Wolf RPG

He had frightened the ducks by accident and had driven them into the center of the lake.

The raucous birds bobbed on the gray water like little dark skiffs, watching him and tattling on him in their noisy, honking language. He watched them back, tongue lolling, sides heaving. His breath floated like a mist around his face. He'd tried to get close enough to catch one, but he was not an ambush predator. And he was too hungry to be patient and careful.

Skífa sighed heavily and licked his nose. He glanced at the sky, which was downy gray and puffy with clouds. The sun was behind them, somewhere. A nebulous white orb barely visible through the cloud cover. Over the dark, wet fragrance of the lake, there was the smell of coming snow or sleet, and the wind was preternaturally calm as if holding its breath, waiting for the weather to turn. Skífa looked at the ducks again.

He smirked, thinking if he was that mountain lion he'd met the other day he probably could have caught one by now. Maybe even two. He was surprised, actually, that she hadn't come hunting him yet - maybe she was being honest when she said she didn't hunt wolves.

"Ghha." Skífa kicked the murky ice-water and waded out from the shallows. He shook himself off, even though it was only his legs that were wet, and started trotting around toward the opposite side of the lake. Maybe he'd have better luck over there.

On the way here, he remembers what his mother had told him. He'd been maybe only four months old, walking with her through the Mojave for days without food nor water when he lost his footing and fell end over end into a karst. Mamá had slid down to save him, to drag him up again. She was panting. With his scruff in her mouth, she'd told him this: 

La proxima vez, no podré salvarte.

He watches the ducks from the lakeshore, sitting on their reflections. Every once in a while, they would test him, honking and flapping, before settling down again. 

They didn't fool him. He would be patient, sit quiet until one of them bit off more than they could chew. One of them always bobbed over, its head at a slant, smooth and dumb like a golf club. He swallows. His heart rate increases and he feels the surge of new blood go to his head. Ven aquí, ven aquí. So close, just one flying leap away, close enough to smell the oil on the feathers.

He tried to find better luck. He found another wolf instead.

They were dun like the desert and patiently guarding a strip of lakeshore. Skífa lurched to a standstill as soon as he spotted him and dropped his head low. His scruff piled with barely raised hackles like porcupine quills, and he gnashed his teeth tentatively.

He almost chuffed with laughter. The stranger was just sitting there, like some kind of gargoyle. Sightseeing. Watching the ducks. Then he noticed a few of the birds had paddled closer, dark as driftwood, playing a game of chicken with the Mojave wolf. Closer than he'd ever managed to get to them. Skífa held his breath and crouched in the tangled snags of grass, leering at the fowl.

Closer, he thought; closer. He'd spring if the desert wolf didn't, but if the stranger made a move first... Skífa glanced at the other wolf with a thieving look in his eye.

He was hungry, he was half-starved, or even three-quarters of the way there. He was shaking not with anticipation but with the effort of fighting his instinct. His mind knelling like an ambulance. But he remained rooted to his foothold. Shared a quarter second of duck-wolf eye contact.

There, too close. Perhaps only two or three centimetres that made up the difference between life and possible death. That was enough for him. 

What he feels after his legs tensing up is the air parting in front of him. And then the water, ice-cold. So cold he doesn't notice the moment when his mouth closes around the duck's thin neck. When they start wrestling in the shallows. 

An eyeful of lake water. Feathers and blood in his mouth, the metallic taste filling his nose. The duck lurches in each cardinal direction— north, south, east, west, each time weaker than the last, before it finally dies.

His head snaps to the stranger. His lips, peeled over his teeth, are beginning to turn blue. Vete, he thinks, but he knows this is in vain.

Tension corded around them like garrote wire. Skífa felt the knot in his throat, the scorching in his lungs of a withheld breath.

The duck was there. Right there. Skífa almost lunged. But the stranger pounced first. The shallows leaped around him. The duck flailed, windpipe pinched, making shrill gargled cries and furious flapping sounds. Then the death rattle. Then silence.

Skífa darted toward the sullen shoreline, mounting a face-off with the hunter. Attempting to stop them from exiting the shallows. He could see the other young wolf's dismal state the closer he came. Half-starved, like him, and probably cold. He didn't feel sorry for him, he told himself. To prove it, Skífa bared his teeth in what was a half-smile and half-threat. His ears towered on the plane of his skull, and his hackles made a ridge down his back. "Hand over," he growled, and his breath coalesced in little wet clouds around his muzzle. "You catch another one, eh? Not too hard for you, I think."

