so um I'm kinda working on a novel and I hope to get it published but uh. excerpt yay? The coyote’s days were not boring, as no creature who works hard to survive every day will find it boring, but rather were filled with a sense of emptiness; despite the rush of taxis and shiny-skinned Volkswagens and blaring lights like miniature suns, the coyote felt a pressing silence- a nothingness that crowded his ears, infiltrated his mind, wove through his very spirit. Every day was the same. He woke from his den, though even that was man-made- a gap under a pile of bricks. He tried to find tasteful garbage, which was always futile, or begged from humans, which often got him a nasty bruise or scrape. And he waited. Waited for the raven to return. Waited for the moon to rise. Waited for something to wait for. And it was in this way that the coyote became a thing of man. A dark-furred vessel with a darker spirit. Reduced to abiding by the rules of men and abandoning his very core, leaving the sun shining through the star-shaped leaves in dappled shadows, the rush of a river freed from the winter chill. The coyote saw his reflection in a puddle of black blood, the blood of the city; surprised, he found himself to be the same as the half-starved creature who fell into the ditch, the same creature that loved the forests like the sky loves the stars. He was not this creature. The coyote knew that, at least. The city had made him as much a machine as the cars, lost in its billowing dark smoke that smelled of death. The coyote stepped in the puddle, shattering the yearling coyote in the dark blood of machinery. Buildings reared around him as if to mock the gentle willows and great sycamores of the coyote’s birthplace. The coyote padded down the alley, hopping along the shadows to avoid a burn on the paw-pads. A scent wafted through the air, the scent of a city rat. Another creature made a machine by the skyscrapers and cigarette butts. The coyote’s ears pricked, his nose swinging around to locate the rat, now lazily chewing garbage. An easy kill, if not for the fact that he found that he could not remember how to hunt.
