ooc: mature for cannibalism, gore, desecration of a body

ic: Xerxes was finding himself in the independence of growing older. He no longer felt the need to cling to his mother's side at all times and even felt himself starting to grow resentful of her presence, if only because with her typically came Tripfire. The boy had nothing against his little brother, they just didn't.. mesh, and it wasn't like the red child was trying to bridge any of those gaps. Xerxes wasn't making much of an effort, either, but that was for a different reason. He refused to grow attached to any of his family with the one exception being his mother. Manes he rarely referred to as father, and Xerxes knew deep down he would shed no tears if he or any of his siblings passed. Perhaps that made him a sociopath or perhaps that made him intelligent enough not to form bonds -- one of the two. He didn't seem to mind, though. His had always been a lonely life and a lonely life it would remain.

At least he found a place to rival how he felt inside, though.

Xerxes didn't know how so many elephants knew where to die. It was convenient, he guessed, on the off chance he was ever hungry enough to go snooping around. There were rotting carcasses aplenty, but it wasn't an elephant that caught his attention. No, it was an animal that seemed incredibly out of place resting among the massive beasts.

A lion.

Dead for a day or dead for two, Xerxes crept closer with a morbid curiosity. He couldn't help but scent the air and approach, his eyes nearly crossed with how mesmerized he was by the body. It looked as though it was merely sleeping, but he knew. He knew from his childhood -- the blood, the icy stare -- that this creature was dead. The teenager hesitated only the briefest of moments before he began to climb the corpse, testing its rigor and stability. Yep. Super dead.

There was something in his head that whispered for him to get closer. Closer, closer, until he was very nearly face to face with the deceased. And then like a switch had been flipped, his teeth flashed to strip the lion's eyes from its body and slurp them down with a squelching pop. Xerxes didn't know why he'd done it, but the desire to experiment pumped through his veins. He tore strips from its shoulders, the haunches, felt the eat give way beneath his teeth as he ripped it from the head. The blood had long since stopped flowing, but he was bathed in it.

Xerxes chest rose and fell with exertion as he turned, slipping off with a piece of the lion's forearm to go consume in private. It was probably quite unsightly for some, but he saw nothing wrong with harvesting what was obviously laid out before him. Food was food no matter where it came from, yes?

The teenager settled down inside a ribcage, chewing at the tough meat of his own kind.

The lioness was still lingering around the badlands, thinking heavily about the things she has witnessed over the last several days as well as Jyzara’s offer. This land was as bloody as the one she and Tamotsu left. She passed her tongue over her lips at the thought. The tall lioness prowled onward, her pink gaze flicking over the landscape.

Her lips curled when she smelled something long dead. She turned her head just in time to see movement in the ribcage of the dead animal. She flinched viscerally, as she had thought the corpse had moved. Afterwards she realized something was inside the creature. Kimagure moved closer, eyes narrowed.

It was a child. She frowned, studying him. Was he so hungry he felt the need to devour his own kind? Especially one that had perished... less than recently.

”If you are hungry, I will feed you,” she called quietly to the boy, ears flicking. She stood a few feet from the corpse, watching the boy intently.

@Xerxes

Xerxes was unaware of the woman until she spoke, and only then did the spell seem to fracture. He blinked as he glanced at the meat between his paws and then allowed his gaze to drift towards her, confused yet not entirely displeased with what he saw. There was undoubtedly lion meat between his paws and teeth, down in his belly that had gone as smooth as butter. Xerxes couldn't remember why he'd decided to do it, only that he had.. and now he was faced with the morality of it all.

Xerxes decided he didn't mind it.

"I'm not hungry at all," he replied with a flick of his tail. "Besides, I have food right here." So why on earth would he need her to provide? The teenager took another bite but kept his eyes trained on her, curious as to how she would react to just a brazen willingness to cannibalize.

The young male was coated in the curdled blood, and he did not appear bothered by being caught in such an act. Her eyes remained slightly narrowed as his words hit her ears. Meat was meat in times of famine, but there was no famine here.

”There is better to be had than rotten flesh. You will be lucky if it does not turn your stomach later, and why eat the meat of your own kind if you are not hungry?” she replied. Kimagure could see no reason for his behavior. She remained silent for a moment more, brooding on it while the sun beat down on her back.

”For the thrill of doing something wrong? Or maybe is it attention you are seeking,” she finally spoke again, tilting her head. Something was wrong with the cub, most certainly. It did not occur to the average lion to eat his own unless he was desperate for food. Kimagure could see no obvious signs he was underfed, and he himself claimed not to be hungry.

