After an indefinite stretch of time passed, Pickles decided her pain had been sufficiently grieved and sized up her offending knee.
"Alright, sister, here's the dealio."
She tugged her faded Miami Dolphins tee -merch for a team she'd never even seen play, let alone rooted for- up over her head and began working it around her knee. Could you splint a bad knee? Seeing as how it wouldn't take any more than a fourth of her weight as it was, it was worth giving a try.
"You're going to make like you're functional and I'm going to fetch that bag."
She gave the lopsided balloon of fabric an affirmative nod and, without further adieu, heaved herself up.
It was by no means a fix. The misaligned, fractured ends of her patella and femur put in no uncertain terms just how utterly wrong they were set together. Even after her expertly attempted brace, her ankle was still, by far, the lesser of the two evils.
But she stayed up.
Though the bandage wasn't about to get any credit.
Not about to sit around any longer and allow the reality of her invalidity kick in, Pickles hooked the firmest grip she could muster onto the most local prominence and got herself in motion.
It was rough going. For every inch she advanced upward, she'd fall another five upon her next movement. Curtains of hazing blackness threatened to descend every time she jarred her forsaken right leg.
But, somehow, she made it to the perch from which the the infuriatingly irresistible bag had gloated at her all the while.
The outcropping upon which it sat was more significant than she'd supposed prior; for what she could get out here, it would do nicely as a hospital bed.
"I'm...just...gonna..." Pickles wheezed as she inched herself across the home stretch, only to collapse a foot short of having Holy Grail of Bags in her grasp. "...minute...need a... minute..."
Not formerly aware of having lost consciousness, being awoken by a deranged chortle was an experience.
Immediately, by instinctual reflex, she hurdled forward to seize the knapsack.
Her sigh of relief when her hands met material and hugged it to her chest was a mighty gust fresh out of a tornado.
Only now was she ready to face this...
Pickles only had to shift onto her lift hip to see her company.
Expertly situated upon the incline itself sat a bizarre-looking dog.
Covered in white shaggy hair.
Standing on hard, rounded little feet.
With horns.
No, that couldn't be right.
Pickles squinted at it in a grab for clarity.
It laughed again. With unmistakable malevolence.
No, that wasn't a laugh.
"Goat," Pickles ascertained aloud.
The mountain goat hopped neatly onto her ledge in affirmation.
Pickles backed up against the rock face accordingly and gave it her most cordial smile. Did goats read facial expressions? This one certainly looked sentient enough to feel animosity.
"Nice goat," she pleaded as it started closing the distance between them with a stalking march. "Nice goat."
Troll's beard swaying, it kept on coming.
Pickles forgot all of her pain as it locked gazes with her.
Endless, soulless blackness penetrated her psyche in all the worst places.
She now knew no other fear, no needs, no uncertainties.
Who even was she?
What was an identity in the face of goat?
Nothing else remained.
Only goat.
And she was entirely at its mercy.
Aside from your occasional daring bird, you hardly saw any sign of life in the skies floating above the mountains. Except for the dragons, when they decided to rouse from their slumber, and search the skies looking for the next victim of their sateless hungers. Which would make those birds more suicidal than daring, really.
It wasn't a place to roam if you wanted to survive longer then a few hours. Unless you were small, quick, and smart. Birds lacked those smarts.
However, the small creature gliding through the clouds did not.
The small, winged creature had survived countless years in the mountains alone. Not without run-in with the dragons, though. It was obvious by the scars riddling its smooth wings.
If one were to look up, they would see what appeared to be a shadow lazily floating in the pale blue sky, with only the slightest movement every few seconds. That was, until it spun midair, swooping lower to the ground, floating in circles like an eagle hunting poor mice in a field.
An incredibly neon yellow shape pressed against a rockface caught its eyes, and it momentarily paused its floating to hover midair.
Out in the plain open? Do they have a death wish?
It only took it a moment to realize that something had the neon creature trapped against the cliff, with no escape.
A.. goat. Seriously? The goats again?
Tucking its wings in, it all but dropped from the sky, face first. It swooped down with grace, however, flying by the neon creature at top speed and taking the goat with it.
And.
Throwing the goat off the face of the cliff, hovering in midair, watching it gruesomely fall to it's demise, bleating helplessly all the way.
That's what you get for being a di- a jerk. The dragons are supposed to be the problem, I thought. No, it's goats.
Goats!
How utterly stupid is that?!
Realizing that there was still the other creature to take into account, the dark-winged creature flipped backwards, back-tracking.
It landed, water droplets gliding off of it's smooth, dragon-like wings. It was much,
much taller then it appeared in the air, so much taller that it indeed must have shape-shifting abilities of a sort. It had long, almost fluffy, dog-like ears protruding from the sides of it's head, and they twitched every so often. Grey horns raised from the shaved sides of its skull above each ear, though they weren't very big. The top of its hair was pulled back into a bun, starkly black against the creatures mostly pale skin.
Dark blue-green irises stood out from the rest of it's huge, owl-like black eyes, blinking at Pickles expectantly, a long, thin reptilian tail swishing back and forth.
It crouched, seeming to shrink as its wings wrapped around it's body, cautiously approaching Pickles on its hands and feet.
One, skeletal, slightly scaled, and long clawed finger reached out, eyes widening further as it touched her nose lightly for a good ten seconds in utterly silence. It blinked at her, making intense, uncomfortable eye contact. Its mouth fell open, revealing a set of razor sharp teeth and a strange, dark, forked tongue. "A..are..you..." It spoke very slowly, voice broken and rasping. "A..human..?"
