Frogspawn Swamp Frog prince
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Elfie is not entirely alone, Wraen is in the background.

When Wraen had first offered Elfie to go out for a hunt, he had been very excited. He had known for a while now that he was a grown up boy, who had much more common sense and general intelligence than his younger uncles and aunts. And along with his ego, his thirst for adventures had grown and they were suffering under Eljay's protective measures. He had thought that now he would show them, how good and independent he was, when he would bring a whole rabbit... no! ... a whole deer back home all taken down by himself!

Imagine his disappointment that Wraen had had no inclination to after the big guys and that even the smallest of prey, which he had scorned in the beginning, had no wish at all to become his meal. Anyone's meal for that matter. The first failures and mishaps, while learning the valuable trade, humbled his aspirations and general attitude to the adults. With something new to focus on and practice, he had less time to be a pain-in-the-ass to his father or anyone else for that matter. 

Wraen had told him that the small game were the true salt of the earth, though he refused to believe her. He thought that with time and tons and tons of practice and, of course, when he was taller and just as a tank as Colt was, he would take that deer down. All by himself. For now, however, he worked on food sources that matched his current skill-set and size. Yet again - as stupid frogs looked - they were not easy to catch. They had a developed sense of survival just the same way as everyone else did.

With his mentor hunting the same prey in the vicinity and being annoyingly more successful than the pupil, Elfie crouched, sneaked up on, pounced, splashed and repeated the whole process again. Once focused - he would not get bored easily.
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#2
Wraen's own hunt was going pretty well and had some highly amusing moments. Plenty of frogs, easy in view and within grasp, but the feisty amphibians had no intentions of ending up on her lunch plate without putting up quick flight. Elfie did not know this, but he had overestimated his mentor's success. The clever thing that masked her failures was her ability to constantly pretend that everything was going well.

This would have turned out to be a rather uneventful thread were it not for a discovery of quite an unusual inhabitant of the swamp. A grumpy looking reptile sandwiched between two hard, bone plates. "Hello," Wraen greeted the animal and poked it with her forepaw, making it retreat inside it's shell. "Elfie, come and look!" she called out to the boy.
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"Yup, coming!" Elfie yelled back, but did not take off right away, because he wanted to give one last shot at a green-tawny frog he had been spying on for the last coulpe of minutes. He made a stealthy move, sudden jump and heard the amphibian flop away, while he was left with moss and grass in his jaws. Yuck!

He spat the inedible stuff out and rushed back to, where Wraen was observing something on the ground. First he did not see it, then his gaze narrowed down on the odd-looking thing. It was a rock just like any other. With holes and - what was that? - a pair of angry looking yellow eyes?

"What is it?" he asked Wraen, while he himself crouched down and put his muzzle within the level of the reptile.
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"Will you believe me, if I told you that I have not got the slightest idea?" Wraen looked up at the boy and grinned. Then she turned her attention back to the reptile, pawed it's shell few times and then had a hearty exploratory sniff all over it's body. Though the animal remained silent and did not protest, she could imagine it being annoyed. Scared - no. That kind of stony reptile expression did not betray anything of the sort.

"Smells like a lizard and it is not that warm either," she said, retreating from the animal and taking a seat. "My best guess is that it's a relative of the lizard. Too dry to be a frog."
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Elfie was at an age, when he began to realize that adults did not know everything, therefore Wraen's statement did not catch him so much by surprise. The turtle opened one, yellow, angry eye and stared back at him without blinking from the depths of it's shell. The boy withdrew, feeling disconcerned by that look and decided to inspect the other five options, which did not involve orbs of any kind.

"Is it safe to eat?" he questioned, though there was one obvious problem - how did you get through that shell? "Weejay would like to see it. Maybe we can take it to the copse?" the thought of doing something nice to his sister brought a sincere smile to his lips. This grumpy fellow would fit well in her flower garden.
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"I am not sure," Wraen shrugged. She was not usually picky about her food and she had yet to encounter a meat source that was poisonous. But if this fellow was anything like lizards or frogs, then it should be fine. If not for the shell. She tapped it with her paw to test, how tough it was. Then - much to the turtle's annoyment, she turned it upside down to see, if it had a soft underbelly like most prey did. 

"Nope - rock solid," she said and flipped the fellow back on it's stomach. "It's a tad bit too big to comfortably pick it up," she told the boy, after she had attempted to wrap her jaws around the animal and failed to do so. The shape was all wrong. "But I think that, where there is one, there has to be another one. So you can bring Weejay here sometime and you can look for it together," she suggested.
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Elfie was a tad bit disappointed that they would have to leave the turtle behind. He was not as confident as his mentor that he was going to see the animal again so soon. He would hate to instill false hope in Weejay's heart. She was already so sensitive and fragile. 

"Should we go home?" he asked Wraen, again eager now to be back at the copse to tell his sister all about his discovery. "Maybe, if we can turn it upside down? So, that it does not run away and I have plenty of time to bring Weejay here?"
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"I do not think that it would be such a good idea. Someone with bigger set of jaws might came along and sweep the critter away. You would not want that, would you?" Wraen asked the boy, who shook his head heartily. "Let's hope then that Weejay is not away or that you meet it again," she concluded. And in a friendly banter about other subjects, they returned home together.