Arrow Lake ludens

The icy water hurt his teeth, tongue, even his throat as it travelled down, but it provided at least the slightest bit of relief from the stabbing ache of his hungry stomach. Once done, Redshank shivered, pulling back from the lake's edge as he breathed a sigh, feeling jolts of pain wrack his body all the way to the bone. No longer fixated on the sole task of getting away from the Emberwood pack, he now faced his pain without distraction. Yet the Cairn grit his teeth and bore it, making to lick at his frozen, aching paws with painstakingly slow and laborious movements.

Suddenly, the sound of claws against the earth caused him to immediately freeze with a sharp intake of breath. With it, came the scent of another as well as...fox blood. With surprising speed, his head whipped up, focusing on the stranger who was bold enough to approach. He had an odd visage, with half a mask of black and exceedingly long legs. He seemed not quite all wolf but Redshank’s attention was instead on the limp corpse he held in his jaws.

No matter the fox had barely enough meat to satisfy even a juvenile, no matter where or how the strange man had gotten it, no matter if he had actually died and this was a demon here to escort him to the afterlife, all Redshank knew was that he wanted it. The offer didn’t need to be made twice. With pathetically desperate, weak movements, he pulled himself forward on trembling forelimbs, gaze only for the carcass that was placed on the ground right there for the taking. The kind stranger for the moment went ignored even as he sat nearby with an amicable gesture as Redshank tore into the fox's thigh with snapping, slavering jaws, making quick work of what little meat lay within.