Grouse Thicket Where the wild things are.

hope its ok to hop in here! successful hunt roll in the tabletop for the grouse :)

the mist that hangs over the thicket is so deep it is difficult to see through. it swallows everything up like a layer of snow over the ground; the soft crunch of leaves and twig under his paws seems to quiet even before it starts, as though he walks through a separate world altogether. he follows the lingering trails of game birds and the sunlight struggling to break through the mist and the heavy canopy of the trees, muzzle lowered to the earth, ears angled and waiting.

caligula is beginning to feel slightly more comfortable here. he has wandered over hills, across mountains, through streams and forest, and for the most part he walks to a peaceful silence, one broken only by the wildlife any might expect to encounter and the few wolves who had…well. simple conversations are – they are not something he enjoys, necessarily, but no one yet has –

a bird coos softly nearby. caligula freezes in place, but it is not a pause driven by fear – it is the pause of an animal catching sight of its prey, the stillness of a waiting predator. it has been a while since he has eaten; long enough that the call reminds him, makes his stomach growl insistently as he stands there. he does not bother to consider it. he crouches, drops until the tangled fur of his belly brushes the dirt, and waits, breath slow and quiet, waiting for the bird to call again – and when it does, he creeps forward, winding carefully through the mist until he has the animal in his sights.

it is a grouse, what he has been scenting all along, coated in speckled brown-and-white feathers, oblivious to his presence. it picks at the early summer green of shoots sprouting from the ground and does not seem to notice as he draws closer and closer, breath held to a catch in his throat, and leaps.

it notices him then. it launches into flight in a rustle of feathers, but caligula is past watching it – it is instinct moving him now, a knife-edged thing that snaps his jaws shut like a steel-toothed trap at the perfect time to crunch down upon the delicate bones of its wing, and though it struggles, there is nothing such a bird can do to free itself from the cage of a wolf’s teeth.

caligula snaps his head back hastily, searching for a more effective grip – he has no wish to feel it writhing under his jaws, to beat out the last of its life, struggling for escape from the cage that now surrounds it. but as he flips it into the air, the copper-and-salt of blood flooding his nose, he glimpses the flicker of something nearby.

his entire body flinches away, thoroughly beyond his control; his head turns, and the instinct driving him – the instinct to fill his empty belly, the instinct to eat – wars with the fear that always accompanies the sight of something, of someone, unfamiliar. his jaws snap closed, levered over the breast of his prey; the rest of his body, unbalanced, jerks him away, and he stumbles as he draws back, neck pulled back to his shoulders as his gaze comes to rest on the slate-and-silver figure before him.