Swiftcurrent Creek an occupation popular with demons and ducks

@Rhakios <3

despite being full of piss and vinegar at all times, Tiercel had worked up quite the ferocious appetite and fretted her mother’s heels with vexatious milk teeth as they walked in (relative) tandem. teeth were a relatively new weapon in her arsenal, sheathed behind her lips, lined up like tiny scythes, and the reprisal that followed brandishing them, even accidentally when nursing, was about as unpleasant as being the unlucky recipient of the needle-pointed cuspids. frequently, her gung-ho attitude resulted in a yelp, fire breathing dragons, and Wylla storming off with precious assets swinging away with her.

to quell the first teething, ofttimes Wylla returned to her cub with helpings of meat to rip into. regurgitated bits were introduced first, and then she was presented with small cuts of rabbit. today, Wylla took her hellion creek stomping—presumably after being driven nearly to infanticide by spears of puppy teeth.

this recent adventure had acquainted her with fish, salamanders, and box turtles, but she was nothing if not accident-prone, falling into the shallow pools in her pursuit of the creatures. strolling back home, Tiercel was soaked head to toe, the hairs of her crown wet and mussed up, but she had a wide smile on her face and snappiness in her step that denoted a successful outing. ”iiiiiiiiiiis!” she yelled tonally, trying to form her mouth around the word mom had easily summoned to existence: fish. 

the silver slip of her mother’s tiredly bobbing hips disappeared around a bend, just a short distance from the den. quietly, Tiercel hung back, putting off the inevitable directive of naptime by poking around the shrubs, sniffing every inch of the earth between her and the home front. her stomach purled with hunger, beckoning her to move in on the retreating teats of her dam—but a desire for adventure prevailed at the moment and found her galloping aimless laps around a rotted log.

He peered around the corner of the den he had been recovering in. His snipey head was levelled below his shoulders and the spiky fur along his nape was raised into even taller and stiffer quills. His eyes, a molten gold, were sharp with suspicion and without any warmth. The sounds of the forest unsettled him; Rhakios twitched nervously to the shuffle of feathers as birds flew, to the chatter of squirrels, and to the rustle of the leaves in the slight breeze, with his ears flicking to and fro in each sound's direction. For every step forward he took, he took two back.

It was some time before the boy pulled himself from the den entirely and snaked through the woods in the manner of a skittish cat: cautiously, attentively, hunched and employing any cover available to him. He could only dimly recollect what had transpired since that thunderstorm. He was unsure of what to make of his new surroundings and the distinct absence of his family and the security he had associated with their presence.

Noise drew him. The coywolf placed each paw quietly and reservedly. His heart hammered in his breast and he was tensed, flight-ready, prepared to scuttle back to the den. It was the only place that smelled like him and so which offered a morsel of safety and comfort. He poked his narrow snout out from the tall ferns where he crouched, only so far so that he could see the small black pup running around the log. He was feline in manner even now as he watched her like a young tom watching a small bird. Rapt but still, as if assessing his desire to hunt and his odds at success.

sold all my brevity for oceanfront property, sorry 'bout it

ever oblivious, ever unfettered to intuition or any sense of jeopardy, Tiercel continued orbiting the moldered log 'til her attention was captured by a fault in the scenery.

nope, it wasn't the certified creeper watching her from afar. you'd think, huh?

”ISSSSSSSSS!” she roared, scuffing over to the ferns while ogling an iridescently tarnished stone half-buried in the dirt and gleaming like valuable loot. what she spied was peacock ore; a specimen with a unique metallic luster, forged in splendor from exposure to the elements. to Tiercel, who only had a generalized idea about the lives of fish, it was dead to rights the prettiest fish she’d encountered yet. her eyes flashed with avarice and a shrill croon left her throat as she passed unknowingly into Rhakios’ proximity to appreciate the scintillating object, mere steps from where he was crouched.

