The Hunt is On [Karin]

[serryph]

Shayne could feel the growl building in his chest as he crouched down, his mane brushing the floor as he crept through the grass. He was following his nose mostly, his jaw open slightly as he paced forward. Padded paws felt the earth before stepping, to make sure it would not shift, and he could smell the herd of deer upon the meadow that was closest to the Caldo border. He could faintly smell the border lands as well, where all scents of people kept a tinge of fire, soot and lightning about them.

Swiftly he banished the thought of Caldo, as his anger rose and his lips lifted to bare large teeth in a snarl. He was hunting, and he must not be distracted. It was the perfect day for a hunt. Sunny, but not too bright, and cool but not chilly. The breeze blew towards him, bringing him the scent of the deer, and hiding his own from them.

Finally, he was able to peer through the grass and spotted the prey he was after. A young buck, watchful as ever, but grazing between his glances around. With a soft rustle, he settled further into a hunting crouch, hindquaters shifting and tail twitching.

With a soft grunt, he leaped forward, claws out and a growl rumbling from his chest as he launched towards the stag from behind. It started to bolt, but his claws sank into its haunches, his weight dragging its rump to the ground. The smell of blood rose to his nostrils, and a fierce roar sent the herd to full out flight, leaving their brother behind as he dragged it down fully and bloodied his teeth to kill it. The large lion snarled again as he bent to begin eating.

What have I become? He wondered absently, remembering a time when he had sat down at a table and ate cooked food. But that had been long before, and he had found, along with his Rogue status, that he enjoyed raw meat, at least while in lion form. It was so much easier than having to skin and gut the animal before being able to cut it up to cook and eat. He could just rip into it. And with that though, his teeth sank into the dead stag's stomach, finding juicy morsels and letting the rest of the prairie fall silent at his bloody feast.

[SUNIL]

It was time to hunt again. Every morning, the young woman rose from her bed, pulled on a pair of beige breeches and a white shirt with the sleeves shorn off, followed by a pair of black boots and a daypack slung over her shoulder. She left the walls of Caldo with the sun just beginning to rise over the Eastern horizon, and her footsteps started to carry her off in its direction. Today, she would venture farther away from Caldo to do her hunting. The amount of prey around the kingdom had been poor for the last few weeks, and the hunter could use a proper getaway. This morning, she was bound for the neutral lands, where no doubt the herds of deer were heading to drink from the great lake before it froze over for the winter.

Karin had prepared herself to hunt on foot, but she didn’t travel far before she lost patience with the speed that her human legs could carry her. She hunched forward and jumped, and upon landing, she ran on fours, a gold-tinted Mexican wolf. Her pointed ears flattened back, her long legs carrying her at much greater speeds than she could possibly run on two, and her short, golden fur made her appear almost a dingo from anyone at a distance. She ran harder than she had in a long time, the sweet relief of speed driving her faster and faster forward. It was nice to get away from Caldo for a time, away from the problems that lingered in her soul when she was there. Out here, performing her duties to her new people, Karin was as close to happy as she could be.

It was later in the morning before Karin reached the neutral lands, but just as she suspected, the closer she got to the lakes, the stronger the scent of prey lingered on her nostrils. She slowed to a walk now and chose a particularly strong trail of smells to follow. There must have been ten deer at least, judging by the prints of their hooves in the dead leaves and mud. The golden wolf lowered herself down and crept through the pathway, making sure to brush herself against bushes and grasses while she slunk along to rid herself of any trace of the smell of Caldo on her person.

She turned a corner, and there in front of her stood the herd in a meadow. A great number of deer grazed there, with two or three bucks among many more does. They already were shifting warily, but remained at enough peace that Karin could slink just a bit farther to get the correct trajectory on one particular buck. He was smaller than the others, but every inch of him was lean meat; just a few weeks before he started growing fat for the winter. Karin salivated.

She crouched down a little lower and squirmed a step forward. The wolf balanced her weight on her front paws, just enough to give her the power she needed to spring forward, while her haunches coiled to launch her up on his back. She prepared herself… took one more step forward… and just when she was about to leap, a streak of color leapt before she got the chance to, and the herd was fleeing. A great lion had lunged at the very buck she was waiting for the pristine moment to leap upon, and he was already tearing into it before it was even dead. A flashback danced across her eyelids for the briefest of moments and she tensed, an anger rising within her, and she stepped out of her bushes with her hackles raised.

“You ruined my kill.” she complained, disdain clear in her lupine voice. “And scared off all the others.” She sat down and watched the lion tear into the buck without remorse. Her words drifted off into a listless memory and she frowned as much as any wolf could. Even her rage was halfhearted these days… what was becoming of her?

