March 01, 2021, 07:33 PM
set in Lupine Flower Meadow
The meadow was winterworn, almost dreary, with its brush dried to a withered brown and its blossoms still dormant. Even so, life hid in the corners and undercurrents for those who were patient -- or keen. Imaq likely would not have been able to answer if she was either, as such a query would have likely flustered her to the point of stammering. The caramel and mocha splotched shepherd of buttercream found herself amongst the browning stalks regardless, arched over pale legs and the similar permafrost of patchwork white beneath her feathered feet.
She had been squatted low over the scrape since Siqiniq's rise in the glow of a lavender turned primrose sky, the taut and disciplined form she relentlessly held uncannily similar to the one Aakkuluk had taught her. Once, she had prowled the lands of ice as fiercely as any nanuk. In that time, she had been the daughter of Sedna; it had been breathing holes she crouched over and seals that she pulled from the inky abyss of her mother's unseen realms. Now, she was daughter to none -- except maybe Taqqiq, who had heard her cry in the night more than any mother who raised her -- and it was the soft white pelt of a snowshoe hare that she waited for some pale flicker of.
When it came, the northron found that her skills had not grown rusty. She dove, paws slamming down on either side of the startled creature as open jaws snatched and snapped fatally -- less like a nanuk and more like a leopard seal. She tucked the dispatched hare in the snowdrifts around her, rubbing herself in the powdery, melting cold to hide her scent as she returned to her perch once more and readied herself for when the next rabbit would eventually decide to leave the den.