Larksong Grotto Quånitǐge

for @Tikigak!

Late in the afternoon her maw brims with sacred things;  yarrow and ginger and rose-pink valerian. The others have no names, nor uses she knew of. They are gathered for medicine, experimentation, and to appease those spirit-beings of the long forgotten in their emptied dens.
It is among the thickest brakes of the grotto where she finds him.
Ayovi has known for some time there are wild boar in the highlands. She’d heard them grunting and cantering in the brush, trampling meadows of blue wildflowers. But this is the first she’s ever seen.
—and he is unimaginably massive, with a steep ridgeline and shoulders threshed with the scars of old fights. He stamps his hooves and foams his aggravation, lowering tusks to rut the earth.
Many koostin had she hunted, but those were long, precise coursings, where the Ashēeran had positioned themselves for victory. Here the lone ivory is unready, staggering astern in horrified surprise.

It had not been easy to get into the grotto, even for a wolf used to navigating the more treacherous paths of a mountain. Tikigâk picked her way down, muscles burning in a way that she had missed. The lands had been much too flat for her liking for many months now—it was good to climb again, and to uncover a place few would be bold enough to know existed. For Tikigâk it was less about the beauty offered, and more about the food that could be found. She suspected she would be left more or less alone here to rest and recover before the next leg of her journey. 

Tikigâk sniffs at the earth, coming to learn of the creatures that had passed through recently. There are many, though most smaller than would satisfy her. Tikigâk continued on, knowing there was more ground yet to cover before the day could be considered a failure and the climb a waste of time and energy.

Signs of larger game were observed. Tusk grooves in the earth… paths made by a body that had bullied its way through. Tikigâk grimaced. Here the scent was not so fresh, but she would need to remain vigilant. Tikigâk did not desire to squabble with such a beast. Their meat was delicious, but the fight was often more trouble than it was worth. They could gore you easier than a bison, she felt, smaller and more capricious. Quicker and more capable for it, too. 

With a grunt, she moved on. The scat of caribou, more recent—the sign of a herd moving through. This trail she followed, ears swiveling. It was a mile in where she heard the sound of the creature she sought to avoid, though it was not so near as to cause her any issue with her tracking. All the same, she paused to listen to ensure none of its fellows were nearby, ears pricked and eyes surveilling her surroundings in a slow sweep.

She and Skorpa together might have made a meal of this enormous bull but a sole wolf was at odds with him. Ayovi exudes her collection and takes a brazen stance, tail fanning high like the bark of birch. She raises a warning with sufficient vigor but his own is a shrill, reverberating screech that gores her ears. He shoots forward in the same step Ayovi leaps and the chase spins out across the vale.
The wolf is nimble, diving between old trees and maneuvering like water through the brush. It doesn’t matter; the bull flattens all in his path, charging, blowing, grunting.
Only in the tight perils of his fray does she make out a dark wolven form and narrowly avoids entangling their bodies. Above roiling hoofbeat and the pierce of screech comes her own frenzied call:
“Go!”

Standing at attention, her ears cupped forward, the she-wolf hears it all before she sees it. Tikigâk knows better than to linger, and huffs out a heavy breath. An ear swivels to the right as she hears the commotion draw nearer, and Tikigâk does not delay. She is in motion, but speed is not where Tikigâk excelled.

And so it is no wonder that the wolf that fled caught up swiftly. Tikigâk can hear her, too, crashing through the woodland to escape the screaming boar—Tikigâk needs no encouragement to continue to run. From behind comes the other, and Tikigâk watches as they surge ahead. 

Ayovi looks to be crafted for the chase. Streamlined and sure-footed, her swiftness appears inherent. Tikigâk, alternatively, was a wolf built to deliver the killing blow—to drag her opponents down with her great weight the moment they were within her proximity, exhausted by a wolf such as the one that surged ahead. 

Endurance, at least, they both surely carried; Tikigâk counted on outrunning the savage beast behind them, and listened for it still. She was silent but for her own heavier footfalls—she maintained her own momentum, pressing ahead.

The forest was a puzzle sussed by flying feet but sharp glances aside grew very aware of this woman’s size and strength in a race of awe against fear. The forest beast persists at hinds, rolling like a storm over once-scenic woodland, but the hungers of a pregnant woman filch stronger!
Struck with a new idea the huntress makes a diagonal sweep, coming to bound instep with the behemoth woman. She ducks a branch and vaults an old logged oak before making breathless shouts over the boar’s churning. “Hey! You hungry?”
Because Ayovi was. And she was craving bacon.