Haunted Wood I don't want your money

the days tick by slowly, marked only by the slow healing of the bloody, scabbed bruises on her side. the uncertain and tumultuous nature of the wolves here is welcome; navigating them and this new place uses enough of her time and energy so that the events of the week past can go ignored. she's elected to deal with the death of her mother by not dealing with it at all, the abandonment of her sister by burying the grief deep and trusting in Eyes. 

she comes across the remains of a doe, only a few bones remaining here; the heavier ones that can not be carried off so easily by scavengers. the skull is missing, too. it's the spine she'd interested in, and seizes the thing in her jaws as she plants her forepaws against the lower two ribs, attempting to strip them from the spine. she tugs back, and the bones shift beneath her paws, but so does the scabbing along her side. a snap, and one rib is dislodged; she turns her attention to the one remaining, then.

it was not the doe that drew merrick's attention, nor the rumbling of the ground. it was the bruised girl-child, her contusions engendering something akin to lust in him. it flickered briefly; he dared not feed the basic ember, lest it burst into something he might not be able to rein back.
a child, bloodied — he desired after the taste of her innocent wounds, as he had upon the mountain. merrick found himself changed, a thirst vibrating always in his throat.
the nightwalkers would tear his flesh to pieces if he laid hurt upon one of their own.
and so merrick only drew near some steps, drifting as if he had come upon the child by accident. "i can help you catch something better if you want," the boy offered after a few moments, tossing an affable grin her way.

she pauses in her destruction, the labour required fast depleting her motivation in securing the spine. the man who appears is far more interesting, she fixes him with a stare as he makes his offer. she thinks on it only a moment before agreeing with an offhand, "okay." stepping away from the carcass, picking her way over the creature's forelimbs, she moves closer to him, hardly trusting him but eager for practice in the hunt. self-sufficiency isn't just her goal, it is becoming very clear that it is a requirement here. "who're you?" 

"merrick," the boy answered, thrilled as the younger child attended him almost immediately. quickly drunken upon the power afforded by his own charisma, the boy had a quick and vivid flash of storing her flayed boy downwind, beneath stones, where she would not be found.
he put it aside. she was a packmate, beneath the protection of the nightwalkers. therefore he must find a way to coexist.
"what would you like to eat?" he asked, tipping the girl a teasing wink.

merrick, says the boy, and she commits the face and name easily enough to memory. so far, he stands out from the rest of the lot here, in a good way. this has her wary, somewhat, for she doesn't think it possible that a true good-hearted wolf could serve under Vengeance. 

"anything stupid enough to catch." she supplies, meeting the wink with an empty stare of her own, unsure of it's meaning. she's hungry enough to put aside her suspicion, knowing she's fairly rubbish at hunting alone. in the wood she always had scylla by her side. "any ideas?" 

"rabbits," merrick rejoined smartly. "have you ever heard one scream?" if he could not have this child in the manner most palatable to his unhinged lusts, then perhaps he would make of her a pupil after a fashion, a small conduit for his chaotic want.
again he thrilled by how easily she moved at his side; he took them both into a copse thronged with stripped berry bushes and began to hunt for the scent of the hapless, stupid beasts.