Cerulean Cape crustacean frustration

The sea was calm, the skies clear, but there was an unmistakable chill on the breeze; winter had come, and soon the corsair would need abandon the coast that he had travelled for the past while. But for now, he was fine with the sand beneath his paws as he busied himself looking for something to eat. Truthfully, it was rare to find him not looking for something to eat.

Overhead the gulls wheeled, but he could charm none of them down with his clucking and cawing, however gull-like his racket might have sounded. Harumph. With a snort, Dragon loped further down the shore. He would find something. Or I'll eat my own tail. Except that he wouldn't. Someone else's tail? Perhaps. But there was no need; ahead the long frond of a beached-stranded kelp moved as a fat, barnacle-encrusted crab scuttled forth.

Crabs needed no finesse in their hunting, no real skill except to know where the look when one did not just scuttle out in front of your nose. So, Dragon barged forward like a slavering dog after a treat that had been thrown across the floor. He snatched the crab up without a care, and promptly found his tongue pinched. He caterwauled like a cat with its tail jammed in the window, and then shook his head enough that the crab was flung from his tongue and sent tumbling onto the sand.

Bristling, the insulted corsair stalked toward the crustacean. "Hah? Ye think ye got the best of me?" He licked his lips. The crab was upside down, attempting to use its claws to upright itself. But it wasn't having any success. Upon seeing this, Dragon plunked his arse down and flicked sand toward the crab. "Hah!" He put his hunger aside to watch the struggle with a shit-eating grin on his face.

Pipit was in awe of the sea. She had seen bays and waterfalls, and all manner of great lakes and rivers, but no body of water seemed to compare to the magnified, salt-heavy god that was the ocean. She had been too wary of its winter crashing and the staunch chill it imposed upon the beach, but as the winter day had become uncharacteristically clear, she found a rare opportunity to travel down to the beach and observe calmer waters.

She was distracted by the sight of a wolf. He was rugged and windswept, tall and colored in a way that reminded her of a rainy mountainside. Interested, she approached, intent on a happy greeting— that was, until she noticed what he was doing. Immediately, she made about ten thousand assumptions.

"Hey!" she said sharply, her voice rising in unfamiliar indignance. "Don't torture it! What's wrong with you?" Pipit snapped as she fearlessly dove forward, though didn't directly threaten the stranger. Using a careful and swift cat's paw, she scooped the struggling crab back onto its stomach without getting herself pinched, and watched as it lifted its claws threateningly at them. Her head clipped back towards the male, a bi-colored frown marring her otherwise very sweet face.

She seemed to realize herself, perhaps feeling the foreign scowl on her face, so she blurted: "I'm sorry, but— but that was really mean of you! You should've just killed it instead of trying to bury it alive." She was thrown entirely from how she had initially wanted to approach him, and clearly didn't know that crabs buried themselves all the time, hardly minding a little sand bath like that.

LMAO at her, thanks for joining!

Once, the crab looked like he was about to make it. He teetered on one edge of his shell as his large claw worked to push himself further, but his audience was not interested in his success. Dragon reached forward, and hooked the crustacean with one nail, erasing all the progress the crab had made. He grinned, rather pleased with himself, until someone had to go and spoil the fun.

She was there, scolding him with a furor he could not fathom, and diving in to assist the crab all before he quite realized what was happening. Reactively he had gathered his paws and spun to face her, ears flattened and brows furrowed into an indignant scowl. He had done no wrong as far as he was concerned.

She was quick to apologize, but all Dragon did was stare at her, until after a moment or two his ears came forward and he flashed her a rakish grin. Without a word, he darted toward the crab, who had not made it far, and scooped it into his mouth. This time, the wretched thing was not able to grab his tongue, and his teeth came down upon it in one strong bite that crushed it dead.

Pieces of carapace, meat and juices all dripped from the sides of his mouth with long, ropy strands of drool. He faced her and swallowed, smacking his lips, keeping the devilish facade. "Better?"

