All proceeded as he imagined - Elswyth's slight form was sheltered well beneath the bowing grasses, the murk of snow that fettered their fronds. She took her shadow through a trail of shivering ends that rounded the beasts, and not so much as an ear trembled in her direction. Gauthier lowered himself even more against the ridge, flattening best as he could, waiting until she would leap from that chosen angle and run the lame doe his way. With his bulk and brutality, he would bring it down, she would help keep it in place, and they would both enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Her descent down the hill was swift and -- too swift. Too swift! She skidded down the slope with a skiing ease; the suddenness of it startled Gauthier and company altogether, if not for the squeal that ripped from her then the gangly collapse in the trench.

He leapt quickly to his feet and galloped down the knoll after the gazelles' speedy departure - but it was all for naught, and just as assuredly played as he had expected. The herd took no mind to the limping doe, and she ran just behind them, just far enough that she could have been derailed and chased into his ready jaws. Instead, she bounded just out of reach, his teeth snapping at her heels before they were gone.

At the point of no return, Gauthier let the gazelle disappear into the snowy haze, panting in the scene of their dismay. There he stood for a while, gathering his breaths, before he turned to where @Elswyth had toppled with a look of fury. Fantastic, he snarled, certainly not with the expression or tone of the feat being fantastic in the least. You had one job. Well done. Truly. A feat of mast- a deep breath, a sigh. Accidents happen, yes? He had made enough of his own in his life. A loss had always been a loss, were it chance or the lack of skill, and he accepted it with eventual grace.

Fuck it, he growled, his eyes spanning across to where the shadows of wildebeest lingered just beyond the watering hole. Had they been alerted by her clumsiness as well? His stomach gurgled, petitioning the consideration that they should quit now, here. If he could find a vantage that did not give them away to the wildebeest, there was still a chance for dinner.

Come on. he ordered solemnly, stalking toward the tall grasses that led around the watering hole in the distance, trying to lead through trails of softened snow._{BG — ART — CODE}

"useless girl! it's a good thing you're so pretty!"

sitting among the ruin of her most recently failed endeavor, her father's words harsh upon her ears.

"damn head in the clouds, aye? pay attention!"

his words rung through her mind, now, remembering the anger and the exasperation. the sneering look when he finally turned her over to her mother, abandoning any pretense of making her his heir. good for nothing, after all.


"i'm s-sorry!" instinct throws the apology at his feet, muscle memory of her lips forming the words a thousand times. sorry was the only weapon she knew how to wield, and today -- today it brings a sudden burst of frustration.

for the first time in her life she frowns, really and truly, and lifts her marred gaze up to his of snapping aggravation. "it was slippery," she snapped, and oh -- oh, where did that tone come from?

blinking, wide-eyed and stunned, her lips popped open in an expression of surprise. surprise that turned to horror; she had been taught to speak with only respect. only kindness. only gentleness. especially to men.

elswyth would have apologized again, except he was telling her to come on and moving away and she was just as shocked by that as her own angry words. he wanted to try again? with her?

oh her mercurial moods -- she bounded after him before remembering herself and slowing her stride, moving with the same stealthy silence as she had mere moments before. "wha-" but the question dies with a click of teeth, her focus following his and realizing that they had another target. anxiety swells in her chest at the thought of failing him again and she does her best to don determination instead.

he would never forgive her if she failed again, so that was simply not an option.

@Gauthier

In the thrall of his swallowed fury he didn't listen to her apology, and scantly heard the angst-fueled tone of her rebuttal - slippery. A snort would be all she would receive for that, even if it was the honest truth. An accident, as anyone is prone to make, as they were only mortal and foolish by the droves. It was natural, was it not? But Gauthier is only hangrier, and stalked through the grasses ahead of the small thing, his head low and expression wolfishly famished.

The draconian temper flares when she bounded beside him, seeming momentarily released from her sulk. He was quick to shoot her a glance of vehement disdain as she crashed through the frosted grasses, making too much noise than he would have liked. A wha- chased the heat of his disgruntlement higher, but he was pleased that she dropped it as soon as it rose. Naive is she, and he is not sympathetic for the extent of it. Perhaps were he softer, or she blameless in her ignorance by cub-youth, he may have made forgiveness a higher priority.

Instead, she receives a cold shoulder and a sharp tongue. Quiet, he reiterated with the clack of his jaws, fangs bared, his nose lined in deviant shadows that sprawled, danced, drew like the terrific writhing of lightning across his features. The core of him gnarled, and he growled if only in response to it.

Ahead, the wildebeest roved the edges of the spring or sipped from its gleaming surface, their eyes trained on the muddied slopes for crocs. Zebra grazed just beyond, their numbers oddly lacking.

