Whitefish River Feast or Famine

In Quartz Cavern, more specifically. And if anyone cares, I'm technically assuming some sort of prehistoric critter here.  ;)  Anyone inclined to pick a more-specific subspecies should feel free to do so, heh heh; otherwise I'll most likely just leave it vague.
...I may also edit this a little more at some point when I'm a little more awake.  <.<;

Nynka hated the rain. She skittered hastily into the overhanging ledge above the entry to the smallish cavern as the droplets grew larger and heavier, spotting her fur with solid PLOPs that left her looking as mottled as if she was changing color for the seasons again; she glared out into the misty air as the gradiented gray grew darker and wetter yet directly above. The very low grumbling of thunder far off was audible more as a palpable vibration in the bones than any actual sound. It didn't look like it was going to clear up anytime soon; with a heaved sigh of disgust Nynka set about investigating her rocky little hollowed-out haven.

Upon closer investigation, it appeared that she had been mistaken; the initial alcove had a tiny opening that threaded its way deeper into the unforgiving stone. Nynka wriggled her whiskers, sneezed and gave her head a brief but furious shaking to clear it of the wetness that had accumulated upon her brown fur there before she squeezed into the rocky tunnel. She noticed as she emerged from the low passage, her body bending and flexing like a large fuzzy pipe cleaner around the rocky jags and curves, that the walls seemed to be increasingly studded and streaked with a different texture of material. Nynka was not impressed; currently, in the gray light filtering dimly in, the quartz looked as dull and lifeless as the rock around it. Besides which, Nynka had seen and even collected much prettier rocks than these, in her staunch opinion. What caught her attention much more impressively were the looming teeth that gleamed right in her face as she exited the small passageway and made an abrupt right turn. Nynka loosed a shrill, angry cry of surprise, puffing up her fur and leaping back with her back arched even more exaggeratedly than a frightened cat's. Nynka's eyes glittered with fury as much as anything however; with the weather putting her in an increasingly foul mood, she felt ready to fight anyone or anything that even thought about taunting her— this despite the fact that a single eyetooth was nearly the length of her bitty legs. Then, as she squinted and hissed menacingly, the shape resolved itself into the shape of a hulking bear skull leering up at her from the gloom. Nynka's anger turned to puzzlement turned to a dawning grin of her own; the creature must have been absolutely massive in life, but Nynka enjoyed baring her teeth right back at the thing with a hearty Hah! Neener neener, no matter how much bigger you may have been than me, my teeth are just as pointy and I am still alive while you are not!

Obscurely cheered by the enormous grinning skull, Nynka glanced about and noticed that it was far from the only bone littered about the cavern's murky shadows, though it was one of the most-complete. Curious, she skittered forth and stuck her much smaller head straight down into the bearskull's gaping eyesocket. She could probably have fit her entire body through the opening with relative ease, in fact, but at the moment she was more interested in simply checking out the space. It seemed perfectly plausible to her that someone might have hidden some sort of fancy treasure in there at some point, even if the original owner's flesh and muscle were long since wasted away, with virtually no scent detectable any longer—which helped explain how it had snuck up on her in the dark so suddenly like that. Now if only she could carry the thing away with her to add to her little collection back home; it would make quite an impressive size, but even hollowed completely out the thing had to outweigh her by an order of magnitude at least.

As discussed, forward-dated to today’s date.

It was raining. Grezig was not surprised, as they sky had been promising rain all day yesterday. She knew she should have stayed on the plateau. She could have been curled up in the Door right about now, warm and dry, instead of drenched with rainwater. Oh well. She had been following the river for lack of anything to do, taking a short scouting mission just outside of the territory. As luck would have it, she found some kind of cave nestled up against a hill beside the river, and she quickly ducked inside and shook off, sending droplets splattering everywhere.

Once she wandered a bit deeper in, she began to pick up a faint trace of a scent… It smelled fresh, so perhaps it had been in the rain as well, which would explain why it was hard for Grezig to pick it up well. She put her nose to the ground and continued sniffing. Soon, though, a sound broke the silence of the cave and she looked up, moving towards it. She soon found a little weasel wandering around the bones in this cave. Her instincts kicked in and she growled at the creature, thinking it might make an easy meal if she could keep it cornered inside the cave. She lowered her center of gravity, preparing to charge.

Nynka shoved herself further in, nose and whiskers atwitch, to investigate the object further. Then the wolf's growl came echoing just a little in Nynka's ears, with the sheer mass of bone between her and it muffling the noise somewhat, along with the awkward angle it had to travel to squeeze up into the eye sockets and in-between the bony orbit and Nynka's fuzzy body. Almost she whipped out to face the source of the noise, but as it turned out given the way her body was kinked and already halfway inside it was easier to slither all the way into the skull than back out of it. Bright black weasel eyes flipped upright and aligned themselves with the gaping eye sockets of the bear. Another of those damn canines? She should have known. This one was a bit larger than some of those whose acquaintance she had made more recently—and thicker-skulled itself as well, obviously. Nynka flashed her teeth in response—though how visible that tiny array might be above the bear's much more impressive array was questionable—and let out a stern growl of her own as the wolf lowered itself to charge in what it probably thought was an impressively menacing and looming manner.