she angled her head curiously downwards, kneeling to inspect the prismatic artifact. unlike the ones living in the creek, this "fish" didn’t run away from her friendship. actually, it didn’t really run, or move, or do anything at all. Tiercel reached out and patted it daintily with her toe-nubs, head retracting into the folds of her neck in anticipation for the slap of fins like when she touched the fish that Wylla had caught and flung into her goddamn face. alas, there was no such reaction. hm. maybe a new species? straightening herself out, Tier decided then and there she wanted to bring it home to live with her. 

like a python unhinging its jaw to consume a dinosaur egg, her mouth expanded around the hefty ware and she collected it awkwardly into her mouth, working it in the glove of her mouth until it was securely in place. she chucked her head back, ready to prance home and share her find with mama (no touch, only look). 

but when she lifted her head, her gaze tripped over the ferns and the shyster hunkered down behind them came into frame soon after. there was a moment of convergerence where their eyes met and Tiercel whispered a gasp, faltering back. the stone fell from her clutch amidst the process, despite her snapping futiley after it, and reunited with the ground with a dull thud. her ears wilted sourly, legs drawing her in a tight circle that in some vague way instituted an immediate boundary between herself and the boy peering at her like he was a stray in a butcher shop, and her: the select cut. worse, maybe he wanted credit for her discovery of this new species of fish! her ego was clearly endangered, but where there were once strict policies in place to prevent extinction, there was now 404 not found.

she stared back at him for a long moment. distinguishing features were obscured by the foliage, so he was a hard study; he didn’t resemble mom or notMom or any of the faces that Tiercel had already met. he surpassed her in age and yet possessed the same telltale dilation of eye as her, an aspect favored only by those in the first blush of adolescence. all told, the only thing she was considering were the odds of failure stacked against her when it came to re-claiming the jazzy little stone.

blue-phased eyes broke contact with his auric stare to scour the ground with a measure of time sensitivity conspicuous in her movements. once she had the rock aimed down her sights, she lunged upon it and, in her rush, clotheslined herself right away on a low-hanging branch.

She found a thing. She possessed that thing and seemed so enamored with it that he soon felt an intense desire to possess it too. He thought of nothing else. His trepidation no longer existed. Such was his fixation, as his unblinking stare moved from her cavorting body to the meaty stone set amongst her tiny teeth. Still channelling his inner cat, he shifted soundlessly on his paws and gathered himself for an ambush.

She noticed him then. His focus-narrowed eyes popped open. He was no longer poised but frozen, and the suddenly harsh drumming of his heart thumped against his ears. The stone fell to the ground but it was gold against blue — until it wasn't. She had him held in place with her eyes but once she loosed him from that grasp and took her gaze to the ground, his snapped to the stone. She lunged, and so did he.

There was no branch in his way to even the odds and he ran away with the advantage. His thin muzzle swooped down and he grabbed the stone hurriedly, his teeth grating against its surface as his jaws closed too-roughly around it. In his reckless adrenaline-spurred haste he nearly bowled himself over trying to scurry away, putting several lengths of his own body between him and her before turning to pin her with his eyes.

just as suspected, he was in pursuit of her valor after all. unfortunately for Tiercel, Rhakios had a generous head start on the enterprise. striving towards mercenary gain, karma was masquerading behind nature and sowing penalties already, as properly shown by the branch that had, in every practical sense, materialized into existence before ms ink-stain-better-a-sheet-stain could reach her artifact.

with only a second to draw her sights on the motion blur of its incoming whip across her snout, she was immediately flapjack’d onto the ground. gravity, yet again, failed to show out for her. she was starting to think maybe it was actively working against her, as familiar as she was with the sensation of catching falls with that big potato forehead of hers.

