hogging all the hog

Mitros did not waste time in taking advantage of his freedom. He did not want to hurt Tyrfing's feelings, but the life of a loner did not interest him any more then the life of a pirate had. The purple man had left in search of some, sacrifice, for a viking ceremony Mitros did not care to pry into. No sooner had he left their makeshift temporary den, did Mitros start to scrawl his apology in it's walls. He explained in the brief amount of written language he knew that he had to leave, to find independence and maybe one day, even his true name. Tyrfing would not begrudge him of it, that much he knew. Or hoped he knew.

A storm was visible in the distance and an inkling of worry came over Mitros at the sight of it. Tyrfing had gone out hunting much earlier in the day, had he missed the storm? Mitros hoped as much. The man was a capable hunter and was an adult in every right - he'd be okay, but the Regni boy had to move on ahead of the storm to ensure his own safety.

Rather then head toward it north, he made his way to the south east where he assumed the weather would be calmer. His stomach growled in hunger, a side effect of his rapid growth to dire height, he assumed. He'd eaten recently, had a massive elephant that him, Fin, and a few strangers had driven off a cliff. Mitros hated feeling hungry, and he changed course on his walk through the desert to head into the sweetgrass basin where he assumed he'd might find more prey.

He took the first scent trail he'd stumbled upon that had any freshness left to it, some pig of some sort, from what he'd gathered. Mitros was not as accomplished a hunter as Fin nor some of his other family members were, how other wolves could determine a specific species off a trail was still a mystery to him. A pig would feed him fine - so long as it was not a full grown boar that outweighed him and endangered him - and so he moved out to follow the trail deeper into the basin.

He did not notice the wind, too preoccupied with providing a good showing in his hunt. It was common for wolves to fail again and again in their attempts, and Mitros was determined to have a higher percentage of success then the average, even if his grandfather was not here to see it and reward him for his effort. The track was easy to follow in the sandy plain, easier yet when the land rounded down into a soft grass that had been made soaked by a recent heavy rain. The season had been a wet one so far which was unfortunate in itself, but it did make the trail easier to follow.

Mitros began his decent into the basin as the winds began, the rain beginning as first a drizzle, and then into a powerful downpour. Mitros would have stopped the hunt, except he could see the pig in the shallow valley. It too, had noticed the coming storm and was fleeing for shelter in the trees. Mitros did not take time to consider his actions and proceeded to sprint full out down across the soaked grass, watching the creature's movements carefully and following at speed. The wind was beginning to roar, drowning out the panicked squealing as well as his own huffed exhausted breaths. He had to focus on attempting to breathe from his mouth, as each inhale of the buffeting winds seemed to suck the air directly from his nostrils. Harder he ran, but he lost sight of the pig through the pouring rain.

He had a rough idea of where the creature was headed and continued his sprint, the tracking aided by the heavy imprint of his form that had trampled through the grass. That, and the unique shape of the terrain had given him enough to make an educated guess on, and eventually Mitros had found it. The pig was fleeing, but each time he'd reached the uphill slope he'd decided against it in his exhaustion, curving and following along the incline to look for a gentler climb upwards. By now the storm was becoming dangerous and Mitros was acting on instinct. He moved to cut off the pig's escape from the other side, his sound and scent covered easily by the rain. The next time the pig aimed to test the steepness of the slope, Mitros fell upon it. It died quickly beneath his fangs, but held too much weight for him to keep in entirety. Hurried by the impending danger and buffeted by winds strong enough to nearly cast him aside, Mitros tore as large a chunk of meat from it's belly as he could. With the prize in his maw, he began the climb up the steep slope, trusting the pig's instinct to get out of the flooding basin but with the strength and size to succeed in the climb.

Making it to the top, Mitros made it to the first bit of shelter he saw. A small, abandoned burrow at the base of a strong, aged tree. He ran for it, panting around the chunk of meat, and squeezed his oversized form inside. The den was built well, inclining upwards behind the tree so it would not be in danger of flooding. He made it up into the raised space, and came face to face with another.

A young pygmy hog - likely the child of the pig he'd slaughtered and now held in his maw. Without a home or a family, soaked to the bone and afraid, Mitros felt a kinship for it. There was no question in his mind what he was to do next. He curled around the creature forcibly, feeling it panic against his heavy form but remaining in place until it settled. The storm would remain for hours, and the two locked in place in a den too small, would perhaps begin to trust each other.

Word Count: 1021