The Sentinels after delacroix

In this desperate time he was acutely aware of his target, and not the angel that had drifted down to witness him. Were he to notice her, surely this venture would fail; no woman should ever be brought before bloodshed, and it would have distracted him enough to give up this precious meal simply to escort her away. Such a thing did not occur, however. The creature's pained begging, though of a foreign tongue, lilted through the air and Renoir knew, acutely, that he was about to save them all. The creature may have once been a deer of some sort, but now it was a creature made of sticks and twigs, its legs like endless branches rooted through hips and shoulders to a boulder of a chest, a neck so thin he could see every puzzle piece connecting it, and a head of sickly large proportion. How this creature survived on nothingness for so long was a mystery, but it would die here. It would feed them, even if all they had were the bones and the marrow.

Renoir was careful of the salted water as he crept closer; his pace was not slow, but somewhat languid, as if he had all the time in the world to do this creature in. His intent was to avoid using too much of his own energy in retrieving this bounty. The massive rocks may have held the creature in place, but it was a desperate beast - and desperation made it dangerous. The closer he got the more he expected a fight. The doe - for he assumed it was female, bearing no crown - watched him with a bug-eyed stare, and briefly he thought, what an ugly beast.

She seemed to urge him closer with the look in her eyes, and did not struggle even as he descended with his teeth to grip her throat. The ocean pulsed against her, spraying him as it thrust itself over them both, and he gripped tightly to her exposed flesh, feeling his gums go numb as they sank in to the chilled skin of her throat. He held her tightly then, and waited. The life slowly drained from the creature's body — Renoir couldn't tell if it struggled for life at the end, or if that was the tossing of the sea as it withdrew for another pass — but soon enough the creature was limp, and all that Renoir had to worry about was dislodging the stuck body from between the rocks.

He pulled back from the sea for a breath of air, tasting the salt on his lips, feeling the chill of the wind as it dragged through his damp chest fur; and that was when he saw the pale girl. How long had she been watching? Had she seen..? It was too late to worry about propriety, yet he worried still. Deirdre, he called over the din of the water's rumble, stay back, stay dry. mwen will come to 'ou — but he was briefly drowned out by the sea, which smucked in to him and, distracted, he tumbled against the stones beside the carcass. Dimly he thought he heard the doe's limp head crack upon the rock, and his mind said, was it her, or was it you?