Great Bear Wilderness in our town the hangman came, smelling of gold and blood and flame

Time had not been kind to the Teekon Wilds. The very soil upon which she stood had been ravaged, time and time again by its savage inhabitants over generations. Cycles of birth, life and death had produced great leaders and terrible villains. War, love and death… it had all come and gone.

Scylla, of course, knew of none of this. 

For time had left behind the secrets of the past. Forgotten were the days of the Melonii clan, the dark brotherhood and her father. Blackfeather Woods existed now as a mere memory to those who were still alive to recall their terribly, bloody anarchy. Even the bloodstained borders of a once shadowed land had long since been washed away by seasons gone by. To any passerby it was simply a forest that gave one slight chills if they stared too long. The sense that important things had once occurred there would likely never leave, but it was a history that would eventually fade with the last breath of the last witness of its existence. 

“it all seems so foreign, father” she speaks aloud, having no mind to who may overhear her words.

Scylla continued her trek onwards. In the far distance did her birthplace now lie, settling a sort of melancholy feeling in her breast. Perhaps at some point she would begin to search for her sister, but she is in no rush. It had been a long time since the earth had shaken and divided their already fractured family. Releasing a howling call into the wind, Scylla decided that if @Hela did not hear it, their paths were not to cross just yet. For now, she hunted as hunger called to her.

there'd been no migraines for days— urias clutches at the lapse of painlessness and normalcy. he hadn't felt this clearheaded in a while. if this is what everyone else feels most of the time, how come we haven't landed on the goddamn moon yet?
walking, running, breathing is becoming easier. the atrophy has stopped. it's reversing. soon, he'll be ready to go and look for tzila, really look for her.
he can be patient when he wants to be. even when his mind races at hundreds of revolutions per minute, he knows how to bide his time. the humming in his head, the humming of some supercomputer war machine, it subsides as he pauses.
it all seems so foreign, father.
right after he hears her, he sees her, and right after that, he smells her. the lank dark girl in the distance throws her head back and calls out. he waits, and as soon as he is sure there is no answer, he begins his approach.
who are you going to be today, urias?
clean-cut. awkward but courteous. he tries to catch her eye, jerks his head to the side as if saying i saw some game down there. he's hungry too.

thanks for joining!

Movement nearby causes her head to swivel in the direction of whom she momentarily believes to be her sister. Yet, she found herself reminded of her father when gazing upon his face which had scars to match that of the cold-blooded brute who sired her. 

He is hungry too. 

She nods wordlessly to the man, trotting silently in the direction of his gesture. He is a stranger to her; a fact that she is reminded of as she stares from a distance at the large hooves of their prey. As she is not an experienced hunter, Scylla realizes a wrong move on his part could very well become detrimental to her. Trust did not come easy to the young woman. Regardless, she presses forth, eyes glancing between a singular elk which appeared weathered and aged and the man, indicating the chosen target. Picking it apart from the rest of the herd was next.

np!^^

elk-scent wafts up to him. he fancies he can feel their bodyheat from here and cocks his head to listen to their snorts and their snuffles. a finger wet with spit raised up to the sky tells him they are downwind.
an old elk who is threadbare and in pennyrags has his back to them and he exhales as he adjusts his crosshairs. the jugular and the deltoid muscle and the dodging of antlers. he has them all lined up inside his head. the old elk is starting to falter and flounder.
now the elk scent is tinged with the beginning of panic.
in the cloudy diffuse light urias and the black-haired girl are shadows. he crawls on his hands and knees through the grass closer and closer to their target. he's in his element and every old forest-born nerve and every nostril and its flaring are exposed to the wet air.
ready, set, go—

Silently they creep forward, parting the long grass in utter anticipation whilst the beast remains unknowing. There is not much time to prepare herself as her hunting partner wastes not a mere moment in lunging forth when the opportunity to strike arrives. Following suit, a ravenous snarl drips from her mouth as she swings around and attempts to cut their prey off from the rest of the herd. A chorus of hooves beating the earth below ensues as the able-bodied elk begin to flee, abandoning what is an unworthy cause to fight for. The old prey cannot keep up with the fast pace of all that is happening and Scylla lunges teeth first at the crook between its belly and foreleg, snaring what she can in her mouth and dragging it downwards. 

Yet, in her moderately successful attempt to do so, does her food stomp backwards upon her paw -- immediately crushing the bones in her outer toe. She can hear the crunching sound directly in her ear and the pain of it swell throughout her body… but she does not let go. If the stranger can finish the job, a feast would await her. Something that took precedence over a momentary slight.

the quicker girl races off, and urias waits one, two, three seconds before he's off too, feet beating against the ground, lungs alive. the rest of the herd screams and scatters, but their target, flailing and moaning, does not. it takes one, two, three leaping strides for him to catch up. the girl has her teeth inches deep in the armpit. blood sprays from a nick in an artery.
he buries his teeth in the shoulder of the elk, opposite to scylla. the crunch of bone breaking makes him wince inwardly, but he does not let go as he tears chunks of flesh and muscle apart, as the old elk continues to scream and as its eyeballs roll endlessly in their sockets in misery and pain.
a hoof grazes his side. if he'd been an inch to the side he'd have several broken ribs.
the thought of such danger fills him with breathlessness. he bites down harder. the elk is beginning to die, slowly but surely, as its flailing tapers off into a silent struggle.

