Iridescent Lagoon This house is clean

we stopped checking for monsters under our beds
when we realised they were inside us

Skin and bones and unkempt fur had watched with mercurial eyes as the cat tried to steal away the fawn. Hidden in the late summer grass she had been watching the mother for days, with her dappled  silvered fur and a bobbed tail so like her own. The stump twitched at the comparison as a black lip pulled back over one pale tooth in a sneer. If the cat took down the prey, she could run it off easily enough she was sure. The mother would want to protect her child above all else, and a wolf was a threat to them both.

Neither one of them saw the stag until it broke from the trees, its bellow filled with enough rage to freeze her marrow. Her muscles tensed beneath her as the scrawny cat tried to flee with the fawn still dragging behind, flailing limps and weakening bleats protesting less with every step the feline took. Eek’s pulse was thundering in her skull, her ears straining atop her head, eyes wide. Was it fascination or horror that held her so transfixed? Thunder rolled in the distance, drowned out by the thundering of the stags flailing hooves. A yowl cut short made her flinch, a slow smile working its way to her face as the stag nosed the dead fawn, its mother keening in the distant strand of trees. The dull thud of a final kick, a last fuck you to the murderer of his daughter and all was silent.

How many hours had passed she wondered as the sun grew low in the sky, not daring to move until the night would conceal her desecration of the young fawn’s corpse. She would gorge herself without competition and when the sun rose she would return to the outcrop where she knew the bobcat had stowed her child. It wasn’t her own, but she would love it like it was.

---

Days had slowly morphed into a week and each day the child grew weaker. It couldn’t run away from her affections anymore, its wobbling limbs would not permit it. She had bought the child what she could scavenge on her own, bits of bone and feathers, an eggshell, some moss. But it wasn’t enough. The bobcat child was curled between her paws now, gaunt face with eyes tightly shut, shudders of starvation and illness wracking it’s tiny body as her tongue passed lovingly over the child, grooming it in a way her mother never groomed her. Suddenly the shaking ceased and panic threw bile into her throat, a growl growing as she nudged the child. Not again, not again, Nonononooo… In her frustration she rose, grabbing the child in her powerful jaws and flinging its lifeless body against an ancient oak but it still refused to wail out with need.

Red.

Waste not want not.

---

Now, as it was then, thunder rolled overhead, but she did not seek out shelter, choosing instead to top off her bloated belly with the cool crisp water of the Lagoon. The fur and megre flesh was enough to fill the hollowness of her stomach but nothing was going to fill the gaping hole in her heart. It wasn’t her fault. It was never her fault. The last time she had scented her brother @Gent she had run in the opposite direction, but enough was enough.

 

Life could have been so good. Somebody had to pay for her misery.

(This post was last modified: Sep 22, 2015, 10:59 AM by Eek. Edit Reason: Adding M warning )

Every night the dream's the same

Cathair Jaggedmaw

Every night I burn

Like a shadow the silver masked male glided through the trees, pressing onward and following a trail that was more intuition than evidence. His cowardly siblings were quick to abandon what had been their home, and what remained of their tracks had soon faded after his departure from the remains Spirit's Gambol. Cathair had taken longer to leave, but at least he was sure that had any others of his family survived the inferno, they had not left behind a corpse that could be discerned from the ashes.

At the first rumblings of the sky he sought sparser woodland, not overly worried of any imminent danger but cautious none-the-less. Soon a lake revealed itself through the trees, tempting Jaggedmaw for a drink. He eyed the roiling sky, debating the catch-22 of getting struck by a stray bolt in the open or burning to death in the cover of trees. Thirst won out and the storm didn't seem to close, so he loped out of cover and towards the waterline. Cooling his parched throat he gulped down mouthfuls, and as he lifted his head he found himself downwind of a female. His curiousity piqued, he made his way along the shore towards her.

Cathair tried to mask his disappointment when the black coated female he found was not his type, to say the least. She was a scrawny, squat little thing with unkempt fur sticking out at odd angles. And not least of all, she reeked.

"You stink." The scarred male grumbled as he came to a stop a few yards from her, punctuated with a cough as he scrutinized the inky woman with a critical eye and twitching nose. The odor was hard to place, an animal musk that was neither wolf nor prey. Something dead... A puma? No... Lynx? Closer, but not right. Ah, "Bobcat." He figured, a sneer pulling at his lips. A wolf scavenging on dead predators seemed somewhat lowly and distasteful. It wasn't a low he wanted to sink to. "Is this land so barren that feline is on the menu?" He asked incredulously. He hoped the female was just shit at hunting.

(This post was last modified: Sep 23, 2015, 05:01 AM by Cathair.)

@Cathair

we stopped checking for monsters under our beds
when we realised they were inside us

You stink.

Now with the rose tinted glasses of maternal instinct removed she supposed she did, but that did not stop her from throwing a snarl over her shoulder at the strange male as she took another step into the frigid water. The cold alone was enough to lift what remained of her tail well clear of her lanky thighs, the fur along her nape and spine right down to its mangled tip standing on end as she moved yet further out to try and wash the scent away. The bottom of the lagoon fell away beneath her paws and her lips pulled tight, exposing the tips of her canines as she paddled hard to keep her head above water, as she turned and made her way back to the shore.

The use of the word barren had struck a raw nerve, although she continued to convince herself year after year, it wasn’t her, it was the men that were lacking the ability to produce heirs. She pulled her sodden body from the water, the added weight to her fur further illustrating just how emaciated she was. With a sideways glance and a slow smirk she shook, conscious of the meagre distance that separated them, deliberately trying to shower him with the water that flew off her fur in all directions.

“Happy now?” she teased before returning to his prior question. “There is plenty enough to go around, its all just a bit too big for me to bring down alone. A free meal is a terrible thing to waste.”

Every night the dream's the same

Cathair Jaggedmaw

Every night I burn

Cathair watched with bemusement as the woman paddled out into the lagoon without a word. At first he thought she might be trying to swim all the way across the whole damn thing rather than have to face him, but to his surprise she eventually turned around. Slowly she paddled back, and he added "crazy" to his assessment of her. Waiting for her to finally make it back to shore was excruciating, but something about the crazy cat-lady had his curiosity piqued and he resisted the urge to impatiently walk off.

He stepped a pace back as the small female came ashore, his silver lips lifting to show the tips of his ivory teeth in irritation as she carelessly flung water from her coat. He found her execution bizarre, but at least she no longer stank of cat. Her teasing voice earned another flash of teeth, warning her against trying his patience.

Her explanation seemed just about in line with his prediction. Shitty hunter. A smirk settled across his grey masked face. "I can see that" Cathair said with narrowed eyes that swept calculatingly over her slight form, the disdain thick on his voice. The female barely looked fit enough to take down a hare. "So how long have you been out here on your own, then?" He asked. Surely this female couldn't be part of a pack, or if she was they seemed to be starving her. "You look like a stiff wind could knock you over." He teased.