Swiftcurrent Creek Beasts of Burden

@jinx after the cougar? I am posting this from work, haha... too impatiant am I!

A haze in the morning sky cast a sunless day over Swiftcurrent as only a soft light bathed the creek, unlike its usual chiaroscuro. The forest was quiet, still shaken by the violent bloodshed that dampened its ground days prior. The foul stench of rotting lion kept the woodland creatures squirreled away, knowing that something quite terrible had passed. Even the birds refused to sing; perhaps in protest of the predators' dance.

Death had visited more than one creature that day, and toyed with the rest. Njal had suffered a terrible blow to the head that had sent him into fits of fever and unrest. Tuwawi had been an attentive nurse, but still his health was low; burdened by the deep gash above the temple. His status had steadied, however, and slowly Tuwawi felt more comfortable to leave him sleeping for short bouts of time. Her thoughts turned to the other warriors of Swiftcurrent, specifically Jinx who had been encumbered by the weight of an unimaginable tragedy. Tuwawi could not know the pallid woman's consumptive intent — that her young were meant for Sos in the end — but she shared her loss emphatically.

These thoughts roused the flickering ember from her watch and spurred her to ford the creek, plucking a fat trout from the water along the way (as it was the only prey who hadn't temporarily resigned from the forest). Jinx's lair was an enigmatic thing, but the Mambo's odor was strong in these parts. Tuwawi searched, hoping to find her resting here... but willing to travel farther if she was not. Something had shifted the secular creature's sentiments, unaware that slowly she would come to terms with the practices of her kin in time.

Tuwawi's stance remained hunched as she cautiously trekked through the dense undergrowth, tail cupped tight against her belly. Her posture did not think of rank at this moment, but only of the crippling burden Jinx endured. Tuwawi and she were the only two in the pack who could truly say that they embraced their womanhood, grown and fertile; and in that similarity there was something to share. The fish had grown tepid now as it sat in her jaws, and so she hurried to seek the demure ex-mother, sensitive to her plight.