Let the poison call my name
The tall grass plains weren't so tall at the moment. As he had ventured just outside of his territory to get some fresh air. The winter dragging along felt like a mild quiet before the storm. Rivaxorus was filled with a soft sense of worry. Sure things seemed okay at the moment, but when was it when other wolves started to target them. When his members were in danger, and unable to defend themselves. Well, he trusted them well enough to protect themselves. He made it clear enough that they had to work together as well.
He kept his large head closer to the ground. He would be two years soon, and it felt like he had lived for so much longer. It made him chuckle slightly. He would have to be proud of how far he had gotten. However pride could easily be his down fall. Like many other places in the past. As he raised his head. He hummed a little to himself. |
A silent belch flapped Marleen's mouth pouches, the only effort she'd given it was to lift her head an inch and part her lips enough for fate, physics, and mechanics to do the rest of the work. Where she lay, she could feel a frozen, hardened bed of grasses beneath her, the warmth of her fortunate double-coat enough to thaw back inches of last night's white fluffy bullshit. The remains of her meal still bled lightly between her paws, a hard-earned raccoon carcass, eaten in such a way that its remains looked as disgusting as possible. A stickly birch tree rose overhead, once majestic but now a skeleton, coat-rack bitch to winter's present of cold, wet, and fluffy. When the colder nights would hit, those same presents would harden into thick ice, compound themselves with more snow, and eventually snap of the branches of its bedding tree in gratefulness.
Marleen's eyes alone swiveled to meet a new, steady sound, the rest of her head and ears and expression frozen in motionless. She observed him for some time. His gait, his expression, the way he carried his weight on his bones, his scent of uneasiness and perhaps that of forced relaxation, to the very shine of his pelt. She estimated he was close in age to her, but only a few seasons younger. His size was a colloseus compared to her, but such matters of physics or fight survival were far from her thoughts. He traveled past her, continuing away from her. She observed more, than got up, her legs spread oddly, but with a pattern of exherting as little energy as possible - even though balance might have required more calories than standing did. With her teeth and front paws, she manipulated her carcass, until she carried something in her mouth.
With a strange motion, she propelled herself from standing to power-walking as if there had been no in-between ramping up of speed. With long strides compared to her loafy body and lack of a neck, her legs daintily and effortlessly surged her forwards, fast enough to catch up, and exactly parallel to his pawprints in the snow, as if Marleen had traveled on a rail exactly two feet from his trail the entire time. When she was nearly upon him, still she traveled parallel. When she had two feet distance with her infront of him, she attempted an exact two foot radius half-circle (a u-turn), and attempted to stop so that there was two feet between her facing him.
She looked at him, unblinking and expressionless, her eyes fixed on his face but unmoving. Then she cocked her head. When it reached as far as it would go, she snapped it back forcibly upright like a bobble head or a head banger. Then she flung her object exactly between them. It rolled a bit in the snow.
The object was entirely round, an inch in diameter, pliable, shiny, and white but slighly pink. On one end, a brown circle, and in the exact center of that circle, a black circle. Upon closer inspection, one might observe that the brown held striations, and that the entire object had tiny streaks of veins of red and pink.