Rising Sun Valley Dread Hunger

ooc: hihi! feel free to power-play/humble her where needed

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All deeds left prints, least not this she-wolf’s, whose lumbering formed sloppy tracks in the freshly fallen snow. A wake that she might have been more careful to conceal had she not been so solely focused on what stirred just ahead. A tantalizing scent, too scarce in these fel woods, pricked at dark hackles as her silver eyes sifted the heathers.

In the wilds, nothing was given. Her gaunt shape was evidence enough of that. But if the wild had robbed her of strength and manners, it emboldened her with will. And here it presented a test: was she faster than a hare?

She dove after it, dark paws churning, scrambling over slippery shale and between spindly pines. Tactless and fool-hardy. A solo pursuit of little practice, for she’d rarely hunted in the absence of her pack. Theirs had been a well-timed dance where each wolf had taken up position, arrows finding their mark without fail. But Tauris was now a flockless swallow, and it was only with pure desperation, or perhaps dumb luck, that the hare succumbed to her chase in a victorious crack of bones. She lashed her head two and fro until its protests under fang waned. Then she collapsed to her belly, eyeing her prize with covetous hunger, lapping at her lips but unable to meet the pace of pooling salivation.

A meager feast, perhaps. But so long as life remained an option, she would continue to choose it.

Pesky.

Out of every bitter word he could scrounge up in his mind, he found himself settling for pesky. He'd been running after hare scent for minutes. A gross slip into the muds and snowfall left him cold and famished. That hare ran itself away from him, and in a humiliated, annoyed fuss, he'd stayed still after his little fall. Run did he let that hare, and run it did. 

He couldn't find much reason to hold value over where he'd traveled yet. Couldn't find much reason not to move on from this hare either. 

Yet despite that, he found his fur whipping through the wind at alarming rates with a nasty, chilly scowl across his face while he beat his paws one, two, three, hundreds of times across the snow. He wanted to kill it. It was the only thing he could think of. It ate at his mind- second after second, he found himself more aggravated by the fact that he'd let it go, and he would make sure he found it again. He would find it all right. Bonnie would find it, and he would kill it. Kill it. 

Finding it wasn't the hard part. In fact, he found it after thirty or so minutes. Copious amounts of scents were flooding his nose, one after another, and really, he only cared about one of them. It'd taken some time, but eventually, he found that hare.

Guarded.

Guarded by a slobbering, skinny mutt.

Hackles raised, exposed teeth, he found himself bristling up like an all too excited porcupine. There had not been a second he slowed down, if that's what one thought he'd do. Nope. Not at all. In fact, he might have sped up, because in a moments notice, the brown devil who stole HIS kill was now missing a dinner. He'd snatched it straight from in front of her, or at least got ahold of it. If she didn't snatch onto it, he would bound off with it and keep it for his OWN self to gobble down. If she did, if she dared to, it'd be an all too tossing match of tug-of-war.

Her head was yanked from her neck and into the eyes of some blight-faced snarl. The silence fragmented with a reflexive shriek so loud she’d startled herself. She had no time to process what was happening.Her body responded automatically, snapping the hare in place. A deadlock. Even as everything in her mind recoiled from the heat of this too-near thief. She matched their warning with a growl of her own, raw in her throat as it shook up her chest and into her teeth. Between cursory tugs she’d fix them in her sight.

Just a boy. Young. The familiar look of desperation in his eye. On any other day, she might have been him.

But the wild made enemies of neighbors, and tonight she was the master of a kill. She saw nothing apart from his garish display of fang, but decided her need was greater. She adjusted her grip with a violent pull of hock, making louder her growl for good measure.

“Fwuck owff!” Drew the threat, mangled between pieces of bloodied hare.

Had this thief not grabbed it, he would have run off with it. To his disliking, and he would scream over it later- if not in a few moments, she grabbed onto it. That was enough to make him entirely almost break his neck from how fast his head spun around, and he needed to quickly accommodate his body to turn. Did he let go? Of course not.

"MnNnOE! YOU FUHK OFF!" Fowl. Dirty, dirty mouthed. It didn't help that she was SHRIEKING like bugling elk. Putting all of his weight onto his front legs, he snarled and bristled while furiously yanking his head back. His front paws were hopping on the ground, scratching at it- trying to MOVE his body and drag her if he had to. Bonnie didn't care. He didn't give a single damn to damn a single damn about.