The elk begins to slow. Perhaps they had underestimated exactly how powerful a frantic four-hoofed beast was in the heat of a fight for survival, thought nevertheless, various puncture wounds left it draining by the second. It realeased a final, defeated groan before collapsing to its knees and keeling over on its side -- to which Scylla tore into. Pulling apart what she could and settling it between her bloodied paws, she devoured it as though she had been starving all along.

But when the hunger subsided and the adrenaline wore thin, the pain from her mangled toe resurfaced like a heat wave. "fuck." she let out, observing how it hung nearly detached from its place on the edge of her paw. The analytical portion of her brain weighed the options and consquences -- causing her to glance at the stranger. It would heal over in due time if removed for she was young enough to recover and learn to move without it. But self-amputation was not something she could bring herself to do.

"You wouldn't happen to know anything about surgery or medicine, would you?" Scylla inquired to the male, unsure of what to expect.

like a felled tree—if an elk falls in the fields and nobody's there to listen or watch, did it fall at all?—the elk thuds heavily to the floor. for a few minutes, they eat without talking and without breathing, his face warm and red in its entrails. sinew and cartilage snaps in his mouth and from his chin down everything is soaked in blood.
once he had eaten his fill, he sits back on his hands. good work, he murmurs, cleaning off the inside of his mouth.
the girl swears, though, and urias notices her toe seems to be in pretty bad shape. it's unnatural and crumpled, and he brings himself to wince. some. but for a wound like that...you'd need cold water. or ice. and a lot of rest.
urias arlli, somewhat of a washed-up child prodigy, moves closer to inspect the wound, his breaths metered.

the stranger inspects her wound, not before paying her a quick compliment. she nods in return. perhaps a kinder version of the girl would have returned the sentiment, for he had performed just as well as she, if not better. yet, she was not kind. it was simply not essential to her survival. 

"i don't need rest." not to say that rest was for the weak... but that was exactly what she believed. scylla had survived worse on fewer hours. 

"i need marigold. and poppy seeds." she spoke mostly to herself whilst not breaking eye contact with the man. one would fight infection and the other, for the pain. however, he was right in stating that cold water would do her well -- flushing out any incoming infection was the logical move.

in a purposeful tone does the yearling ask of him, “water. where is it?” for the topography of the land had long escaped her memory. scylla briefly considered that perhaps her curtness would become a problem, however, figured her father would have likely ripped his toe off by now and proceeded to bite the stranger’s head off just for good measure so at least her conscious remained intact if not her manners.

at the mention of water, he briefly recalls the conversation he'd had with the white warrior nearby the lake. this particular place was full of the hardy types, ready to plunge into the folds of mother nature armed with nothing. he eyes her skeptically, but doesn't protest. a broken bone was a broken bone.
she's curt, for a yearling. when he was her age he'd been full of words and jagged edges, but the girl seems like she'd came straight out of the womb with a dagger in her hand and a map in the other. straight from the fetus to a rugged survivalist. southeast of here, there's a river that leads into a lake, he frowns, rubbing his chin. he'd just come from that direction.
it's less than half a day's travel. there ought to be some herbs there too. his attention snaps back to the meal. he gnaws at a forelimb, carefully unsheathing the bone from the meat, before turning back to her and flicking his ear as if to ask wordlessly, are you going to go?

southeast, he says and she unknowingly turns to look north. “thanks.” scylla replies, figuring that following a stream for half a day would be easy enough, before turning back to the carcass before them. 

the girl considers for a moment what to do with what is left of their meal. to cache away what was left would be the most efficient option, but with only one intact paw, digging did not seem too appealing. she would have to hunt again or return for scraps. 

she turns sharply to the man with hard eyes. “will you join me?” it is spontaneity which causes her to ask. she does not know him. she does not trust him. but yet, he had helped her. the wilds were not full of those who would do so, but rather, quite the opposite. if anything, now that she was somewhat inhibited, it would only benefit her to have an ally in a land that she knew did not take kindly to melonii blood. if he declined, it would be of no loss to her but simply prefered if he agreed.

fading here?

flint-like, she scans her surroundings and urias is quietly pleased at her thanks. a bright smile breaks the dark greyness of his face— that way, he gestures, towards the open expanse of the glen.
as her gaze drifts back to the carcass, he follows. we can leave it for the foxes. he mutters, then rolls his sleeves up and stands, stretching. his joints crack and pop and he sighs as he shakes his coat out. i could use a bath. the idea of trekking through open grass smelling like elk blood doesn't exactly fill him with delight, and neither does doing all the legwork to bury what's left of their meal.
oh, um, this was one thing he didn't expect. although in hindsight, she was compromised, and even the proudest of wolves wouldn't make a journey with a broken leg. why not?

sure! will archive

to her slight surprise, he agrees to accompany her. nevermind that she does not know his name just yet. true company was a luxury rarely afforded to the girl and perhaps some part of her was quite glad he obliged her request. the mere ghost of a smile caressed her maw, and even that, she was careful not to show. 

careful not to place any stenuous pressure on the wound, she limped forth in the direction of his indication -- disregarding the fact that she had believed it to be the other way initially. scylla glances to her travelling partner. big bloody scars disrupted his features. the mark of a warrior or a fool? her father had been both. it cautioned her and yet, against her better judgement, intrigued her.