Outwardly she appeared cross— stiff and unyielding despite her lack of hard, intimidating features accompanied by an unfortunately diminutive build. Inwardly, however, Pipit was shrinking beneath his unwavering gaze: two dreary-lit lanterns hanging from a dark porch in a storm. Her chagrin was fast fading, water draining out of cupped hands, and she was already eager to be shed of this state of mind that felt so unnatural to her. Still, she wouldn't let herself seem too fickle or weak, so she continued to scowl at him despite becoming increasingly aware of how much her face itched from doing it.

The stranger darted forward suddenly; and though it wasn't in her direction, reflexively Pipit gave a small flinch. Her tensely held shoulders began to ease as she watched him snap up the sideways walker and end the poor creature's angst. She hardly expected him to do so, even if he was being derisive about it. "Yes," she huffed back, turning her nose up at his caustic sneering, though even this polite haughtiness couldn't last with her.

She sighed, and looked at him squarely again. "I didn't mean to scold you," she admitted, her voice losing its sharpness in favor of something meek— possibly embarrassed. "I just.. I don't like to see suffering." She realized belatedly that he likely didn't care how she felt about anything, but even as she turned her face away from him, she knew that she needed him to warm to her, as he'd be more inclined to answer the important question she wanted to ask more honestly.

Her demeanor shifted, and Dragon twitched an ear as she explained the reason for her upset. Once again, the corsair stared at her for a moment. "Hah?" He sniggered, expecting her to admit she was joking. But she wasn't, and this took him back for a moment. He did not come from a place where soft hearts toward other animals was a thing; other animals, even other wolves that were not one of your own, were food.

"It's a crab, girl." He said, arching a single brow, his tail swishing. She puzzled him and it showed across his brows and in his questioning gaze. "It doesn't suffer. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't think. It's food." He rolled his broad shoulders. "Suffering is when wolves starve," he said. He knew that well.

Pipit swallowed her terse disbelief at the stranger's words. He was a wolf with no sympathy for other living creatures, and though this didn't make him a terrible being in her eyes, it did make him ignorant. "Just because it's food doesn't mean it doesn't have feelings," the "hippie" scowled again. "And suffering isn't exclusive to hunger, or— or to just us! You're edible to a bear!" she spewed suddenly, as if such an example made any sense or difference to him. He was making her feel slightly hysterical, which she didn't like, but her competitive nature goaded her to be right. "Are you saying you wouldn't feel any suffering if one just decided to flip you over and throw sand all over you and you were all powerless and—"

Her voice had risen to a level she wasn't comfortable with, and with a quiet hmph! she ceased her tirade and plopped down on the half-frozen sand, setting herself into an ungracious pout. She didn't seem to be afraid of him, or concerned that he could turn on her if he chose— it didn't even seem to occur to her really— but rather than take her leave of the devilish swain, she just looked up and frowned at him. "Do you always torture your food before killing it, or do you have some decency somewhere in that fat head of yours?" That, was for calling her a girl.

Dragon was intimately familiar with hunger, with its burn, its ache and its madness... it was only recently that his flesh rose above the hard lines of his ribs, and the jut of his hipbones and spine, concealing them - but only just.  Hunger was not the only suffering that the corsair knew; but it was the root of all of them. All that had been sour in his world was because some wolf had gone hungry. A wolf who attacked and killed their own did so because anger and savagery were born of hunger. A wolf that ate other wolves did so because any flesh was better than death. A mother that killed a weak pup did so so that another may live off the only meager scraps she had to offer. Hunger was awful, and the choices it forced were worse.

But he did not dwell on his past. In this moment he was fully entertained by the tirade that he had pulled from the girl. He received her lecture with a toothy, impish grin that stretched back to his wiggling ears, and with a swishing tail.

"You can roll me over and throw sand on me if you want," he answered, daring her with the drawl of his voice and the gleam in his gold eyes as he ignored her other question.

Pipit cut her eyes at the male, narrowing her gaze into slits as he insisted on belittling her frustration into nothing but a joke. She would have been offended, if her spirits weren't so naturally light, and her inclination for competition wasn't so strong; but as things were, she took his words as a challenge, and the petite fawn was not to be daunted by the strapping pirate before her.

She was on her feet in an instant, curving her spine like the arc of a bow as she dug her forepaws into the chilling sand and stuck her rump in the air. Her tail lifted, swinging tentatively back and forth as she targeted him. "Any last words?" she growled, unable to keep the elvish grin from her face before she suddenly lunged at him.