she lost all impetus and conjointly, all dignity, but regardless of the throbbing of her head and the urge to bluster for her mother, Tiercel instead squirmed back to her feet with a dim scowl, knobby legs shuddering from the reckless gear-changes. wrath was an excellent power source. with a huff, she realized that the bandit had triumphed against her in recovering the coveted object. insert a lot of solidarity with gollum, she was the victim of a heist! her precious, wrongfully possessed by the retreating Eyjolfur— 

as he turned to taunt her, she boldly stared him down like a bull facing a matador, feeling the same indignation sift through her soul as when Wylla had tried to re-stake her claim on the rabbit’s ear several weeks ago. Tiercel held frame to his focus, her eyes unflinchingly trained on her target. in moments like this, she was seldom prone to fits of agreeability, and once the light caught the glistening “scales” of the stone, a switch flipped. ”AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” she roared, rearing back and springing off her haunches to give chase. 

where he gainfully scored, she felt the enormity of her loss. perhaps from a peer's perspective, this was all an invitation to simply play—to participate in the common sport of childhood. however, failing the social aptitude test required to diagnose the intentions of anyone remotely close to her in age, his junior opponent saw it as outright war...

and as such, she treated the retrieval of her prize with the seriousness of a goddamn spartan.

He had one expectation borne of his limited experience in life. He expected her to think twice about pursuing him and attempting to reclaim the stone. He expected her to behave more like his sister and to know of his savage fangs and be wary of them. But she was not. He would have to teach her that he was the sharptooth to her threehorn.

It was as if the stone in his mouth was a fount of courage from which to draw because all his prior flightiness was gone, replaced by his usual self who was unafraid to fight. To the last second he doubted her resolve as she charged, and in holding his ground awaiting her cease and desist, he assured their collision. She barrelled into him with surprising momentum and Rhakios staggered back, nearly losing his balance while still grasping firmly the prize. Though he coiled tense like a snake, he was reluctant to strike her — reluctant to make his jaws a weapon instead of a cage.

He bristled and snarled, a coarse and grating sound from deep in his narrow chest as he regained his footing and leaped aside, putting distance between them once more. He tried again to cow her so that he might never need loose his hold on the stone. He pinned his ears forward and glared intensely, deep furrows running the length of his snout as it buckled terribly, lifting his black lips off the gleaming sides of his teeth. There was no child's play here. He was a young but awful sight: possessive and vicious.

in just a few indignant stride-lengths she was upon him. in her mind, this conflict had already found its resolution: she would give chase, sink her barbwire gums into his tail—at which point the coveted relic would be expelled from his grasp, giving her enough time to dive for its rescue. 

things didn’t go according to her imagining (did they ever?). instead he squared up to her, but this did little to forebear her full-steam-ahead trajectory right towards the orphan, and their bodies united as Tiercel’s headbutt connected with his wither instead of the thunderclouded brow she’d fixed in her crosshairs. 

she immediately teetered backwards, toppling onto her ass with an uhn as Rhakios staggered aside her foray and jumped away to reinforce distance between them, issuing the devilkin a glottal warning as he did so. she didn’t move from her seat for a second, somewhat disoriented as she lifted her head to the visual double-exposure of the boy’s fierce stance. Tier cleared the vertigo from her head with a shake, an ornery gathering of her frons setting to challenge his intimidation strategy. 

she straddled her legs and tried to muster the mightiest thunder her lungs would allow, but there was nothing threatening about what amounted to the angry growl of a pacman frog. her scruff became piloerect, tail streaming aloft her back. often times, litter-mates tested each other’s limits to feel out the familial pecking order. however, these two were unfamiliar with each other and this was a veritable demonstration of resource guarding. 

on one hand, Rhakios was an older kid and by that merit defaulted to daunting foe, vicious sure… but on the other, more persuasive hand, there was that finders keepers losers weepers caveat in process. stone/fish was the apple of her eye and recouping its loss was the only thing her one-track attention span could focus on. who would ever believe she’d found this new species if she didn’t have the archetype itself to confirm her integrity?! Tiercel raked scores through the ground with her foreclaws, threatening to rush him a second time if he didn’t unhand her property immediately snorthuff.

awww yeeeeaahhhh that scene

Um. What?

