King Elk Forest don't pretend

rasalas stops, annoyingly dutifully he thinks, as she does. there are scents here, faded and faint but were once present. he is amazed he can smell anything beyond his own filth and metallic tang of blood. he reeks but lacks the will the care in his weakened state. once, he was so proud of his moondappled pelage. now it is matted and clumped with dirt and blood and urine. horribly unkempt. he watches with renewed interest as she procures from the hole she’s dug a slab of meet. his stomach both rumbles and roils and salvia begins to well, once more, in his mouth.

he wants to lunge towards it — almost does — like a ravenous little beast only to temper the gluttonous desire as she tears from it growling and snarling. his lip curls back, smarting with a sharp stab of pain as his eyes swim with betrayal; mistaking her defensiveness.

only to soothe over as she tosses a strip of meat to him. imagined slight is gone as he flings himself upon it with a burst of energy and pins it beneath his paws as she pins the slab of meat. he ignores her warning and gobbles it down without tasting it. it does not satisfy him. his stomach violently roils and in the next second he is twisting his body to the right to upchuck it.

the pain of the forced expulsion screams thru the nerve endings of his torn flesh. blood dribbles in his salvia now, from the wound that he refuses to let heal and he falls upon the second strip. he takes a deep breath, glimpsing up at her, and eats this one with aching slowness; lesson learned. for now.