Shifting his weight onto his hindquarters, his back end was quickly nearing the ground with how swiftly he was back pedaling and pulling.

"LET," he managed to snap out, furrowing his brows, "GO!" 

In a sudden snap of mouth, she did as asked and released the hare, watching with no small victory as he tumbled backwards in a tangled heap of snow and limb. Pivoting weight from hock to forepaw, she wasted no time in reclaiming her quarry, snatching it up with greedy jaws.

“Twootles,” She smirked at the mess of him before plunging off into the bracken.

In a frenzy entangled in snow and mud, his fur slid across the ground after his trophy was let go of. By the mugger. Halfway through his fall, head turning and body rolling across covered stone and dead weeds, his mouth slammed into the trunk of a tree. By force, his mouth slacked open and as a result.. Leaning into his front paws, he pushed down with his elbows and shoulders while sliming out a, "Why you little-" As a result, the lurcher was running away. With HIS food. "HEY! GET BACK HERE!" 

Scrambling onto his feet, he was jumping up hill, breaking through thin layers of ice and going at a burst towards the looter. The bottom of his jaw pushed against his chest, and with a rampant, plaguing gaze, he was bursting towards the girl. His tone, however, broke the cold gaze he had. It was equally cold, but not as calm as his still head might have deceived. "You're 'bout to regret that BIG TIME!"

Catching up to her tail was difficult. She was weaving, running with HIS food, but Bonnie was relentless as to catching up.

His calls tore after her through the night, even as a ravel of trees put distance between them.

He would relish the challenge, would he? Well she had earned this kill. Her grip tightened around the hare. Mine.

Heat under pelt surged, an alloy of adrenaline and fear, both aiding the speed of her long legs. The chosen trail was jaggedly and crooked and she kept an eye on the ground for tree roots that might trip her up. The crunch of new powder under paw pleased her ears as she ran faster, faster, letting the biting wind fill her lungs, just as she let the pure sensation of the chase, no matter how dire the stakes, take her dread and guilt and make them transparent shadows that didn't hold up beneath her sun.

But she could not always outwit fate. Too closely behind her she heard the thunder of pursuit. She threw a glance over her shoulder, long enough to catch the glint of moonlight in her thief's eyes.

Still running. Even now, she was STILL running away from him, and that dd nothing but piss him off more. Had she dropped the hare, he wouldn't have found himself at this point, but she'd done this to herself. That was his food, and he was certain of it. Same hare he let go, and same hare he hunted back down, only to find it wrapped in the jaws of some salivating -CENSORED-.

Faster. Faster. Faster. Each given second, he was closing distance. How weak she must have been, unable to keep up with her own muscles and having them fail her. It wasn't like she could have been much older or younger than him. It just meant that she was out of practice, and that meant out of luck. With little time to brace, the dusty pelt of the hawk-like demon took flight. No longer were his feet touching the ground. He'd taken himself into a full soar, and not gliding, but falling sharply crashing into her feeble body. A smarter move would've been to wait for the upcoming dip ahead of him in order to tumble her down it, but he'd entirely disregarded it. It didn't matter. He wanted his stupid bunny. In snaps and snarls, barks and chokes, he'd gone from taking her down to the ground to trying to lively snap at her mouth in repeated attempts. 

Shit. He wouldn’t concede! The thoughts spun until a crushing weight slammed against her back. Footing was lost and she toppled sideways, the slide of her body leaving one long trench-mark in the snow. She’d had no time to compose herself before the barrage of bites began and she shrieked, releasing her jaws. Limp and tattered, out slid the hare.

She’d not fight him, then.

Instead, Tauris used the distraction to scramble from underneath his weight, reclaiming four paws. Every thought in her mind that screamed to run was repealed by the simple fact that she could go on no longer. Tail tucked and sinews trembling, dark eyes flicked to meet the face of her perpetrator.

Ears pinned back to his head, his eyes flooded from the released gates of hungered pandora, he found himself pinning a hungry thief and aggressively snapping at her mouth. He'd not quite drawn blood, but that had only been from how quickly she released the hare. Had she not, it was safe to assume he may have escalated it. Amazing what bunny cravings did. 

