Panther Park [M]Thundering

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: Heat thread #2. Conception potential. Possibly receptive.

She ran the plains for game. Yowls cut through the upper sunspires and tingled her inner ear. They're far enough to be comfortable, close enough to be cautious, but she is anything but as she races the grounds. A hare ran, out of breath, bounding forward on weakened legs. The squeals were stiffened once her jaws clasped. Now she missed the morning bark platters of elk lung and cow liver from each handmaid. 

They're far now.

the woman has gone from the forest. her path is winding through the grass and towards the mountains, with kikyō on her tail.

he takes his time—he must, as it takes effort to read the way the trail scrawls the hillside.

it is slower still as the stones take over, and the sedge growing clustered among them is less forgiving.

he can read a change in her pace from time to time, but he does not hurry. should she find trouble he has no doubt she would do the natural thing and run a reverse course; the fact she has not, bodes well.

he wonders what draws her this way.

Catch in mouth, sharp eyes cut into the mountains. The coniferous are near and they are where her feet take her next, the iron of blood on the tongue turning her possessive. 

Flank sliding down the base of a tree trunk, she slumps down and throws a wrist over top of the hare. Hers, and she is careful to begin removing the hide from the flesh with gnawing teeth. Frustrated, chewing harder and firmer as a fleeting whine announces her hunger. She is still not used to eating alone.

at first the blood in the air is thin. not worth the effort of investigation. when it becomes apparent that this bloodscent carries alongside that of the woman, the warrior's instinct rises.

still some ways behind, he climbs.

the sound of something shifting against the trees up ahead—and the gradual sight of a woman, hewn as if from pine bark, where the blood is the strongest. as she whines and tears in to her prey, kikyo's interest grows to a sort of infatuation.

he does not say anything—but he also does not leave her.

"Why do you follow?"

At first, a coincidence. At that point, she had not known how long he'd been there. For hours? For the day?

But when the hundreds came of her own steps were fallen into by another's, it was clear. Karavira hid this realization, if only because she is at the end of her running. Maybe it is that her tired body came from more than working to keep it alive. That it has realized before she did that she has nothing, and no one.

It makes her suddenly uncaring.

She eats. Numbed. Or does she now care too much?

"Is it a game?"

he ruminates over her question. in the time it takes for him to decide on what to say, she has her own idea of what is happening. the man looks to the bloody mess of her meal, first. he watches the way her expression seems to hollow out.

a lady should not walk alone, which was so obvious to him, a man, in this deepening springtime; but also, there was the blood, and the underlying musk of—was that cat?

especially in a place such as this, at a time like this. nostrils flaring, kikyo looks to the angled trees where they grow from the hillside, and the stones, and the shattered path of shale which serpentined around them both.

She isn't listening. There is no care for what he will say next, whatever mindless words spew from the mouth of a shadowing ronin. Chewing the frail bones of dead rabbit, looking but not truly seeing. She is in a world of her own where the buzzing is louder than words.

Brought back into the reality they are in now when he finally answers her. Breath flees. The suns of her eyes open. Both ears twitch, holding upright next. He is...

It is her turn to answer. How?

Defensive is what she knows. "Alone? What? Do I read as incapable to you?" Ronin is scenting. And she is oblivious as to what.