[serryph]

A voice addressed him. A whiny one. He growled, rising from his crouch and swallowing the chunk of meat he had just ripped from the deer. Blood dripped down sharp fangs as he turned, tail lashing. Staring hard at the wolf, he scrutinized her, letting his jaws hang open to catch her scent better. A disdainful look entered his expression as his ears flattened into his mane.

The wolf was much smaller than him, despite her raised hackles, and the complaint in her voice didn't impress him. " I ruined no kill. I simply succeeded in my own.. You should have been faster." His own fur raised a little, and he shook out his dark mane, flicking his tail as he glared at her, teeth still bared and bloody. Muscles shifted, ready for a possible attack.

"Only the strongest get the kills here, and you're welcome to what might remain after I am finished. Though I doubt a wolf like you is likely to drop down so low as to scavenge like a coyote or jackal." Hunger was making him a little more amiable towards her presence. He was more focused on his meal than on the threat she might pose.

Part of him hoped she would go away to let him eat in peace, and part of him wished for the company, even of a wolf. After all, lions were animals of a group. Besides, she was female. A part of his mind went over her again. She was attractive, for a wolf, and absentmindedly he wondered how she would look outside of her shifted form. Shayne scrutinized her carefully. Golden eyes that meant she was either a rogue or from Caldo. Anger flared in him at his thought of his former comrades that lived there now. He took a deep breath once more, trying to gain a better sample of her scent.

[SUNIL]

The creation of Caldo had tamed the once roguish Lightning hunter. Where once she had been a ruthless loner, an independent and selfish and difficult character, she had started to become responsible and understanding, almost caring, even. The realization that her halfhearted rage didn’t send her flying at the lion without a second thought at his opposing size and strength irritated her but it was his mocking tone that finally made the gears catch in the old Karin’s mind. She had become more docile over time, but she was still Karin, the most prized hunter of Caldo, and she was not to be toiled with with such an air of disregard. Her golden eyes flashed dangerously, and a dark rumble of a growl made her ribcage quaver. If it was a fight and a run for his money he was after, he would get it. Karin could still deliver quite the blow when rubbed the wrong way.

After spending so much time with Conall, the feeling of an animal’s tongue attempting common language felt sandpapery, and to deliver all the right messages, Karin decided to shift. Where once stood an angry, golden wolf became a short and slender woman with her hunting clothes, her short, fair hair unkempt from dashing through the woods, but the familiar flash in her eyes was unmistakable. They narrowed, and in another half a second she had an arrow drawn and strung back on her bow, pointing straight at him. Of course, she wasn’t planning on shooting him, but she was hell-bent on proving a point. “Mock me again and I’ll be feeding you to the masses.” She glared savagely, which was a strangely soothing sensation. It felt right to be furious again; intense emotion had all but vanished from her lately.

If there was one steadfast characteristic of Karin that could never die, it was her lack of fear in dangerous situations. Though small and female, and almost certainly incapable of taking on a full-grown lion in human form, her expression was bold and hot, and her feet stayed rooted to the spot. “You’ve just made my day more inconvenient, is all. It’ll take another hour to track them down at the least.” She said more faltering this time, taking a brief moment to realize just how whiny she had let herself appear before. The realization made her brows furrow and the line across her lips turn into a tighter frown. “Perhaps it is you who should learn to be more stealthy.” And with that, she felt satisfied enough to lower her arrow and slip it back into the quiver slung over one shoulder. She eyed him calculatingly for a moment. By appearance, he seemed like he should belong to the same Kingdom as her, but he carried no scent of Caldo, and she should have recognized him if he did. “I’m Karin, by the way.”

[serryph]

Reddish eyes watched her shift, his head tipping up a little, since now her head was above his. The blond virago was glaring at him vehemently, and swiftly pulled her bow from its place and put an arrow to string, aiming at him. Boldly, Shayne lifted his maned head proudly, his lips raising in a slight snarl, even as his breath chuffed in lion laughter.

A bow? Did she think that would stop him long enough for her to get from the range of his claws? Part of him longed to leap at her, to rend her with claws and teeth, to feel the blood of an enemy between his jaws, but hunger drove him to stay by his kill as she spoke about how he had inconvenienced her and then faltered as she seemed to realize how she was being whiny.

He laughed at her comment of how he should be more stealthy, and bared his teeth in a vicious grin. "What need is there for stealth when one has the kill in one's claws?" He watched her put the arrow away, and then sat on his haunches, his head nearly reaching her chest, and examined her closely. She was slender, a huntress in this form as surely as in her other, and her eyes were quite startling in the way that they matched her hair, but it was attractive. Even how she stood, still on guard, how her temper flared.

