Dawnlark Plains [m] haruspex

blood stained his jaw, seeping from the liver held between his teeth.

shadows crisscrossed his vision from overhead; the wind was like a death rattle breath, and rather than the sour notes of brine, the hunter tasted only iron.

he loped inland.
a blood trail threaded upon the snow.

scattered viscera lead west to an empty vessel—what once might have been a wild sheep; faceless, and with a hollowed belly.

She scented blood on the wind. Tikigâk did not delay in the following of it, heavy footfalls making no mystery of her approach. It was not far, and the journey was short. There was a blood trail that seemed to lead away, but no other yet occupied this space but for the wolf that, from this distance, looked to be abandoning the kill. 

Tikigâk lowered her head to begin to grab and consume what remained, an opportunist as she sought what would become home base, but her eyes were upon the wolf to discern whether or not they were retreating, or approaching.

if the wind shifted, he would not have known.
iron seeping through his grin; pungent, distracting.

a crow's squall drew his eye, and he saw the way it winged back.
a stranger—headfirst in to bowels.

his teeth sink deeper in to the liver, and he knows in that momentary rage his work is undone; it would require repetition to get right, to see it through.

approaching at a stalk, the hunter is livid and staring.

they were not near the snow shelter, this man and this woman.

but he watched them all the same. adding to his ranks those blooded and strong was paramount, but only if they saw him for what he was.

a plume of breath reached upward. sun eater approached, tail proud and dark against the open skies. were these darukaal? were they from the mountain? he would discover.

blood in the snow. prey on the wind.

He turns. Tikigâk quickly weighs her odds, and determines that what little of this carcass was left was worth no squabble. It was no abandoned kill, it seemed. 

Tikigâk lifts her head and licks her chops as she creates distance between the headless kill and the male wolf who stares, his mood apparent. Tikigâk was ambivalent then, but her eyes did not leave him. Her guard was up—she watched his gait, seeking any hitch in it. The blood on the wind, was any of it his? Her gaze baldly assessed him, seeking weakness.

One ear turns toward the third among them as she moves. 

the bighorn, for that was what lay spatch-cocked before the woman, had been eviscerated in an expert fashion. what remained of the entrails spiraled out from where it sat, its check cavity stuffed with an assortment of objects with no obvious pattern. the hide had been pricked at by crows; now, parts of the interior had been excavated by the woman.
kukuvrak looked to be a barely-contained cacophony unto himself: purple-red coated his snout, staining the bloom of grizzle-white fur on his chest a garish crimson. the liver fell from his grasping teeth, one side first, then the other, plop, plop.
he turned an ear towards the oncoming stranger—but he was focused on the woman, and each stared the other down. he had been well fed through his travels and—watching her, it was a truth they shared. but she had disrupted something that she knew nothing about.
the newcomer, a man—kukuvrak spared a look.
he had one eye. he carried himself proudly.
kukuvrak looked to the woman again, wondering if she saw what he saw; his focus peeled from the carcass and affixed upon the man, instead. he prowled boldly in to range of One Eye, grimacing with wet, red teeth—

a man. a hunter. he had killed near the clan. by the edict of some in saatsine, he should slay the male outright. but sun eater saw how he moved, how he had laid out the kill. the smearing of blood and perfect figuring of a self-sustained hunter was of interest to the man.

he allowed the other close with a bristling of hackles, a flare of his own nostrils.

they read the stories of one another. 

the big woman watched them. "yours?" sun eater asked at last, lifting his chin toward her. did the hunter speak? 

lanzadoii watchfulness.

The dull woman had observed no pattern, though had not missed the strange assortment of things within the meat. It meant nothing to her, as it did not smell of poison that she could detect with her keen sense of smell. The entrails she had hoped to devour, and she salivated as she noted then the liver that was in the mouth of the man. A string of drool oozed, and she licked that away too.

The man had sensed the other. Tikigâk did not know if they were pack, and only when his gaze shifted did Tikigâks to behold the man. A warrior, by the look of him, with only one eye to appraise her visually in turn. The wind picked up, and she could not hear them—but from where she trotted, she could pick up their scent. 

Tikigâk had not stopped. She would soon move from this territory to the next, but before she was gone her gaze turned back to the first bloody man, nostrils flaring to take them both in from where she ranged.

the woman found nothing worth consuming. she had defiled his work, though; it would have to be corrected.
she pulled away from the men. she did not go towards One Eye, and neither did One Eye appear to know Her;
kukuvrak observed these things in flashes, not wanting to detract from his testing of the proud man.

the man had said something—but the woman had fled, and in that was an answer. kukuvrak drew his tongue across his teeth, then sheathed them behind black lips.

tartok. he stabs with his voice—lancing for One Eye with his tone, equally proud.

tartok.

he knew this title. beyond them, the large female moved away, intent upon another clime. sun eater watched her depart with some reticence, then shifted his single eye back to the bloodstained man who had laid out the kill.

"i know tartok. i saatsine," he said of himself, thumping chest twice. "many hunter. you come. see other tartok?"

it was dangerous to bring as one two halves of one faction.

sun eater welcomed the thrum of chaos after all that had gone on.

saatsine? meaningless.
tartok? other.

eyes pulled from the man, looking to the liver scattered in the dirt. a wad of bloody spit is volleyed at it. a last glance to the sheep, too—the distant, now gone woman.

grunting, kukuvrak gives a rumble of acceptance and waits for One Eye to move.

another hunter for the sun clan, and a silent one it seemed. sun eater had heard far enough of common and accented lanzadoii; he found respite in the silence as they moved back toward the herbalists' cache.

as the snow shelter came into view, he fixed the new man with a hard look, one that warned. head tilted. a call for @Nagruk next, low and teasing;

look what i have found for you.

something began.