Redtail Rise XXV

he chuffed for @Thursday Evening.

it was time to evaluate the child himself. time for a new name.

the hunt-leader led his offspring toward the burned place. the rise was teeming with life. he wanted his son to understand as much of it as he was able.

to his father's chuff, thursday evening responds.

it's a small noise: a small chirrup of curiousity that is borne only after a low huff as he is pulled from batting 'round a small, terrified frog that had played dead in hopes of warding the boy off.

given reprieve, the frog hops off before thursday evening can push himself to his paws. he does, trotting after augur.

augur rumbled in approval. his son was already a hunter. 

they moved toward the black land. he sniffed at its edges. in spring the sides of the burned place would be misty with fresh green grass. for now, he noted the mice-tracks and looked to his child.

what did the boy see?

the terrain that they step nearer to, father and son, is bleak, desolate charred earth. he sniffs at it: a faint scent of smoke that will linger for many years, imprinted into the morrow of the wood and earth.

still, the soft years faded tang tickles his nose as his gaze continues to wander; chin lifting as he tests the scents in the air then.

the harlequin kissed landscape: misty greens meeting charred burnt lands is confusing to thursday evening who looks then to augur, soft question in his gaze.

like his mother the boy was observant.

augur watched him draw in the scents. the young one's yellow eyes missed nothing. he moved with a grace despite his large body.

and so in this moment he became bobcat to his father.

he moved to show a patch of little tracks, swiping dirt away from their sides with strokes of his massive paws. augur sniffed and looked to bobcat to do the same.

as bobcat has come to expect: there is no verbal answer to his unspoken question. only the movement of his father's paws in small sweeps. it is then that he notices the tracks; life in the otherwise charred landscape. something about it strikes bobcat as strange but he moves closer to study the tiny tracks; following in his father's gestures by sniffing at them.

he lets the scents linger in his nostrils before breathing out a soft exhale.

mice, he deduces. relatively fresh.

he looks up to augur then, waiting to take his cues of what to do next from him.

bobcat looked. augur watched. his sunlit eyes were approving.

augur motioned in the direction of the tracks. he took one step and then another. they must follow.

and slowly they would, the man stopping every so often to show how the trails became more, became fresh dung and gently bent twigs.

the hunt is afoot, bobcat quickly pieces the puzzle together, a thrill of excitement surging thru him.

he's hungry for it: for testing and training natural survival instincts. thus far, his hunting instincts led him to his mother's teat ...had been present when they bring him meat and he growls as he devours it — as if he lingers with the fear of sharing ( he does, just doesn't know it yet ).

greedily, bobcat's eyes follows augur's muzzle to study broken twigs and trampled blades of grass, to find crossing tracks and then — which he recoils from only slightly — sniffing at droppings. the first were old: holding a smell not pungent as the droppings that progressed the nearer they got.

he watched and paused as bobcat did.

and then he lowered himself like a huge grey stone among the grass. there some fifteen feet away, two mice, scurrying back and forth.

his sensed reached for his son. he silently urged the boy closer.

yellow eyes glowed. was bobcat ready?

first augur's steps slow and then bobcat's — taking his cue from his father. it is only in the following seconds that he hears their quarry: the soft scurry of the mices' tiny feet against the hard, freezing earth.

bobcat's ears twitch, hunger for the hunt bubbling in his chest, warming him as augur urges him on.

hunt.

eager to please augur and earn his praise, to be the pride of his parents, bobcat slinks down drawing nearer. they were small and in this he suspects they have an advantage, especially if they took to ground.

bobcat tries not to overthink. tries to channel blossoming instinct.

but he is clumsy and green and though he pounces on one of them, it slips in a panicked fright out from beneath his paw. brow furrows and a low, annoyed noise rumbles in bobcat's throat as he tries again and again to pin one with his front paws only to have them escape into a hole in a hollowed tree trunk.

failure droops his shoulders and he lets his annoyance known as he rams his shoulder into the wood though it did nothing but cause his shoulder to ache.

augur chuffed toward bobcat.

a low rumble congratulated the boy all the same. these things did not come easily. these things must be learned.

he stepped aside and motioned for his son to watch. the great man stalked lightly off into the green once more. he lay in wait. he used the same movements.

the mice scattered. his pounce had not netted one either. the man glanced to bobcat with lolling tongue. did he understand?

bobcat watches; golden eyes follow augur's movements. augur waits where bobcat had been impatient. noisy.

greedily, bobcat's gaze falls upon his father's mouth upon his return, disappointed to find it empty of mouse. they'd scurried off. the desire to stalk into the grasses again and let his anger at failing drive him. but he suspects that might not be what augur wants him to do.

so he waits for further instruction.

bobcat was angry. it sparked in his fur and his eyes.

augur rumbled, tossed his head once. to be hunter was to be patient. many a wolf had starved due to premature hunts.

bobcat would not be one of them.

low now, stalking almost upon belly, showing his son another way.

trying to reign in his anger, his impatience is a bit of a struggle. it wars against the attempt to restrain it, to let patience and calm bridle it.

like a mighty dragon it swings its head; defiant.

but bobcat takes a deep breath and another, letting the cool air temper the heat of it within his body. golden gaze falls upon father.

watching.

bobcat mimics augur, slinking low to his belly.

low and easy and swift.

this time the mice were more easily seen. at this level, he gestured to the tiny feet and tails and twitching noses, at the energy of the grass-stems where they met the earth.

strike, he urged bobcat with a look.

this time they would succeed.

the difference is notable, even to bobcat's young eyes. he can see ...perhaps not at their level but close enough. it's a better vantage point, at any rate. it shows bobcat a new world.

the mice are in his crosshairs and at father's command he surges forward.

his teeth make contact, instinct telling him to bite down, to hold harder as the pitiful creature squeals and tries to wriggle away.

he clamps down until it stills and pops up from his place among the grass, showing his prize to father.

success.

bobcat's second reward was a bass rumble from his father. augur thrust his ears forward and wagged his tail once.

good.

if bobcat meant to stay and continue his hunting, augur would go. otherwise he would lead the boy off, to where @New Snow might be shown that their son had become a hunter.