aniruk couldn't seem to move through these lands fast enough. fresh wolf-scent lingered just around every bend, haunting him. he'd left to find solitude, and in it, perhaps some semblance of self or purpose — but such an existence seemed worlds away from the crowding he'd found instead. was there no place in the world where wolves did not rule?
disease lurked here, too; he'd smelled it on dead caribou left to rot, and on living ones wandering aimlessly with no fear for the wolf who walked at their side. unnatural, he thought, and shuddered, for he knew better than most what it was to be at the mercy of spirits.
today he'd had good luck, though; a corpse free of the scent of disease or other wolves. the stale scent of a big cat lingered, but aniruk figured the other predator was long gone. he tore at the meat without reservation, glad for the frost that had preserved it past when it should have spoiled. he would have no such luck when spring came to these lands, warm as they already were.
Somewhere north of the glacier, a rabbit darted past Meerkat. It quickly disappeared, though the sight of it reminded her of hunting with Issorartuyok on their trip down to the caldera not so long ago. Abruptly, she felt bereft and very, very lonely. She had taken such care to build a good life in Duskfire Glacier and now it was all falling apart.
She fell to her haunches, then oozed to the cold ground. She laid like that for a few moments before Meerkat curled into a ball and began bawling.
the meat wasn't the best, but the meal was filling and unlikely to make him sick; passable, until an ugly childlike wail interrupted aniruk mid-chew. then it continued, and he realized it was sobbing. his ears flattened, and he started to chew again slowly, swallowing in harried silence.
relative silence, anyway. the sobbing stretched on, and aniruk was agitated enough to search for the source, expecting a lost child or something of the sort. what he found instead, when he finally spotted the lone figure curled up on the ground, was a grown woman.
aniruk frowned, pawsteps slowing as he took in the situation from what little distance remained between them. no blood that he could scent or see, no sign of struggle; he was baffled. what happened to you?
he asked in solemn, probing tones as he moved closer, expecting some kind of tragedy and feeling an obligation to offer aid.
This time, when someone happened across her during her emotional display, Meerkat couldn't bring herself to care. It was a total stranger, in any case. She hiccuped and raised her head to look at him through smeary eyes, then shook her head and waved him away with a paw. She buried her head in the crook of her own foreleg and continued sobbing, her heart breaking in her chest over Issorartuyok, the pups they'd never have and the home they were about to leave behind. She was losing everything.
Although her snout was smashed into her own armpit, Meerkat suddenly smelled something that made her lapse into abrupt silence. Slowly, she pulled her head free and lifted it again, looking around as she blinked the last few tears from her eyes. The yearling tipped her muzzle into the air and tried to fully capture the scent, her mouth watering as the odor of blood and meat filled it.
"Where—where is it?" she yelled in a nasally voice, beginning to push onto all fours. "Where's the meat?" Had she ever felt so ravenously hungry in her life?
the wolf looked up, and within moments her expression changed from despair to... hunger? what the fuck? it's the wasting madness, he thought — irrationally, for the girl called for meat rather than water. but already his imagination swept him away, and he thought he saw her eyes wide and white-rimmed, and the beginnings of froth at the corners of her mouth. his whole body went rigid, hackles rippling as he stepped back, lips peeling away from his teeth in a silent snarl. stay away, his body language warned.
She hadn't necessarily been speaking to the stranger in particular, though her eyes flicked to him as he backed off with a defensive snarl. On a normal day, Meerkat would've caught herself and tried to diplomatically deescalate the situation, probably starting with a dozen apologies for her behavior. But something about the way he lifted his lips and bared his teeth stirred some crazy instinct within her.
The yearling didn't attack, though she stood tall and puffed out her fur, her head raising and her tail curling over her back. She kept her eyes pinned on the stranger even as she sidestepped in the direction of the tantalizing odor of a carcass. She desperately needed meat and she wasn't going to let some rando get between her and a juicy venison steak.
aggression set the sandy wolf alight, another stark change in a matter of moments, but this fire burned with a control that a sick wolf would not have possessed. aniruk felt his own mood shift now, from fear to indignant anger. his own posture inflated to mirror hers, fur still bristling. are you crazy?
he demanded, though his mind was already made up on the matter. she wasn't mad with illness; she was just plain mad. and his sympathy had run dry.
Her reaction seemed to trigger the strange man. "Are you crazy?" he barked at her and Meerkat nodded. She felt like a total madwoman right now. She certainly wasn't herself. Maybe all the shit life had flung at her lately had finally tipped her over the edge. Or maybe, as her mother posited, she would go into her first heat soon and become a creature driven by nothing but primal instincts.
"Yes," she corroborated the nodding motion of her head, her own lips peeling back in a sort of maniacal grimace, "but I'm not here for you. I'm here for..." Meerkat swung her head toward the carcass in the distance, "that."
Without another word to him, she pivoted and sprinted toward the remains. Meerkat didn't even bother examining them or figuring out what sort of creature she was eating. It was there for the taking, so she fell upon it, feeding the impulse to fill her stomach to the brim with all the nutrients this meat could offer her.