil. The silver fox had been a star once, she tells the quirking ears of her litter. Each night she would watch from the obsidian stretch of the sky, weightlessly gleaming as she observed the world beneath her. Until one night a brief flash of auburn had spotted her, his vulpine eyes mesmerised in a singular glance. She had shone for him, and he had burned for her. Seasons passed this way, their affair deepening with each rotation of the sky.

When the blossoming scent of spring had begun to drift through the world, she had decided to fall. Plummet. Descend. Shedding her celestial form, she took the shape of a vixen. In her eyes, starfire burned. She and her lover were united under a sky that had one less star. 

Tonight, however, the night was starless—only the waning crescent of the moon providing light as she raced home to him. Their kits have grown and left the burrow. His mortal frame had grown old and weak, he could no longer join her on the hunt. He could no longer shield her from earthly dangers and greed.

The hounds were at her heels. A root snagged at her and she stumbled; the beasts fell upon her. Crimson seeped through her coat, dark and tacky. Their owner whistled, a shrill sound that pierced the night, and they relented. His metal blade glinted in a cruel mockery of starlight as he carved the fur from her flesh. He lusted for her beauty. 

As the clouds began to part, the stars wept for their lost sister—illuminating the sky with a cacophony of celestial flares. They shone mournfully upon her lover, watching as he passed of a broken heart long before the clutches of starvation could claim him. The rivers of time flowed and the world forgot its celestial vixen, but the stars did not, and no star ever dared to fall in love again.