RP Where The Wild Things Are



He laughs! Aspen’s grin is wide, pleased with herself for being the cause of his joy. There’s a brief moment of confusion when he stops, and she tilts her head to the side and opens her mouth to ask, but he is already turning back to the deer and away from the Aspen.

She doesn’t linger on the oddness, because there is snow to be rolled in! She finds a fresh patch that doesn’t have too much mud or dirt and flops down, scrunching up her nose and rubbing her face in the snow to clear off the blood. Her clothes are never very clean, but she rolls around a little so that they’re less dirty.

Lyle finishes up with the deer around the time she finishes her tidying. She lifts herself from the snow, feeling the cold on all of her skin and fur now. It’s not just that she was rolling in the snow - the sun is behind the trees, which is usually a sign to head back to her den. Nights are cold, in the forest. So, as much as she’s enjoying the unexpected company, she will have to go inside and hope to see him again come morning.

“No,” she answers, with a hint of petulance. Still…

A sigh escapes her as a warm cloud of steam. She lowers her head slightly, looking for the sun again and finding only long shadows. When the sun goes to bed, so should you. “Will go in den for nighttime,” she relents.

Her tail hangs low, her ears drooping slightly into her tangled hair. She doesn’t want to say goodbye.

 
Lyle’s face melts into a smile at the childish petulance, the gentle refusal to go to sleep. Without thinking, he reaches out and rubs her wet hair, almost like one would a dog or a particularly affectionate cat. Halfway through the motion, he almost hesitates – but follows through. “I’ll finish up here, and I’ll see you in the morning, kiddo. Sleep tight.”

The hesitation is a sign that he might need to rethink his plan here. The sooner she goes to bed, the sooner he has the space to do just that. That, and start setting traps. If he’s really lucky he’ll catch something by morning, but he doubts that. It takes time and patience to wait for people to fall for something like a pit trap, and it’s pretty clear that Aspen hasn’t seen many people around here lately at all.

No, the traps are probably going to take a few days. He’ll take that time to at least settle around here, see if he can’t find an empty cabin. It’s going to be important to stay close to Aspen if he really wants to go through with his plan – he’s a much better hunter than she is. Bigger, stronger, more efficient. More experienced. She’ll need him around to gain any weight. And besides, he can keep anything more dangerous than himself away, too. It’ll work out in the end, he’s sure. It always does.
 


It has been a very long time since Aspen has been touched by another human. She doesn’t know what to do with it; something in her delights at the brush of fingers against her hair, and something else snarls and aches, fierce and so sharp that she nearly gasps.

She’s sure her face must look very peculiar, as confused as she feels, and she feels both relieved and terribly sad when Lyle lifts his hand away. Shaking herself, she bounces between her paws to get some of her momentum back and then scurries over to the entrance to her den.

“Night!” she squeaks, squeezing through the crack in the rock very ungracefully in her current form. Midway through, her fur shifts to something equally short-haired but gray, her tail shedding in reverse and becoming hairless, and then she’s through and into her sanctuary.

Rather than evaluate her feelings, Aspen opts to collapse into her nest. As usual, it seems, the day has left her exhausted, and she burrows into the furs and fabrics with a great big sigh.

But most unusually, she has something to look forward to come morning. Someone to talk to! Meat she doesn’t have to hunt for! How exciting.

As her eyelids droop ever closer to closing for the night, Aspen digs two carefully preserved scraps of fabric from her pile and presses them to her face in turn, breathing in the faint not-her-scents that cling to them.

She wonders what her momma and poppa would think of Lyle. She isn’t sure what she thinks of him quite yet, but she wonders. If things were different, maybe they could have met him, and he could’ve sat with them for dinner. They would eat something warm, she decides, something like warmed deer meat. And they would talk, with words and sentences that line up the right way the first time.

Her chest aches, that same fierce hurt that overtook her earlier, and she curls around herself, pressing the fabric scraps to her chest as though, this time, she can protect them. She doesn’t know when she falls asleep, only that the warmth of a full stomach is a sweeter lullaby than any she’s sung to herself.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top