It was hard to maintain the facade of one not to be messed with when the one wanting to do the messing with was producing such queer sounds and was not the least bit deterred by his display. Fleeting doubt swept across his face; her lack of acknowledgement that he was as fearsome as he thought he looked made him insecure. But he was just as hellbent as possessing the beguiling stone as her and her dragging her claws through the dirt was far from enough to convince him that he should simply hand it over.

Rhakios dropped the stone and stepped forward so that it was sheltered beneath his breast. His teeth were free. He renewed his threat, snarling louder, bristling more bristly, and uttering a sharp coyote-blooded bark in her direction.

Bring it.

You're the one going the wrong way.

that she made him insecure was not to her cognition. any vacillation on his behalf skippered over her the tips of her ears, the nuance in his features easily overlooked. she was in the zone—transfixed on the glitzy stone and the turnpike road to its recovery. regrettably her bullish and minacious posturing was not at all effective in strong-arming him into transferring ownership of the rock back to her. in fact, she watched as it seemed to dismantle some tectonic plates in his boybrain. as he stood collinear to the height of every black, arch hair with resurgent possessiveness, she initially shrank back with second thoughts. however, once the stone clattered onto the ground, gollum junior lurched forward after it, sinking back against the pads of her heels when he stepped protectively on its path. just as she, Rhakios had taken a shine to the commodity and was hard pressed to jettison its potential acclaim because a little girl demanded he do so.

…but I SAW IT FIRST! her inner-dialogue opined. there was no appealing to the guiding principles of whats fair; the coy-wolf curled his lip away from his teeth and asserted his fief with a threat-bark. hmph. too bad it sounded like he’d entered puberty mid-yap, the way the end note stammered off his tongue. Tiercel held off for a moment, slouching her ears sourly as the bitter realization that she probably wasn’t gonna get her fish back settled in. her inner firebrand bid that she try anyway, waste of effort or not. 

undeterred by his loud mouthing, her face clouded over and she drew in a lungful of air and then roared again, stampeding towards him with her head bowed—fully intending on using it as a battering ram to sweep his legs out from beneath him (because she was fun-sized and didn’t meet the height requirements to bunt him in the head, damn it). of course, all Rhakios had to do was shift over an inch and momentum would swiftly correct the lack of strategy applied to the girl's tactics as she careened into the brier.

Had he not dropped the stone to guarded it between his legs, the coywolf probably would have side stepped out of her way and then seized the advantage of her exposed backside. Instead, he was caught in a possessive panic. Rather than get out of her way, Rhakios dove for the rock — forgetting entirely his plan to simply fend her off and hold his ground. This put his skull right in line with Tiercels and SNOCK! they collided forehead to forehead.

Rhakios went tumbling. He had just managed to scoop the stone up and so that went flying off to the side with slaver stringing off of it. The coywolf staggered to his feet, disoriented and dizzied with a throbbing headache. For a moment he focused only on the pain in his head and forgot about the scenario that lead to it. Then his molten eyes clapped onto Tiercel, and beyond her the rock, and he remembered in a real damn hurry.

Infuriated past reason, there was no preamble this time. Rhakios launched himself at the younger pup in a blaze of unbridled savagery, seeking to sink his fangs into her scruff and pin her down.

in a moment of divine intervention orchestrated by the gods of chaos, plan B miraculously yielded to plan A as Rhakios crouched to re-collect the artifact. 

Tiercel had the advantage of bracing for the collision but she didn’t anticipate that their newfound connection would be concussed and appended to a splitting headache. the consummation of her stampede was met with a thwap. grunting, Tiercel rebounded off his face like a bouncy ball hurled at a wall, reeling backwards without much command over the direction whereupon her legs stumbled as she twirled and then fell to the ground. the rock was all but forgotten. actually, most things were. her name, fish, mother dear, her social security number. for the ensuing moments, the only thing she knew was stars.  

and she wasn’t granted much of an opportunity to gain bearings either. before she could even recollect her footing, the boy swooped overtop her and sank his teeth into her scruff with unmufflered force—okay, she could see why Wylla found the sensation problematic. while one could reasonably cull from prior actions that the girl was basically spoiling for a fight, in her current situation, Tiercel was very much in favor of harmony. 