Nynka had been prepared for the wolf's puffed-up posturing, but started back in surprise nonetheless as her own voice boomed out at an unprecedented volume, amplified immensely by the dome of the skull arching over her head and tail. It took her only a second or two before she decided she liked this enhancement, however, and a wider and wickeder grin to plaster itself upon her face in place of the surprised "o." Upon which she hopped off her dusty tail and darted her head forward once more to give a shrill little weasel-roar and listen in delight as its magnitude built to ridiculous proportions as it richocheted around first the skull's innards and then out into the larger cavern beyond, where it would bounce around for a bit longer before gradually fading.

Skrraaaaaaa!

Was the wolf stupid enough to charge straight into that ferocious noise and the empty bones that were both armoring and amplifying at the moment? Nynka almost hoped so. That seemed like it would be very entertaining, and well worth all the trouble it had taken to wend her way through to this cave and its treasures. Forget the shiny rocks; already she was trying to figure out if there was any possible way whatsoever she could take this awesome skull home with her. If this idiot intruder didn't go bashing it all to pieces with its stupid skull in turn, that is; ugh.

Grezig did not see the flash of tiny teeth in the darkness of the cave, but she did hear a growl—and it was far louder than she would have expected. It echoed in the chamber and Grezig stopped her posturing and stood up straight. She turned her head this way and that as she listened to the echo. Ah. That’s all it was, wasn’t it? An echo. Harmless. The creature was still only a weasel, after all. The worst it could do was leave a few nasty bites. She wasn’t sure its claws could get through her fur unless it aimed for her face. She crouched down again and was about to charge the weasel when another, much louder sound echoed around her, filling her brain so that she could no longer think. 

’Skrraaaaaaa!’

Grezig shook her head, growling in irritation as her thoughts jumbled around inside her confused brain. A headache was blooming in her temples, and now she was angry. This hunt should have been easy. Before the stupid creature could yell again and cause Grezig’s headache to worsen, she charged at it. She wasn’t sure what she expected to happen, but what did happen was a lot worse than anything she could have thought of. As she approached the bear skull at the back of the cave, she slipped and slid on the other bones littering the ground. She lost her footing and slammed her forehead into the bear skull at top speed.

Her head pounded angrily, as if someone were bashing a rock into the inside of her skull over and over again. She groaned and got up clumsily, backing away in a daze. She needed to go home and forget this embarrassment ever happened. And she needed to get her head looked at by Liri. Not even aware of the weasel at this point, she stumbled towards the exit to the cave, her vision blurring from the pain.

[Exit unless stopped.]

The noise made the wolf straighten up and pay attention. Nynka had to smother a laugh at the comical way it stopped the canine in its tracks; served the rude and stupid creature right. Nynka's roar seemed to bounce around inside the wolf's skull almost as much as the bear's, however, by the way the canine shook her head hard and tried to rid herself of the noise. Dumb wolf: didn't she know that wasn't how soiund worked? Everyone knew you couldn't just dump it out one ear or the other by tilting or shaking your head, or at least, Nynka had thought everyone knew. Her eyes glittered and her grin grew all the more ferocious as she herself paused a moment to watch the spectacle of the wolf whose intelligence score just kept lowering in Nynka's estimation.

That pause even for just a breath proved to be something of a mistake, however. Much though Nynka might have argued against it it was somewhat dubious to assume that another shrieking weasel-roar would have kept deterring the canine for much longer. In fact, it might have been her last attempt enraging the creature that sent it stumbling into a charge straight at Nynka and her precious bear skull. Nynka yelled and then hissed in indignation—truth be told, her own little ears were starting to hurt from all the noise she was generating, but more importantly this stupid wolf was about to try and hurt her recious bearskull treasure! Nynka wasn't at all certain the old thick bear-bones could be hurt by even a fellow bear, much less some much-scrawnier wolf, but she resented the attempt regardless. It was awkward to try and get her face aligned at just the proper angle inside the eyesocket, and there wasn't much time as the wolf came steaming toward her like a runaway locomotive; Nynka whipped back on her brown haunches and tried to get her head coiled back in position to strike snakelike at the wolf when it put its big fat black nose within range.

Perhaps the rattling clatter of bones should have forewarned her and Grezig both, but it didn't. Nynka's own strike was aborted as the ground and skull suddenly quaked all around her; rather than the flash of teeth and black nose with a big imaginary bullseye upon it, she saw a sudden rolling wall of fur and the quick flash of a widening brown wolfeye just before the world went all topsy-turvy about her. Nynka's half-aborted snakestrike instead cracked her own pointed tooth against the wall of bone that quite suddenly was not where it had been a second ago. Nynka yiped and jerked her head back, rapidly feeling the blunted eyetooth with her little pink tongue, but was distracted from this and loosed a hearty guffaw as she saw the wolf clambering uncertainly to its feet and then wandering toward the door in a drunken daze from her concussion. Nynka kept cackling, literally rolling onto her back with laughter inside her now-lopsided bearskull hideaway at the canine who'd gone and injured herself before the weasel could touch so much as a hair. She composed herself just long enough to roll back upright for a moment and victoriously yell, despite her own slightly-aching head: Skreeee! And don't come back! It gave her own thinner pointnosed skull a twinge, but oh, it was so worth it.

By the time she had finally finished laughing herself silly, the cave had only her own empty echoes remaining to keep her company. Nynka gave the inside of the skull a few vicious prods to try and make absolutely sure it didn't want to come home with her, but Grezig's failtastic charge had left it with one side of its muzzle jabbed deep into the soil, and if anything it was even less willing to budge than before. Nynka shrugged and eeled free of the thing, but made a mental note of its location in case she should find herself bored and in need of a fun, wolf-mocking prop for another day.