All Hues and Honeys by Dawn Felagund  

The First Orc

An Elven scout dreams of captivity. A drabble for Orctober instadrabbling for the prompts "decay, tunnel, dark, foresight."

She had a persistent dream of dark dripping down the sky and, one by one, the stars were devoured.

Cold nights, the deer were running, and she was scouting where the Valacirca dipped beneath the trees. The air was toothed with cold and smelled of the sweet decay of once-crimson leaves gone brown, then gray. The cave scooped from rock seemed a place where she might stay warm for the night.

Closer, though, she saw it was not a cave,

The dream—the foresight?—of the slow-dripping dark. The stars,

it was a tunnel.

gone.

A fulgent hand closed on her ankle.