FREE ESSAY ON THE RUN

THE RUN

THE RUN 
She had only recently returned from the last fruitless round, and had just fallen into an
exhausted sleep; when the persistent prodding was pulling her back into this warm, don't
want to move, half awake daze. The probing became more urgent, more demanding, and she
rolled away from it to face the entrance, a soft grey against the black surround.
Slipping from under the cover, she stretched her legs, shook the mist of sleep from her
head, and moved wearily towards it.
The frost lay heavy on the ground, the puddles like glass littered the yard, and the
drainage gully sliced through the centre of it all like a stream of silver. The stillness
that had allowed the hoarfrost challenged her hearing for the slightest sound - silence.
She launched herself across the cobbled stones, skirted the frozen cow pats, leaped
across the gully, lost her balance on the other side, with a scramble of feet regained
it, and head thrust forward, streaked for the entrance to the run. 
The run was reassuringly dark and dank, her body fitting its space, with the surrounds
lightly brushing against the fur of her back and sides. Thrusting her front feet forward
she drummed them rapidly on the hard ground. The sound disappeared into the distance -
there was no echoing return - the way ahead was clear. 
She moved forward over the slightly concave ground worn smooth by thousands of feet, her
feet, on a hundred passages before. She searched the darkness ahead, sensing familiar,
comforting smells. The feeling of security, coupled with a nagging urgency drove her
ahead at an increasing pace. The momentum slowed as she neared and rounded the concrete
obstruction and increased again on the downward slope leading to the long lazy bend. 
It was the grains of earth clinging between the toes that first indicated a change. She
slowed - stopped. Here, not yet halfway round the long bend, a disturbance had dislodged
the earth from overhead. The fall was slight, nothing to impede her progress, but
unexpected and of more concern - recent. To return would be slow, with an almost total
loss of senses. There was no space to turn until the entrance - dawn before it was
reached - and the yard would be all noise, movement and danger. The probing mouths would
be waiting, and again she would have little or nothing to give. 
She inched her way ahead, gathering confidence as the loose soil was left behind and she
felt again the smooth, almost polished earth underfoot. She gradually increased her pace
as the slight incline became more pronounced. The long bend straightened out on its reach
upward to the place of light and the dangers it held. 
Gradually the blackness ahead lightened. Instinctively she slowed, stopped, and crouching
low, ears forward, eyes closed, she slid slowly into the light and stood stock still -
her forelegs braced like coiled springs for the shunt backwards should the need arise.
The first sheet of light struck the ground just in front of her. The glare penetrating
the thin skin of the eyelids, dilated the pupils, but still there remained an instant of
almost total blindness, as her eyes, exposed to the fullness of the light, fought to
adjust and focus on the way ahead. 
The shuttering effect of light between floorboards stretched before her revealing the run
clear to the darkness beyond. The sweet sickly smell ever present in this space and
always associated with danger, was slight. Reassured by the silence and steady unbroken
sheets of light the tension in her front legs relaxed, she sank back exhausted; expelling
the air out of her body in sheer relief. 
She rested. The move through the light would be arduous and frightening. The light would
help. To have light was to see, but to have light was also to be seen. The space beneath
the floorboards was constricting, requiring a crawl, when all the instincts were to run
through and out of the revealing glare. 
Crouching, ears pinned back, legs all but folded, belly brushing the ground, she moved
forward. The first sheet of light moved slowly over her body, the uneven lay of the
timbers creased her back, warm compared to the coldness along her belly. A conveyer belt
of light enveloped her, moving down her back, along the length of her tail, and rolling
off the tip. At last her face found the darkness. The run opened out welcomingly. The
last bar of light falling off the end of her tail acted as a release to all the tensions
in her body. The restriction above her disappeared, allowing a freedom to stretch out the
legs, a freedom that spread throughout her body as the danger, like the glow, faded
behind her. 
The run broadened, as she neared its divide, and keeping the wall against her right
shoulder, she bore away into the wider of the two tunnels ahead. Raa had warned her
against this run and at another time she would have heeded his warning, but hers was a
desperate need. The late spring had left her unprepared, unable to satisfy the dozen
demanding mouths. The safer split was longer, but the pickings were poor, and a hundred
keepers of 'livings' like her own, suffering similar scarcity, scoured the safer runs. 
Again the run inclined upwards. She lost awareness of size and shape as it opened up and
out. The ground was becoming increasingly strewed with loose soil, bricks and stones. She
moved over, pushed aside or skirted the obstructions, feeling her way forward until the
soft rotting timber stake barred it. Instinct, knowledge, the trace of her own smell,
turned her to lay her left side against the wooden board. Inching along its length she
searched for the soft, spongy rotted place that would allow access through to the other
side. 
Her head pushed through the rotted timber into the grey gloom of the barn, the strong
sweet sickly smell that met her, held her rigid, alert, and every sense straining
forward. All was still, her ears found no sound, no lingering odours other than the
stench of man stung her nostrils. She drew her front feet forward, pulling with these,
and pushing with the hind legs she forced her body through the narrow opening. The sudden
release as her body broke through propelled her forward.
The wooden step startled her. Its collapse under her weight shocked her. The dull
metallic click as the spring was released stunned her. In the short second before the
steel trap slammed down smashing her backbone, she thought of Raa and that she had failed
the 'living'... Her long hairless tail twitched - once - twice - and was still.
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