You're free to do whatever PPing ya like ;)

"Bite me," he answered, rakish and bold, his eyes glinting. He braced to meet her lunge, receiving her against the muscle of his chest as their jaws met in a spar. The touch of his fangs against her skin was rough but skilled; he boasted a sleek control over himself in this way, and would not draw blood without intending. And, at least for now, he did not intend to bleed her. Though he was not known to linger close to others for long, he entertained her in his space, in play, gradually affording her the chance to overpower him if she wished.

I left the end open for you to decide on :)

Pipit was gaily vicious, invigorated by his ungentle behavior and exhilarated by his virile strength that he had no qualms with using against her. Though no blood spilled between them, there would certainly be some unforgiving welts left tagging their respective hides as they jaw-sparred and gnawed and clawed at one another like a pair of hormonal teenagers. Despite her size, she was surprisingly tough (where he allowed, she realized— as it would've been all too easy for him to toss her aside), but it would always be her swiftness that made her somewhat formidable.

At some point in their wrestling, the golden-eyed swain wound up on his back, allowing her to best him for the briefest moment. She loomed over him with a dainty paw pressed firmly into his chest. "Now," she panted, eyes alight as her tongue lolled and her grin spread wide; "hold still." And she began to use her other paw to mound sand up against his already well-dusted shoulder.

Even as he relinquished himself to her, his heart beat like thunder in his chest, and lightning gathered in his flesh, coiling his muscles into trained readiness. His lips were drawn in a hard line, but it wavered, becoming a roguish grin as he warred with himself. His instinct and his experience snarled at him to get back his feet, but he swallowed it. She was a curiosity to him; she was petite and groomed, not a mark marred her coat or her face, yet she was able to match the coarseness of him as they tangoed. That attracted him most.

She commanded him to hold still as he laid on his back, and still he was as she started to scoop sand onto him. His eyes shifted from the bi-colored depths of her own, to fall to and linger on her throat. He growled then, his rumble low and soft, and lurched upward to grasp her throat in his teeth. His fangs pressed firmly against her, but as ever, he maintained control — over himself, and for this brief moment, over her. He held her only long enough to show her that he could have had her, that his exposure, his vulnerability, had become her own. Then he released her. That growl rolled into a fiendish laugh deep in his chest, and he grinned toothily at her as his tail swept back and forth across the sands.

Time slowed dramatically for Pipit as her peripheral caught the male's blinding strike for her throat. She flinched, but was not nearly quick enough to evade his teeth, and still in the spirit of the game, it didn't occur to her that she needed to get completely out of the way anyway. Alarms trilled through her body as his mouth closed on her throat, her eyes widening and her body tensing as she fought the instinct to tear herself away from him even at the risk of losing her jugular. And yet...

What frightened her most about this vulnerability— the pressure, the threat— was that she liked it. She'd never had her throat in the jaws of anyone before, and she was bewildered to find that her fear was being overpowered by a foreign sense of ecstasy. A shiver crawled up her spine, culminating in a quiver of her throat that toed the line between a whine and a groan. The foot planted on his chest flexed softly, her claws scoring into fur like smoke and ash, scraping against skin and the hard layer of sinew that made up the pirate's body.

She gasped as he released her, scuttling from atop him as she struggled to comprehend the residual tingling of her nerves she was left with in the aftermath of her powerlessness. His laughter only managed to make her more self-conscious— did he know?!— so she kept her back to him, unwilling to face the roguish devil and his unmistakable allure of total power. Unwilling to admit that she wanted... more.

It was a game to him to rile others, to invoke some reaction from them, but her reaction he had not quite expected. She sprung free and said nothing. He was left staring at her back at length, but it did not take long for him to form his own interpretation and understanding.

Dragon got up and shook his coat, before lowering down on his haunches. "Did it scare you to meet your own mortality?" He asked. She certainly did not look like she had seen many horrors or hardships in her life, but he could not know. He only assumed her reaction to be one of shock and fear, the realization that her life was not protected, and she could die well before she ever thought she would.