Whitefish River guernica

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@Rose

The pig snuffled along the embankment while death waited, bedeviling the shadows which sheathed the pulsing river. The creature meandered the bank of the river, overturning stones and inspecting the unearthed contents; its hunter moved in lockstep, obscured amongst the copse with a nimble prepense. Then the hunter shot out, and the beast screamed; jaws like vicegrips snapped closed and the prey surrendered its life to the victor with just a few thrashes of its moribund dance. 

and then the hunter was one with the hunted, which hung limp in his jaws, bereft of spirit. 

With experienced paws, the marbled brute set to work — he knew just what needed to be done. The carcass was laid upon the riverside and snipped open with the careful work of his incisors; the heart was extracted, though not with ease for a creature of middling size. The man's maw was smeared with the telltale claret hue of the deed… but he was a healer, an angakkuq, and blood had always been a sacred part of his upbringing and rituals. It never phased him. 

Trusting that his meal would not be embezzled by another, Komodo trotted away to a springtide seedling and dug a hole at its base. The organ was placed beneath it’s verdant sepulchre and recovered in the loamy earth.  In this way, the soul of the departed was honored and made to unite with its ancestors — and thought Komodo was a pious man, he turned back to feast upon the spoils of his hunt. At the moment, he was much too hungry for any more sacrament than that. 
 

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The young flame had slunk away from the group today, her heart craving some much needed downtime. It was exhausting trying to memorize the names and faces of all the newcomers, and Rose had a feeling that even more would soon come. She had not expected Tulip to be among the lost souls that had coincidentally found each other but it was a nice surprise. She was not close to her sister by any means, but it was still comforting to have a familiar face among a group of strangers. 

Stuck in her own mind, Rose had not realized how far she wandered until she came upon the stream. She didn't recognize the area and the fearful thought that she had gotten herself lost quickly rushed into her mind. Well this wasn't good. "Ugh" she mumbled out, looking around for anything that might seem vaguely familiar. Nope, nothing. 

She then turned to rely on her nose. It had always been her strongest sense and she often turned to it when identifying plants. There was the heavy odor of fish in the air as well as an unidentifiable musty smell, but it was the fresh scent of blood that drew her attention. She turned in the direction the smell came from and she carefully made her way in the direction of the new kill. She came upon it while it was unoccupied and Rose, not noticing the approaching hunter, casually strolled towards the strange carcass.

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Komodo had not traveled far enough that the kill was out of sight — if he looked straight down the beach, he could see the small pile of meat and bones laying upon the river’s edge — so when the small, firekissed girl made a beeline to his kill, the brute was quick to react.

The earthstalker picked up his gait, saucerlike paws beating a steady drumbeat against the sodden bank of the river. His rush was not made of anger, but of a simple wish to intercept the girl before she assumed the pig to be hers. His tail was held high and his ears pushed forward, hoping not to scare the girl — but wanting to stop her all the same. “ 'ey, red!” he barked out as he deftly closed the distance between them. 

Komodo slowed his heavy stride as he pulled up alongside her. With eyes aglow and muscles aquiver, the angakkuq observed the flower. She was young — he could tell in the way she so unassumingly approached a fresh kill [rife with his scent, she would have realized had the girl taken a second to inspect her situation] and from the way his thickset, northerner’s frame towered over her own. 

Komodo had a soft spot for pretty, young things so the brute easily forgave her for her transgressions. “Happy to share— but it’s not polite to steal.” he drawled thickly, knocking up an eyebrow at the nameless shewolf. A wry smile danced upon his maw and he pushed the cadaver towards her with a nudge of the paw, encouraging her to take the choicest bits for herself.

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The girl's tongue smacked against her lips as she closed the distance between herself and the prey. But just before she was able to get close enough to get a good idea as to what it might be, some deep voice called out to her causing her stop in her tracks. Her head shot to where the male was approaching and she immediately backpedaled to try and get away, but she ended up failing miserably and instead landed on her rump. It took a moment for her to realize what had happened, but by then the stranger had already made his way beside her. 

She looked up to him and blinked a few times, curious as to why he hadn't attacked yet. She stood and carefully watched as he offered her a piece of the meat, but couldn't help but wonder why a complete stranger would be so kind towards her. She didn't complain though and leaned forward to take a whiff of the creature's scent before looking up to ask the male "what is it?" She had never seen a pig before and Rose thought it to be the strangest looking animal she had ever seen.

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Komodo had only intended to occlude the shewolf from the kill, not to give her such a fright — she backpedaled and fell upon her rump, and though the man found the spill quite comical,  he could not help but shift the weight of his frame forward and take a solicitous step in her direction. The firegirl made to stand and Komodo saw that she was unharmed, so he sat upon the ground and settled himself there, seemingly without the intention of moving any further. He was willing to apportion the carcass, but it was his kill and he would be remiss not to make that understood through his actions.

She inquired as to the animal which gave its life to feed them, and he turned to look upon it. The boar was quite a macabre sight; the barrelchested creature split open and heart extracted, but such a look pleased him. The heart is the domicile of the soul, and in death the soul had two choices: to remain upon the earth, stuck in an ephemeral pergatory; or to live on in peaceful coexistence, adding the wisdoms of its short life to that of the earth’s collective conscious. The surrendering of the heart to the tree’s earth coaxed the soul towards the latter choice. 

He subscribed to these theories for the balance of earthly existance as much as it was for his own selfishness. Perhaps he would later speak to the felled pig [gleaning what he could from its short life] as he often could when he communed with the spirits and danced with their souls.

“Boar,”  the medicine man said gruffly, summoning the colloquial moniker of the animal. This one was juvenile [it was of a small size, with coarse hairs along its back and the beginning of tusks poking from between its jaws] and Komodo was thankful for that, as adult boars were often not worth the obstacle they posed. “Pig,” he shrugged, giving another name that he had learned during his travels. “Razorback.” That one was his favorite. It reminded him of one of his own surnames, earthstalker. Komodo pulled his portion forth with corded limbs and set to eating it. “You ain’t seen a boar before, little lady?” he questioned between bites.[/td][/tr]

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The girl took a step back, unsure what to think of the male before her. He did not seem to be the fighting type despite being a brute, so Rose remained to learn what she could. "Boar," she repeated after him and inhaled the fresh scent of the kill. Several more names came after but the girl preferred the first. "Nope," she answered with a shake of his head, "never seen one before." Perhaps they only settled in this area, it would explain why she had never come across one prior to now.

Her eyes shifted from the carcass to the earthly man. "Why does it have bones popping out of it's mouth?" she questioned, wondering if something was wrong with this one. It didn't smell or look sickly, but the tusks looked unnatural to the girl and she thought that perhaps this was had a deformity.

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”Hmm,” the earthstalker grunted as the red girl confirmed his assertion. She was a young thing after all, and perhaps inexperienced in the ways of the world, so it wasn’t surprising. When he was a young cub — it seemed so long ago, now — he, too, was shielded. But now he roamed the earth free and knew much of it.

There was mention made of the tusks and Komodo glanced towards the foretold protrusions. They did indeed look grotesque; perhaps that was what drew the brute towards it — the life of a shaman did not leave much room for fears of strange things. ”They are like us. Boars like to protect what is theirs, but where we have fangs, and cougars have claws, and porcupines have spines…they have tusks.” There was something macabre about the way he spoke of the boar and humanized it as he devoured its corporeal flesh, exalting its evolution as he actively abetted in its own natural selection. Almost as if in response to cognitive dissonance [or was it some type of divine understanding?] he finished with a hearty shrug and ”It is just the way of things,” licking the blood from his lips. 

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