she yelped out in surprise and initially complied with her station, but it wasn’t long before his tense belligerence and her panic created a fulminant defense response in her. more or less hog-tied by the grip Rhakios had on her, with an angry growl she pancaked against the ground and then thrashed like a shark, rolling with mighty effort to her back and seeking to club him with a Thumper-like drub of her back legs. hang off, thou cat, thou bur! vile thing, let loose; or i will shake thee from me like a serpent, thou egg—small fry of treachery!

Her surprised yelp cut through the coarsenss of his snarling and hit sharply against his eardrum, but it did nothing to deter to him or to buy her any remorse. He fed on that moment of victory, feeling her yield to his teeth as he imprisoned her within the cage of his limbs. He clenched his jaws, biting down on her hide to emphasize his reign over her.

His rule was fleeting. He sought to reposition his fangs, to gather more of her nape in his jaws and shake from her head any future thoughts of defying him again. It was at that moment that his hold slackened that she found it within herself to rebel. She, a dark flurry, twisted beneath him, and though he had quickly bit back down he had lost the formidable grip he had. His canines dragged through her fur and she was free of his mouth entirely as he thrust his snout aloft, clear of any blows from her forepaws or fangs while he grunted with each breath she kicked from him.

He stubbornly held himself over her, refusing to give ground even as his tolerance for her pummelling withered. He endured, snarling through his teeth, glowering molten fury down at her. Fucking give up, already!

she winced as his teeth bore down on her smoky cape, plunging those bitchy little cutlasses into her flesh. ohhh yes, Wylla certainly had the motive to kvetch this is what it felt like anytime her cub made use of her own fangs. of course, aforementioned cub had yet to develop empathy of any meaningful capacity and this example would serve less as a deterrent and more as an... irritant.  

she bared her teeth at him, issuing a scornful growl once she successfully snaked to her back. Rhakios grunted but otherwise didn’t seem terribly fazed by the percussion of her feet as she used his chest as a kettledrum. likewise, she was unfazed by the smelt of his glare. ha! I get that look for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. three square meals of DISDAIN of DAY, ya cretin. she shot him a glare of her own right back, lips purling snidely. 

suddenly, she remembered the stone and severed the moment of mortised contempt with a frantic sideways glance. WHERE IS IT! l'enfant terror reared her head back and spotted its glory wrong side up and out of her reach... but only just so. with a grunt she made to claw her way out of the older boy’s clutches, flooring her hindlegs hard against whatever fate would connect them with.

if that didn’t haul him off her, the next strategy was to screech at the top of her lungs in an effort to either a) grab mom’s attention or b) blow out his eardrums. whichever came first.

Oh, fate. It had not been kind to him before and had no intention of being kind to him now. He was about to give, but he had overstayed his welcome and held stubborn too long. His abdomen could endure so much, but her latest savage kick landed square and true against sensitive flesh further down that had precisely zero tolerance for such a strike. Rhakios squalled like a coon with its foot in a trap, and crying in shock and pain (truly, it did not hurt as much as his theatrics would suggest), he scrabbled back with his tail between his legs. His snout soon followed, his slim skull tucked beneath a raised hind limb, as he sniffed and licked around himself.

this is tier's exit, but feel free to post one more time if you'd like <3

fortunately for everyone within earshot, her first strategy was effective in staving him off. he yowled in pain but sadly there was no solicitude etched in her genetic code, she dismissed his presence as soon as she was free of him. Tiercel struggled to all fours and sprang for the rock, descending on it with an avid furl of her lips. her eyes sparkled and, with the quickness of a viper striking the hand of its charmer, she plucked the artifact from the ground and swung her plump frame around to face Rhakios.

with a hmph! she hoisted her snout and pranced away with the stone gritted between her teeth, clipping through the ferns and returning to her den like no gladiator face-off had ever taken place.