Gasping for air

Tabatha, Yaxkin and Jairo gasp for air.  They fight for their own right to exist wherever it is that characters in a novel exist.  I'm just a facilitator.

Tabatha

Crouching inside the muggy rift in the rock,  I painfully plunged my back
against the jagged rock wall. My chest heaved in and out, desperately
trying to provide me with the oxygen my adrenaline-pumped body demanded. 
Outside, I could hear the scabrous blood-curdling growling and the cracking
 and snapping of leaves and twigs as the irate creature circled the narrow entrance. 
Suddenly, I jumped back as a hirsute behemoth claw reached in and took a strike
at me.  A huff of fetid, reeky sweltering breath bashed my face.

The beast missed, but my cotton blouse was drenched in frigid sweat, my throat
was parched, my whole body was convulsing with terror, and there was one thought
 in my mind:  He did not make it!  He did not make it!

Writing...

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. (Thomas Mann)

Still struggling over the editing of my first novel... the characters and the story seem to slip through my hands like sand...