There was a muffled yelp and the animal struggled backwards, turning an evil, foaming mask to its tormentor. Two bright yellow eyes focused on Masklin, who leaned panting on his spear. This was one of those times when time itself slowed down and everything was suddenly more real. Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance...
There were flecks of blood around the creature's muzzle.
Masklin felt himself become angry. It welled up inside him, like a huge bubble He didn't-have much, and this grinning thing was taking even that away from him.
As the red tongue lolled out, he knew that he had two choices. He could run, or he could die. So he attacked instead. The spear soared from his hand like a bird, catching the fox in the lip. It screamed and pawed at the wound, and Masklin was running, running across the dirt, propelled by the engine of his anger, and then jumping and grabbing handfuls of rank red fur and hauling himself up the fox's flank to land astride its neck and drawing his stone knife and stabbing, stabbing, at everything that was wrong with the world...
The fox screamed again and leapt away. If he was capable of thinking then Masklin would have known that his knife wasn't doing much more than annoying the creature, but it wasn't used to meals fighting back with such fury and its only thought now was to get away. It breasted the embankment and rushed headlong down it, towards the lights of the motorway.
Masklin started to think again. The rushing of the traffic filled his ears. He let go and threw himself into the long grass as the creature galloped out on to the asphalt.
He landed heavily and rolled over, all the breath knocked out of him.
But he remembered what happened next. It stayed in his memory for a long time, long after he'd seen so many strange things that there really should have been no room for it.