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It wakes up.
The process is slow; the creature finds its eyesight is bleary, the world around it a grayish purple (it is the blue time before dawn and the creatures eyes glow pink). It blinks, owlishly.
And then suddenly it’s howling.
It’s a raw, painful scream of inexplicable sorrow and anguish; all the creature knows is that everything hurts, its body is all wrong - wrong wrong wrong wrong! It slavers and growls and howls, slashing at the trees around it and clawing into the ground in agitation.
It grows, and it hurts. Hurts deep, deep inside, and the outside burns as it’s flesh is pulled and stretched, something thicker and harder plated in-between soft skin.
There is no coherent thought in it, but the underlying sensation that this is How It Is and that it Deserves This for some inexplicable reason.
It exhausts itself and collapses, whimpering broken-heartedly.
After a time - a long time - bird song returns.
It sits up, body aching and shifting strangely. Shreds of fabric slide off of it although some portion clings stubbornly to the spikes on its back. It is. . .sad?
It sniffs the scraps and paws at them lightly, then catches sight of its fingers.
It taps them on the ground. They’re thinner than it would have thought?
“-n?”
It whips its head up and growls lowly. There is orange before it, not much bigger than it is. A paw(?) hand(?) reaches out for it and it lashes out, hissing.
Both of them are startled at the new noise, but it bunches back, muscles taut and ready to defend itself.
Orange-blue-white rumbles sounds back but they make no sense; it knows that this is one that Fights, and won’t make Noises to Avoid. These are feelings that rise up as certainties.
Orange is angry now, howling and flashing fangs aggressively, walking over suddenly and it hunkers lower, hissing and whimpering.
It attempts to bite, lunging forward.
And orange is bowled over with a yelp of surprise, so it jumps over and runs off. Flees.
Nothing will help it.
This is also a certainty.