Perhaps something was lacking in the boy’s mind, a broken piece. She herself had been driven to extremes in her life more than once, but never had she done something like this for pure pleasure. It left her morbidly curious, and a voice whispered in her mind to remember his face. He would not always be a child, and what sort of man would he be if he was already feeding on his own kind when not motivated by starvation?

@Xerxes

Xerxes wasn't terribly enthusiastic about being lectured what meat was and was not edible. The taste of lion may have been a bit sweeter than gazelle, but flesh was flesh was flesh. He had seized and opportunity to eat, and that was all as far as he was concerned. "You misunderstand. I was hungry, but now I've eaten and am not hungry." Was he? Xerxes couldn't remember, honestly, but if it got her off his back he would go along with it.

"And whose attention am I seeking out here in the middle of a graveyard?" he asked with a furrowed brow, confused as to how she'd drawn the connection. "I was exploring. I was hungry. There was food." And just because they shared a common species didn't mean he cared for the fallen lion. "What does it matter if it's my own kind? Is it so much better for the birds to eat it and not me?" Xerxes shifted his weight, drawing his tongue across his bloody muzzle. Go on, now, he was curious.

The child clarified that he had been hungry, but was no longer. Her ears twitched at the words. She didn't know that she believed that, it sounded a lot like the words of a child who was attempting to cover a lie, but the boy's body language did not appear repentant to Kimagure. Instinct said that what he was telling her was not entirely true, but she could not be certain one way or the other. It did not relieve any of the unease she felt.

"Perhaps the attention of your mother or father, surely they are not far away. You are too young to be out entirely alone," she replied to his question, aiming to subtly probe for information. Kimagure made a show of slowly easing into a sitting position, bring her tail to wrap around her pale form. Though she attempted to look at ease, she was not. Her lips were parted slightly, so that she could periodically draw the air over her jacobson's organ, alternating with breathing through her nose to scent and taste the air, alert to signs of approach.

"It's a natural instinct to avoid feeding on your own kind when your kind lives socially with one another. It is reasonable to think that a lion who would eat another lion's meat would hunt another lion, and no predator enjoys the idea of being prey. Who would want to live side by side with someone they have to fear attacking them when they are vulnerable? Would you want to live with me if you thought I might attack and eat you when you were sleeping or sick?" she continued, eyes focused intently on him as he cleaned his bloody muzzle. Kimagure felt no need to tell him she herself had eaten the meat of a lion and would do so again if she needed to. With age came the wisdom that hiding one's less socially acceptable tendencies were beneficial.

@Xerxes

Xerxes puffed out a dry laugh. Really, the attention of his mother? Of Manes? "I'm not doing too good of a job considering they're nowhere near here," he retorted with a judgemental scowl. Seriously, why would he have done what he did for attention? Whose attention was he trying to get? No one's. Not a single soul. "I am entirely alone at the moment, so you're wrong on that end as well." Assumptions, assumptions.

She lectured him about the instinctual feeling not to consume a neighbor. Xerxes shrugged. "I didn't get that memo. Meat is meat. Something was gonna eat him anyway, and now I'm not hungry. If you keel over dead I'd probably eat you too, and you wouldn't care because you'd be dead." So he had a sinking suspicions this lion didn't care too terribly much to be gnawed on.

His tail flicked as she asked a question he was sure she meant rhetorically, but it was Xerxes. He was a shithead. "Shit, wish you would. Save me a worlda trouble." And he didn't care whether or not she ate him afterwards, honestly. As long as Ambrosine eventually found out, he was good.

Kimagure decided quickly that the cub was a fool. Perhaps he would be dangerous one day with his proclivity to devour his own, but his obvious lack of tact or sense of self preservation would be his undoing if he did not learn. Kimagure was beginning to see that the cub had no desire to reason. If the lioness might have attempted to adopt a lone child, it would not have been this one.

She felt irritation licking up her spine and for a moment, she considered teaching the boy a lesson. The lioness knew, however, it wasn’t really worth the effort. She had no doubts she could thrash him with ease, but what would be gained? Nothing but small claw marks and bite wounds.

Kimagure doubted he would learn anything anyway, and if he was an orphan as she suspected, he would eventually anger someone with a temper sharper than her own if he continued to be such a difficult child.

”Suit yourself,” she replied, eyes narrowed as she regarded him, rising back to her paws. ”I’ll leave you to your meal,” she told him, turning and beginning to walk away.

-exit unless stopped-