Stone Circle Meal time

Merrit watched his sister play from his perch upon the clearing's log, until his mother's scent drew close and he lifted his gaze to catch her approach. Arlette made quick work to cover the ground between them, but the boy simply stared with a curious blink at what their mother carried in her jaws.

The creature's limp body rivalled his size, and wrapped with a pattern he didn't recognize as anything wolf - or anything he'd seen before. It was this that drew his ears forward, and after a moment of distant calculation, he hopped from the log and approached with senses outstretched.

While his sister gnawed and chewed at every inch of the still creature's body, Merrit circled her frenzied dance until he reached a point where he could see its face more clearly. Its eyes remained open and strangely glossed, and when he reached out to touch the bloodied fur around its neck, the body radiated with a cool and fading warmth. Strange. He pressed his ear against the body and waited. He couldn't feel the rhythm, that gentle churn of the heart he felt in his mother, his father, his sisters, and in his own chest.

"Whasswrong?"  He turned to face his mother, for though he had been fed many times before, and had seen the carcass of many kills, he had never thought to question this before - the body of a creature still so intact that it looked like it could be sleeping, but wasn't. And though he had seen his mother tear up carcasses before, he hadn't questioned how the creatures had grown so still, or why they didn't beat with the lifeblood he and his family held. But his childlike mind was growing, and the breadth of his questions with him.