A lion's grin on his face, he half bowed, dipping his head a little in acknowledgement. 'My name is Shayne." He let his claws flex for a moment, muscles rippling all the way through his shoulders under tawny fur and dark mane, and his voice shifted to a deep purr. "Karin.. a beautiful name."

[SUNIL]

Karin narrowed her goldenrod eyes again, and by looking over the lion once more, she decided that she didn’t like him all that much. The initial moment was so familiar to her, almost exactly like another hunting incident from years prior, except that the lion had been faster, and she wasn’t caught in his trajectory mid-leap. He was confident, boastful, and so many other characteristics like any warrior that belonged to the Fire tribe of old, so why did he have to remind her of him? He did, in a way, but in all the wrong directions. She eyed him up and ignored his laughter, though her muscles tensed under her pale skin again. She was not in the mood to fight, really. She was tired of the verbal wars. If she had to defend herself, let it be with her arrows or her fists, but for now she swallowed her tongue and pursed her lips.

So, Karin chose to take a more professional route and introduced herself while she looked him over. As soon as she acted more the part of a diplomat, he seemed to follow along with ease, and even offered her a little bow. Shayne. The name didn’t sound familiar either. She gave half a nod and let out a silent breath of air through her nostrils, in turn helping her muscles to relax a little bit. His deep purr only made her raise an eyebrow, and one of the corners of her lips twitched upward. “If you say so.” She replied back to him coolly, giving a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. The Lightning hunter had grown up around men that were quick and like liquid velvet with their words. She half expected to hear them by default now.

It seemed to her that this Shayne character had forgotten about his kill, or rather, the kill that should have been hers. She eyed it, momentarily, before looking back at him. “Don’t let me interrupt your meal.” She sashayed to the side and glanced off in the direction the other deer had headed. “It’d be a shame to let that buck go to waste. I really ought to go after them and at least catch something…” Karin frowned. “I don’t think Caldo would take it too lightly if its hunters made long trips and came back empty handed.” When she looked back at him, the lingering disdain flashed in her eyes for the briefest of moments. If only she had gotten a hold of that buck a second sooner…

[serryph]

Shayne noted her cool response with a slight tilting of his head, an let his jaw drop in a slight grin. Her reminder of his meal was punctuated by a growl of his stomach, and he chuffed with laughter gently. He stood, and turned slightly, before pausing to look at her. His round ears pricked forward from under his mane, a strange urge upon him. Reddish eyes looked her over, a tentative offer slipping from his lips. "If you allow me to take the time for choice tidbits, I can help you hunt. It has been a long while since I have hunted in any way but solitary..."

The hunter waited momentarily for a reply, settling into a comfortable crouch by the buck, his tufted tail twitching slightly. He wasn't sure if she would accept his help, or even if he truly wanted to give it. He wasn't sure where this lovely woman was from, but she didn't smell particularly like Caldo, but they were so very close to the border, that he didn't believe she could be from anywhere else, and she certainly didn't smell of the other kingdoms.

[SUNIL]

Karin’s golden eyes were scanning the forest line back and forth, taking note of every small break in the trees and bushes that had been caused by the herd in their panic. It seemed like they had all gone in the same direction, at least, which was good; she wouldn’t have to chase after lost, terrified individuals. Their scent was still strong on her nostrils, even in human form. The Lightning hunter began to calculate her next mode of attack – they’d be wary of any movement on the ground, now. Their eyes would be peeled for any flash of movement, even one created by a smaller wolf, or human, now that a lion had jumped them. She narrowed her eyes a little and scanned more, a quiet hmm sneaking past her lips.

Her focus had become so intense that she hardly noticed Shayne speak, at first. They fell on muffled ears, but once they clicked in her mind, she flashed him another hostile glare. “I don’t need help.” She said scornfully. He hadn’t said it in an offensive way, but Karin’s fuse was easy to light and difficult to put out once it was lit. One thing was for certain: Karin didn’t wait for anyone, and certainly not for someone who was devouring her choice buck. She eyed him briefly while he settled back down next to his kill and rolled her neck to crack it.

Then, an idea came to mind. She grinned and stretched her arms out and back, arching her back like a feline, and casually shifted around again. “You can come along if you can keep up with me… and if you can manage to be quiet.” Her words reeked of challenge, and with that, she sprang into action. Karin shot forward in the same direction that the deer had run off to, grabbed the lowest branch of a nearby tree, and swung herself up amongst the branches and falling leaves. She leapt from branch to branch, leaned forward to do so quietly, and danced off after the herd. She’d spent enough time in the trees that it felt natural there. If not for being a wolf, she would surely shift into a tree-climber. It felt exhilarating up here, and she let herself let out one musical note of laughter as she left him behind.