space aliens

Artur had ventured outside pack lands once again, this time without his siblings in tow. He thought that they could certainly the seasoning that they'd gain from more family outings, but he hadn't had a particular destination or reason in mind when he'd set out. He simply wanted to get out of pack lands for a time, and away from his home and his family. He respected his mother and had loyalty to her, but the constant oppressive knowledge that she was dying was too much, and he'd slipped away early that morning through the wall. He hadn't gotten sentry duty that day, so as long as he'd returned by the next morning when he did, he would be fine.

He'd spent a lot of time that morning stalking squirrels, and half the day had gone before he grew frustrated with it and left off to go somewhere else. It had been entirely by chance that he'd come across a meal in the form of an elderly deer that had recently died. In better times he'd have turned his nose up at what was essentially scavenging, but there were too few hunters among the Celestial wolves and he was a fast-growing near-yearling male and he always felt hungry, so rather than getting picky he fell upon the meal ravenously.

He was tearing into the deer's bloated belly when a rustle in the grass behind him set his hackles on edge, and he spun with a snarl, sending an opportunistic fox scrambling for cover. The young Adravendi returned to his meal with a wary speed, wanting to eat as much as he could before too many scavengers noticed it. It was just a matter of time before he was overwhelmed by too many different scavengers trying to make off with his discovery at once for him to chase them off without another one sneaking behind him to snatch at the food when his back was turned.

Rustling returned behind him and he spun again with a roar of anger bubbling from his blood-stained jaws at the temerity of the fox daring to brave his wrath again...

The roar momentarily died on his lips at the sight of the creature he faced - no fox, but rather a fully grown cougar crouched ready to spring. Artur's furious roar died down a moment but then came back in a defiant snarl, answered by the yowl of the big cat. Artur drew himself to his full height, painfully aware that his youthful frame was nowhere near the heft and musculature an adult male wolf would bear, that he would bear when he was grown. He raised his pale hackles to make himself even bigger, his tail lifting in a dominant posture that he didn't know if the cat would even recognize. His head he lifted high as well, but he tucked his chin down over his throat, and his ears stood stiffly high and pointed forward, his muzzle wrinkled in a threat that would be clear even to a creature not of a canine persuasion. This meat was his, not the cougar's, and he would not give it up as easily as the cat undoubtedly hoped.

The cougar's tail lashed in a threat of it's own as it circled him and snarled. Artur pivoted in place to keep his chest facing the cougar. Another few steps and the deer would be between the two of them. Artur hesitated a second, but he couldn't bring himself to let the cougar have the meal. Instead he gave a short, abortive rush, his snarl ratcheting up in volume. The cougar snarled back and swiped at him, but missed when Artur didn't follow through with his charge and so wasn't where he was expected.

Heartened, Artur rushed again, this time slamming right into the shorter but larger cat and bowling it over in a tangled clump of claws and fur, and jumped away again as the cat swiped at him. The cougar flailed its way back to its paws with a frustrated scream. Twice his tactics had worked, and maybe that made Artur a bit too cocky, or infuriated the cougar too far. This time when he made his feint, the cat leaped forward as well, one paw swatting down in a heavy strike at the pup's face. Artur jerked frantically backward, trying to arrest his forward speed but momentum was a terrible force that kept him moving inexorably forward at a rate that was simply too slow. Knowing in that split second that seemed to last an eternity that he'd never stop in time he simply dropped to his side, but could not entirely avoid the claws that slapped against his face.

He yelled in surprise at the sudden fire that burned icily down the side of his face and the sudden warmth of blood that spattered and dripped. No... no, not his eye, he couldn't be blind, it wasn't fair. He shook his head frantically to clear the blood as he backed rapidly away from the advancing cougar. Blinking, blinking but that eye was dark and the fire around it burned with pain - but then the blood finally cleared enough to see, and he could, he could see.

The cougar charged him again and slammed one hammerblow of a paw against Artur's ribs and sent him sprawling, and between the pain in his face and having the wind knocked out of him the youth decided that, in this case, discretion was certainly the better part of valor, and he retreated rapidly, by which one might say he turned tail and ran. The cougar chased him for only a short time before it turned back to the disputed meal, just in time to chase that fox away from it. Artur staggered onwards though, setting one foot blindly in front of the other with instinct directing him towards Celestial's lands. Blindly, because pain was taking from him the ability to take any real note of his surroundings, and blind, because the bloody claw wounds were swelling his eye shut and cutting off his sight once again.

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