Sleepy Fox Hollow the icarus to your certainty

Mayblossom was a creature of many talents. Subterfuge, wit, power and prestige. 

She also knew when she was being stalked.

In her jaws lay the creature that did it. A coyote, young and overconfident, starving in the winter. Its pelt would hardly be the best thing in the world, but perhaps she could gift it to someone among Paleo.

She strode through the territory with the creature in mouth, before she would make it to her center of tanning. There, she would methodically begin her work, with the grim face of a doctor preforming a surgery. Or a mortician, perhaps, giving feat to the dead.

an illness had waylaid wylla, bringing her down into rest for now. mahler stepped into her duties easily, as they had worked together for a long while. 
the scent of coyote struck his nostrils, and mahler veered in that direction with a rippling of hair along his neck. 
he found mayblossom with the creature dead. mahler relaxed somewhat, though his eyes shone with interest at her work. "vhere did you kill it?" he grunted, wondering if she would allow him to watch.

She looked up with a tiny smear of blood across her nose, before she would raise her head off her work, regarding Mahler with a friendly wave of her tail.

Just inside the borders to the north. I checked for more, but it seems this one got in over his head. He was alone. A small pang of sympathy for the creature, before May reached up to run her paw through its coat with a little “tsk”.

Hes young. Probably a fresh dispersal who only just got chased off. His coat is ragged with starvation. I will do my best to make it so he is at least dignified in death how he wasn’t in life.

mayblossom had killed the animal but seemed to hold empathy for it. a respect for the dead thing beneath her paw.
mahler settled nearby.
"usually i scatter them at the borders," the advisor said softly, contemplatively. he gestured. "how vill you set him up?"

She hummed, leaning back from the coyote to observe the body, thinking of what to do.

He is a bit too scraggly to make any sort of good den liner. Perhaps a child’s first pelt, a warm coat for when they need it. He will suit such a purpose. The idea in her mind, now she just needed to get to work.

She started to skin the creature, taking little breaks in her task to readjust and ensure everything was held straight and narrow.

I learned to do this from my parents. My mother had the cleanest pelts I had ever seen, and my father knew all the ways to make the coat seem thicker. Mayblossom commented idly as she moved the coyote a smidge to the left to continue.

the mention of a child's first pelt made mahler think, irrevocably, of the spring.
would it be the final chance for he and wylla?
the gargoyle hunched his shoulders in contemplation and listening. "so this is your birthright?" he said of her skill, watching the skin peel cleanly from the coyote, moreso than he could have managed.