He stopped beneath the tall fronds of grasses and cast @Elswyth a cautionary glance, cold and resilient. They would stomp you to death if you make a mistake. he warned with a precarious lilt to his solemn baritone, turning then his attention back on their hulking forms as they munched and drank and groomed. For a while he stead, searching beast to beast for a nuance of weakness, a break, a limp, any sense of carelessness.

And then --

A spark. Something sandy moved between the brown wash of the wildebeest, and his lip pulled tight over a fang. Try not to slip this time, eh? he rumbled from the corner of his jaws, his eyes trailing, fixed._{BG — ART — CODE}

Quiet.

Sharp and quick with a flash of teeth that made her cow, sliding lower to the ground, reminding him that she is no threat and he need not use those teeth on her. Ignore the spark of anger that flickered as she pressed so easily down, taking up the too-familiar position of subservience. It was all she knew -- all she had ever known -- and never before had it bothered her.

Until today. Until now, faced with a man fierce and scarred and frightening, a man she so desperately did not want to be useless to.

Learn to use her claws, he had once said, and she had stumbled and failed and proven to him every bad thing he had thought of her.

"I am," she protested even as she cowered, because this was as quiet as she knew how to be. As if he would listen to her, as if he would ever think her anything more than a hindrance. Head in the clouds they would say, and Elswyth knew it was true.

He is full of warnings but not of direction, and though she is silent beside him she poises on the verge of asking him a question. Her lips part and the words are there, and then she swallows them back and makes the grave mistake of assuming. "I won't," she snips, wide eyes once more showing a hint of horror at the tone she dared to take with him. Flexing her claws she brushed past him, slinking low to the ground, attempting to swing wide through the grasses so that she might chase them back his way.

Dangerous, perhaps, but what was life without a little danger?

A glance back, a brief pause, a hesitation just long enough to give him the chance to stop her if the plan had changed. If not she would burst from her spot at his signal and hopefully they would be successful this time.

@Gauthier

The cold makes its home in his heart - his flesh - his bones. Ruthless Heathcliff, his bright eyes appeared ever so dark as he looked over the lilac softness of Elswyth, suddenly risen with the embers of derisive smite. Still tender, those rebellious inclinations. He leaned into the prospect of it, a challenge before fury, squaring his body into the voracious image of a beast that he is. Where she snaps he presses, vicious lines rippling across the length of his nose - there is amusement yet, humor that there is a spark in her. Were he less cruel, there may even be admiration.

Gauthier does loathe subservience, but how he plucks the strings of it here. He cannot help it. It is in his blood.

So it is recklessness that fuels his muscles to twitch when she bites barkingly at his orders, impulses to shove her into the cold ground, carve another hollow in the other eye, teach her what claws are for. Instead, there is the ghost of it: he looms over her for just a moment, like drawing high a back-hand, before fixing his attentions back over the herd.

There, in their ranks, the devils of hulking hooved things that wouldn't hesitate to cleave her guts and gore her ribs, grazed the lesser forms of impala, but before he can say a word - she is gone.

He drew a hiss back into his teeth as he realized, snatching his eyes back over the leaning grasses, narrowing his vision until he could see her sly silhouette slipping beneath the golden fronds.

She turns back for a moment, but why bother? Why stop her in her heedless ventures, her graceless bouts of temper; perhaps it is useful, perhaps it will serve her better than cowering under his gaze and slipping down icy crests. Perhaps they will skewer her, and she will be made the snack instead - so be it, he thinks viciously, watching her stalk uninstructed. The wildebeest are clumsy, loping things, however barbaric their defensive tactics and shameless desperations can be. He'd seen them stomp their own calves to death if only to get away from the herding jaws of death. He had no doubt they'd even wallop the impala if they didn't clod @Elswyth to pieces first.

Gauthier slunk along the grasses shortly behind and askew, too hungry to waste another chance, too eager to wait on another's fortune. If she failed and scattered them again, he would watch them for the strictest measure of vulnerability - their worst mate, their most heavily endowed mothers, a limping daemon, a stomped fool. And if Elswyth counted her cards well enough, he would be in the right position to end it all._{BG — ART — CODE}

elswyth was not born to be a hunter. in a different life, perhaps, for her small size made her nimble and quick. but in this life? where she had been raised in a pampered world with only the intention of becoming a little housewife?

well, she was still learning, right?

tangled in confusing emotions she does not think of the risks; she does not know how dangerous these beasts are. elswyth sees them the same as any hooved animal, and scarcely understands how deadly these particular wildebeast are.

he does not stop her and so she presses onward, smothering her annoyance and focusing instead on the ever-present excitement she has discovered in hunting. the thrill of the chase is a new treat for her, and she slinks forward with surprise grace considering her last folly. elswyth had learned how to be delicate and quiet, to move silently through an area so as not to draw unwanted attention. these are the skills she draws on now, bi-eyes focused on the grazing animals.

too late does she realize that there are others among them that were meant to be the true target -- too late for she is already bursting from the grasses with a decidedly ungraceful holler. it is more than enough to startle the grazing beasts, kicking up the equivalent of a stampede. fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) they turned directly where she wished them to, pounding in the direction of her hidden hunting partner with elswyth giving her best snarl as she takes up the rear.