No. Another catch, impossible.

He turned back. The rest of the ducks were gone, wings outstretched on some distant draft. Feathers floated around him— tail feathers, flight feathers, down feathers, caught on the same surface tension that let bugs walk on water. 

The duck's head lolls to the side. Its open mouth was wet and red. He puts a paw over one of its twisted wings, tries and fails not to let the shaking show. 

And where was mamá? Far away. Dead in a tar pit about two hundred miles down south. Cause of death was lack of oxygen but he knew subconsciously that the real cause was desperation. For a while he had been proud of himself for succeeding where she had failed, but desperation was the very emotion that was overwhelming him now. 

One last warning snarl.

"Your problem." Skífa hitched his lips higher, exposing more gumline and more teeth. He slung his head lower, shielding his throat. Any hope of the stranger making this easy quickly evaporated.

Hope... he was stupid for hoping for too much.

Weight shifted slightly off his right foreleg, more into his thighs. He stayed taut like a bowstring, ready to lunge one way or the other. He could tell the other wolf was shaking, even though he tried to hide it. "You want to get out of here, you give me the food." As he said this, Skífa was seized by a cheerful sort of desperation that made it impossible not to smile. Adrenaline made him jittery, and the threat of violence made his stomach churn, and he felt almost faint with fatigue. But he wasn't alone in this race to the bottom. The whole world was against both of them, and everything was going awry. If only one of them got to eat today, Skífa wanted it to be him.

"Tell you what," he added lowly, "you tear off a wing. Take it with you, eat. Give me the rest, and you can go. No trouble."

He tensed, slouching low. Desperate wolves don't talk back; he readied for a fight.

Filled to the brim with empty cardiac bravado, he sways on his feet. Distantly, he notices the stranger smiling, wonders if he's gone insane. He wants to yell, take his hair by the fists and dig his elbows into the dirt. Nausea, or hunger, or both, fills his mouth with saliva.

Two wings, he insists, vengeful. He was well aware that this could end with him facedown in the mud with no breath to call for help. He was not scared of death but he still flinched away from pain just like any other living thing. 

In a moment of disassociation he sees himself dead in the mud. Two wings, I leave, you never see me again. He felt very foolish when he bartered. Because in truth he'd never had anything in his pockets other than lint and the implacable need to stay alive. 

What was this? Vertigo? Hatred? His thoughts were congested, in gridlock. His face moved of its own accord.

Skífa considered him for a long moment. His face was sapped of all emotion, host to nothing but the dense, steely-eyed look of a wild animal. No fight? Mentally, he staggered, caught off-guard.

Then the smile smeared back on his lips like an oil fire. "Fine," he agreed. "Two wings. Then you go. Catch yourself something else somewhere, huh? You'll live." His tone had lightened, much in contrast to his earlier low throttles. It could even be considered friendly out of context. Yet a little warning voice in the back of his head warned him this could be a trick, warned him he could be double-crossed if he let his guard down too much; if he placed too much faith in the bargain before it was settled. His gaze was sharp and cunning, still; still anticipating a fight.

But for now, he eased back and opted to trust the other wolf not to flee - to take just the two wings and disappear.

The stranger's smile disappears. He is sure that this is the end. Cochise squints and looks away as if shying away from a bright light, but what he's really doing is making sure that he's going to die with his eyes closed. A few moments pass. 

He is still alive. 

A sigh of relief is straining at his lungs but he must remain in control. He tears off each wing, worrying it back and forth until it comes away with the sound of ripping wet paper. 

He must remain tense. He must remain conscious of the knotted bodies, how one step of the stranger's equaled nearly two steps of his. When he is safe, as close to safe as possible, then he can cross his arms and wait for the world to make sense. For now he takes the wings with the same coarse and jutting motions of a man with a gun to his head. 

In a dun blur, scattered feathers, he's gone.

The pair fretted over each other's motives, but the little Lobo made good on his deal and carved off the two wings from the duck. Skífa relaxed even more. He was half-convinced the stranger would try running with the duck in tow. He would have if their places were switched.

Wings in hand, the stranger sped off like a gunshot. Skífa hove forward and snatched the rest of the duck, then idly watched the other wolf go until he'd disappeared into the snarled lake foliage and gray winter weather. Skífa skulked away from the shore too, into denser wildlands, and scarfed down. It was the first half-way decent meal he'd had in recent memory.

A powdering of feathers obscured the site of his meal. Snow started coming down in thick white flakes. Skífa looked north, licked his chops, and left the lake behind.