Shimmering Sands "it's calm before the storm, winslow."

like a snapped sapling the deer's long head shot up, yanking knaven's paws from the earth with the force of its resistance. tongue lolled as lionel circled back; that would take the last of his strength, he decided, and as knaven's heavy jaws snapped deeper, he swung forth.
rearing to his own hindlegs, the boy struck true into the juncture of shoulder to neck, cutting through until fangtip nicked bone, shearing sheets of blood down in a rain upon the pair of them as he dragged lower and lower, straining against each weakening movement of their quarry.
a flurry of red drops, and it had come down into the churned wet earth, lowing a last time with feeble desperation.