When she let go, his jaws immediately clamped down onto the hare, pulling it back towards himself and promptly using his hind legs to gracefully remove himself from her; all the while, she scrambled away. Giving that same scowl at her, he found himself clenching the hare further in his mouth while looking her dead in her evil witch eyes. Mine. That may have been more of a subconscious, possessive fear of losing his rabbit before it was a thought out action. Dropping down into a half-sit where he stood, his gaze immediately crossed and turned strangely unfocused. Because he wasn't. Not on the evil wench anymore, anyways.

He wanted to eat this stupid bunny he worked hard for. Immediately, he started to try and scarf the entire hare down his throat. His head was tossed back, he started to chew, and he was eating as quick as he could without (and probably was close to) choking.

Nothing about him was agreeable. Not the coat bedraggled and colorless, nor the greedy gleam of his hickory-tinted stare. Least not the retch of his throat as he made a cruel show of jockeying her hare between his jaws.

She sank down in her crouch, shaking with the stress of restraint. A deep indignant rumble that crescendoed from her chest with each of his exaggerated gulps was all she could do to keep from smacking him. The resulting clash she knew she could not hope to win.

Repulsive, hateful brat!

Frustration glazed her eyes. It wasn’t him, but herself she was angry with. That she had no power over this foul creature, that he could take from her freely and when he wanted, and there was not a damn she could do about it.

She hissed, her voice cracking over growl, “Choke on it.”

It'd taken him a bit. He hadn't even been focused on her initially, only now noticing her trembling body and quaking legs. A cowering calf lined with ice and snow, no mother around nor loving sibling to huddle. He ate because he needed to. Starved? Yes, but he could've gone longer. He had some hunger pains for the day, but he was not near dying by any means. Traversing these foul lands would not break him. He pushed through regardless, breaking it below his feet and going deeper through it; all the while, he knew little of this place. 

Tough luck. She wasn't getting anywhere like this, that was for certain.

When he was done, he licked his lips to grant himself that last taste of iron, looked her up and down, and promptly spoke before he went to turn.

"Piss off!"

It seemed taking it came second nature to him. At the very least, she wasn't a pack wolf. At the most, she was a shitty lone wolf! How EASY was that? Whatever. He didn't ponder on it long.

Until he did. So he stood there. Quietly. Waiting. Until eventually he got fed up with waiting and staring at her.

"Don't you got somethin' better to do?" Bonnie's audacity....

She remained frozen, forced to look on as he devoured her feast, hunger pangs escalated by the scent of blood and crack of bone. Envious slaver trickled down her chin but she wouldn’t wipe at it. He’d already stolen dinner, he wasn’t going to steal a second more of her time.

“Get the hell away from me.”

Take your small victory, wolf. I won't always be a girl you can so easily steal from. And if a day would ever come when their paths would cross again, she’d be sure to prove it.

He found it odd that she stuck around. as far as he was concerned, he didn't have to answer to anyone telling him what to do, let alone a wolf of this nature, shivering and snapping about over something she couldn't win. It was his to begin with anyways, and even if it wasn't, he still fought to get ahold of it. Bonnie won, didn't he? So, there was nothing to fuss about.

Just to make himself look bigger, and albeit truthfully as a lousy, lazy test, he stuck his chest out and pushed his head up. Pushing a huff of air out of his nose quietly, he turned his scowl into a squinting, bored expression. While she was worked up, he was long moved on as if it had been nothing, and not that he didn't hold grudges, but simply that he didn't have a grudge to hold when clearly he was top dog in this situation.

Glancing uncomfortably at his feet, he snorted before slowly walking himself backwards, then shortly taking a thought-out step away. She'd probably run off to a pack wolf for food, they'd feed anyone, assuming she wasn't a basic omega. Dropping his tail, he focused on the ground ahead of him and turned an initially slow gate to a trot, with no clue where he was headed. Somewhere, he could catch the scent of deer. Many packs too, that much he could tell from the stench up his nose. The cold winds of the Sunspire Mountains were grazing his fur. He found it to be.. Well, he didn't know what he found it to be. Irritating, maybe. With the rise in prey here though, or maybe the drop of it over here, he found reason to stay in Teekon. Prey didn't seem to be so difficult here. At least, he'd learned that much prowling through the valley. The packs seemed to love hogging the prey, so despite the rich nature of it, he couldn't land anything. Living off of rabbits wasn't favorable. He'd need to slash down a deer. Something tomorrow, or when he could- he had the muscle for it. Bonnie's skill was just not prominent. Learning.