The realization of her success was one bittersweet; a sort of yes, yes, and a horrifying sinking of no. She misses the impala by twice of a lion's length - they are too keen, too spritely, to fall into the ranks of wildebeest as they snort and huff and galomp their mass Gauthier's way. The impala shift left, the wildebeest right, and all are blended in a union of greys and horn-throwing madness.

Gauthier fell back on his heels, a mixture of rage and terror; no, more rage, more fury for the insolence of the wild idea that this was the way things were meant to go. She was new, that was made certain - she did not choose one or two but the entire throng of them to send hurdling his way. Pick one! One, naiba să te ia! he roared over the pandemonium of hoof and grunt, scrambling to his feet. A gluttonous herd, too many for the picking and much for the plucking!

His heart thrum with the rocking of the earth beneath them all, the ripping of hell that seeped between the cracks and reached for the pith of him. Death had smiled on him many times before, and it had burnt its likeness, its stigma, in the facets of his own handsome facade. To dance with it now was the prospect - and he is a horrible dancer.

Trying nonetheless to avoid hoof and horn unscathed - he ripped the ground beneath him, startling a first two devils that drove into the fold of writhing grasses, his tail catching the blow of a third, and another blasting his hips aside. Legs fallen underfoot, the pain reared up the length of his spine and he bit the summoning of a pained roar with a rippling snarl and leapt into the nearest tree. The acacia rocked with the rush of the horde that ran beneath it, and he gripped the bough he found with all the steadiness and power he could to contain himself there.

The herd, thankfully fewer now than they would be in the thrive of summer's blessings, thinned toward the end to reveal the lithe creature at their tails. @Elswyth bringing the rear, pulled his grimace into darker brooding, something even toothier and feral than it had before in her ever daring marks of irritation. Not a thought passed that this may be karma for his cruelty - he is too selfish for such whimsical superstitions, and owes his ire only to her insolence.

Regardless, he selects his eyes to the one she drives closest toward him, watching it dart one way and the next, smashing into its fellows to shepherd it just... the right way.

Gauthier leaned forward on a bough, weighing his body with it, swaying with the motion, waiting, waiting, as the thunder underfoot fell into lesser power, and the creature lunged on with its brethren, kicking and snorting and throwing its head with resentful fashion. The animal's eyes rolled in their sockets, his mouth frothed and back beaded with sweat, but for all his commotion did not see the lion biding in the shadow of the acacia.

At once he drove down upon it - forced the whole of his weight into the thing's spine, writhed with the creature's groaning and flailing as it crashed into another, both lion and wildebeast dropped to the ground. Not a one of its brothers stopped to claim him, not even the one it had slammed into in its descent; the herd drove on through the fields, shifting to their known safe quarters of the realm, somewhere they could stop and count beyond the watch of hungry lions. This beast, however, thrashed and gasped and throttled his horns into the dirt and kicked for all it was worth - Gauthier leaned up off of it as it attempted to clamber to its feet, and then drove again, slamming them both into the winter-dusted ground, digging his fangs deeper into its shoulder, pressing his claws deeper into its ribs and neck.

Eyes rolled Elswyth's direction, and between desperate panting breaths - -Crose yr routh rrn its routh fo it can't reathe! he ordered between spread, vice-grip jaws, and re-adjusted them to slam the beast into the ground again. QRICK!_{BG — ART — CODE}

it occurred to her -- too late! -- that she had made a mistake. as the herd kicked up their hooves in to a thunderous roar it became apparent that there were too many. this was surely not the plan, but by the time that little thought dawns on her she can do nothing but try to salvage her ruin.

pick up the broken pieces and glue them back together, haphazard and tilted and with far too many gaps.

with a determined snarl she pressed forward, seeking to drive one away from the rest, as if she was a herding dog and not a tiny lion. by some grace of god there is one that does as is needed, slamming in to its herdmate and then turning just enough that she can move between the herd and the single one.

a flurry of action brings the bigger lion down on it's back and for a second (just a breath) she is frozen. staring as the rest of the herd carries on, thundering away from the downed beast, saving themselves from the hungry jaws of the lion. "o-oh!"

scrambling, then, to do as he asked. claws sunk in to the side of the animal's face, trying to hold it still as she looks to do as he has directed. cover it's mouth, cover it's mouth. elswyth is sloppy and at first her grip slips when the beast swings it's head, driving it's horns towards her lithe body. a snarl and then her mouth finds its spot, teeth clamping down as she steals the breath (and life) away from the struggling beast.

too caught up in the adrenaline to realized that the swing of its head had drove the point of a horn in to her side.

