Witch's Marsh After the foxes have known our taste

Trade thread ~ for ranger or hunter (#2)

Soon he was trailing through a half-frozen mess of slushing, foul earth. It wasn't entirely solid but it wasn't exactly a river or creek either; somewhere in the middle, then. The season had chilled everything so that it was a mess of muddy, icey terrain.

Thankfully, Larus had grown in to his body by now. No longer was he the stout and chubby little boy who struggled to keep afloat in water; he was tall, broad-shouldered, a powerful mountain of a man like his father before him. He could traipse across the slick marshland without too much issue, and soon enough even the cold  of the winterscape was but a mild numbness on his extremeties.

Here too, he would pause and investigate scents, sounds, and any indication of life. There was no way to tell scat apart from piles of mud — though he did manage to locate some disturbed soil; a wide patch within which something might've been dragged. It smelled like some sort of mustelid but it was also quite musty, a little foul. Something old had come through here.

He was on the right track.

Despite picking his way carefully and quietly through the freezing marsh sludge, Coast was more in the mood of a scavenger than a pursuant  that day. He moved with a hunter's wiles—careful not to be seen or heard—but what he stalked he did not intend to capture. Instead he observed, from a well-off distance; watching the gradual progression of a true hunt. He had eaten recently himself, so took this endeavor casually until the stranger seemed to find something substantial to follow, and Coast perked up and hunkered down with a greedy smile.

He continued to follow from afar, sizing up the "lone" wolf in his silver-laced coat, and determining his own likelihood of taking whatever this wolf might turn up with at the end of this trail.

Thanks for joining! :)

Larus was invested in his investigation and was oblivious to the stranger that patrolled so near to his position; his nose was full of that musty animal scent, and his entire body was engaged in a lowly stalking maneuver. The path was obvious at first. A large swath of greenery had been exposed by something pulling away the snow, but as soon as his path tapered towards this clue, the path seemed to vanish. At first Larus thought he had gone the wrong way - that he had been misled - and so he doubled back and rechecked his findings.

But no, it seemed as if the path led to a collection of pines, and the scent was thinned beneath them. He could smell the wet scent of muddy soil easily enough, and it was perfumed by the needles scattered throughout. The animal smell was present but it was thin, and Larus was at a loss. He rounded about the trees a few times before growing tired and frustrated with his efforts, and came out the other side from the shadows, snorting to rid his nose of the pine scent and shaking his scruff to relieve his mild irritation.

Coast was getting himself worked up as the followed the hunter. Something about preying on another predator fascinated him, and he wondered why he didn't do it more often. Imagine how let down the mercenary was when he realized that the hunt was lost, his quarry having given up on this particular trail to follow. He didn't have the patience to wait until he found another, but he was irritated enough to complain about it.

"Oi!" he shouted over the distance, stomping downhill with his tail flag-poling behind him. "What's with the givin' up, then? I was depending on you to get us some grub, pal." His tone was markedly derisive.

Terribly sorry for the wait!