Closed RP Tooth and Claw

[Deleted member 94]

 

[Katpride]

Adelyn knows that it isn’t necessary for her to hunt here, but she still likes to keep her skills sharp. But proper hunting requires a proper forest. The little gatherings of trees closer to the city aren’t real forests, and rather than complain she’s set today aside to continue her search for something closer to the real deal.

She’s wandered far beyond where the lights of her grandparents’ neighborhood can reach. This stretch of woods still doesn’t compare to the forest of her youth, but the trees are denser and there are fewer and fewer human paths packing down the dirt and fallen leaves. That’ll have to do.

Finding a nice tree to lean against, Adelyn tugs off her boots and gloves. Her paws stretch, finally freed from their leather concealment, and she can’t repress a grin. Finally, a chance to practice! She tucks them into her pack and looks up into the tree she’d chosen, trying to pick out a good branch to hang it from.

That’s when she hears the sounds of chase. Instinctively, she freezes. Her ears twitch, angling to catch the noises of feet - paws? hooves? - on dirt. A hunt? It doesn’t sound like the hunting she’d have to run from, with men waving guns around. It sounds like a scuffle between animals.

Her curiosity piqued, she creeps silently across the forest floor towards the scuffle. She moves a little faster as there’s a loud thump and the sounds of tearing. She always liked watching the predators in her forest, even if she had to stay hidden in trees so she wouldn’t become their new prey.

There’s a clearing up ahead, and Adelyn stays behind the cover of one of the trees bordering it as she peers at the scene. Rather than an animal, she sees a man hunched over a fresh deer carcass. Thrown for a loop, all she can think to do is stand and stare.

It’s a long moment before she realizes she should probably leave. But as she takes a step back to do just that, her paw lands awkwardly on a wet patch of leaves and skids out from under her. “Eep!”

 

[Katpride]

Her heart thudding in her chest, Adelyn scrambles back to her feet. She takes a half step closer, resting her hand on the tree she’d been hiding behind. “I’m not afraid. I just thought you might like to be alone with your kill.”

That’s one lesson her parents had drilled into her head. You don’t interrupt a predator when it’s eating. Plenty of animals get territorial over food.

But, she supposes, the weather is still warm, and small warm things still scurry about in the foliage. It isn’t yet winter, when survival instincts are at their peak. And, looking closer, the figure in the clearing seems more man than beast.

She shifts her paws under her, and settles for circling at the edge of the clearing rather than approaching him directly. “I’m Adelyn. Is this your forest?”

She can recognize it in him now, through an instinct that has never failed her. He belongs to the wild like she does, maybe even more. And he doesn’t seem to mean her harm, which her heart recognizes by slowing its pace to something more reasonable.

 

[Katpride]

“I was about to,” Adelyn answers, glancing back in the direction where she dropped her bag. “I’m new here too, and it’s been a while. Usually I catch smaller things. Not to eat, just to practice.”

She finds the thrill of the chase fun, but isn’t much of a fan of the blood and death part. Easier to just catch and release, especially when bunnies and foxes and squirrels are so cute.

Deer are cute too, especially fawns, and she looks at the poor mangled creature with a tinge of pity. It isn’t her place to judge Connor for where he gets his meals, but the thought of doing that herself twists her stomach a little. Speaking of… “Is your stomach alright? Do you not need to cook them first?”

She thinks she would need to cook raw meat first before she ate it. She isn’t actually a big cat, after all.

 

[Katpride]

Adelyn appears at ease, her body language relaxed. She can Sense that Connor doesn’t mean her harm, though the thought doesn’t cross her mind in as many words. Perhaps the blood would have put others ill at ease, but all things must eat. She’s just glad he can stomach the raw meat, she wouldn’t want anyone to make themselves sick trying to eat something they couldn’t.

“It keeps my instincts sharp,” she answers honestly. “I enjoy the hunt, but I have no need to do actual hunting for food. It makes me happy, too.”

She drags one of her toe claws through the dirt, pleased to have found a nice person in the woods. “Also, bunnies are soft! They’re nice to hold for a while.”

The deer carcass draws her attention again, and her excitement tempers somewhat. “Do you ever catch things just to hold them?”

 

[Katpride]

“Momma says they don’t think the same way we do. Everything is scary to something that small, but really if they’re out they’re probably looking for food,” Adelyn explains. Her non-furry hand digs in the pocket of her skirt, and she pulls out a handful of shredded lettuce, carrot peel, and flowers. She shows the rabbit food to Connor, then carefully puts it back in her pocket.

“Maybe it’s still scary, but if I were stuck out here, I’d need to know how to catch them for real. So this is practice for me, and a treat for them.” She shrugs, her ears flattening a little against the sides of her head. “Not that I think I’d get stuck, of course.”

Regardless of her ability to find her way home, her parents had stressed the importance of having a place to run to if home wasn’t an option. Someplace she could sustain herself, until the rest of her family came to get her. Those are sad thoughts, circumstances she’d rather avoid.

Still, she’ll need to be prepared, if they happen. She scuffs her paw against the ground again, pats the tree she’d been leaning against, and turns slightly away from the clearing. “I should get back to it. It was nice to meet you, mister.”

 

[Katpride]

Adelyn looks over her shoulder at Connor; the large, somewhat disheveled man is still crouched in the pile of viscera that was once a deer. No, wait, upon closer inspection, she sees the white spots on the deer’s flank and recognizes it as a fawn. Her poppa taught her that hunters weren’t supposed to kill fawns all that much; it would be bad for the ecosystem.

Somehow, she doesn’t get the impression that this was an accidental killing, nor something that Connor does only rarely. Swallowing around a lump in her throat, she looks again at the man. His shirt is stained with so much red she can hardly see its original color, his hands and mouth the same.

“No, no thank you,” Adelyn says, as politely as she can manage. She does not want that kind of hunt for herself, does not want to know the stickiness of blood seeping into her clothing from such a messy kill. No, she thinks, this is not the path for her.

“Goodbye.” She turns again and is off, her paws light on the forest floor now that she’s paying attention. She’ll need to retrieve her pack and find a different part of the forest for her practice, it seems.