@Gauthier

She obliged - thankfully, pressing death's kiss to the final breaths of life that groped the gullet of the flailing beast; suffered the harsh groans, peeled the muffled whimpers. It howled and moaned, the simpering flesh that gave beneath his teeth (sinking, sinking deep and carving the crumbling edges of its bone) and the anchored weight of his claws buried themselves in the rush of decadence. Warmth, lending itself to the innocent bed of snow, made its black paths through the disheveled dirt.

Delightful, the way blood stains the chill of frost. At first it runs a bright, stunning claret so luscious and clear that an artist's keen eye may find romance in canvassing tragedy. Then it sinks, blackening with its pilgrimage back to the dust from whence it came. What settles on the surface is brilliance and beauty. An offering.

Gauthier makes this offering to himself. Perhaps, to Elswyth. But he is a selfish god.

So it goes until the thing can gasp its last, writhe its last, its hooves the parody of a great gallop into the ventures that surpass the sight. Perhaps to its own Valhalla, its own halls of grace and pomp, vast pastures of verdant grandeur, the skull-rattling victories against its lesser fellows. There in the rolling pink purgatory of its eyes, a dream unfurled its last press of solitude, and the bull thrust the last throw of its horns, kicked the last fury of its powerful hind legs.

Relief finds the pit of his stomach where anger once knelt: success founded, however released to surprise. @Elswyth's claws were not useless after all, nor the teeth that clenched the creature's snout.

The heathen held until the last pulse was given to the soft hum of the earth and the whirling remembered roar of celestial stardust that exists in all of us. And then he released his hold, sighing, his mouth full and dripping with sanguinary succulence. That which moves them on, on.

Blood is the life.

But when his grin moves to Elswyth with its impish perusal, he sees there, too, floods that brightness, that alluring tread of life that finds the ground, the beast, his senses. Though the meat of kudu had made the top of the chef's list for him, the ichor of lions had always held the stead of his thirst. It was different, its own tang, its own salt, metal, grit. It was powerful.

And now, appetite roved as he looked to her, though woven with the fringes of concern -- You're hurt, he said, too evenly to be sympathetic, too obsessive, too breathless, too hungrily. The hole in her side made dark, deep rivulets of delicious granache. He licked the line of his black lips, dripping wet with blood, the sheen slick, laced along the edges of his teeth. In the well of his cold eyes bled a cryptid fascination._{BG — ART — CODE}

how sweet victory tasted!

elswyth had hunted before, had fed before. nothing big; small mice and rodents, little creatures unlucky enough to cross the path of the unskilled waif. learning, practicing, putting faith in her claws and her teeth.

this, though, was a new level. a new experience, a new thrill -- and the taste of blood on her lips stirred a satisfied sigh when she finally released her grip. life had left and there was only death; death and blood and --

-- pain?

it struck her suddenly, flop ears pressed quick against her head, confused. the source is muddled, unfocused, and at first she is certain it is only the exhaustion of muscles rarely used. soreness that will spread to consume and leave her aching (but content) when the sun rises on the morrow.

but no. no.

you're hurt.

as if underwater and she turns her head to him, blinking, frowning. a strange expression for the sunshine girl, turned all the more morbid by the paint of blood across her pastel skin. "oh." it is all she can think to say as another wave of pain skitters across her flesh, this time more pointed. a turn of her head to look at the wound, seeping blood that is not of the prey but of the hunter.

"oh." she says again, watching as the twist of her body jostles the hole and spills more of that precious lifeblood to the earth. "ouch." there is a distance to her voice as her vision swims and she slumps, suddenly, to the ground. shaking her head, wanting to clear the dizziness that rose so abruptly, thinking of the fresh meal that lay in wait.

thinking of how she wanted to share that with him; how this would ruin it all.

"i'm fine," she mumbled with a forced smile, pushing her paws beneath her again and seeking to heft her tiny bulk from the ground, ignoring the fresh wave of agony and the warm gush that aimed to serve as a warning. don't move it said, but oh she was a stubborn thing, looking still to find her footing.