Blackberry Fields if third time's a charm then what does that say about the second

Merys accepted the untrusting glare he received from the boy, unfazed by any sort of aggression the boy thought he was putting out. He could go ahead and be angry with him all he wanted, he hardly cared. The boy was a stranger. Granted he was a potentially useful stranger; and, technically a stranger that he had seen twice. Surely that made him at least an acquaintance? Nevertheless, it was not the boy's approval he was seeking today. Nor ever, likely. he imagined the only way to gain the little weasel's approval would be through gentle coaxing and affection. Two things the hunter was fresh out of.

Fish? Really? "Are you actually trying to barter with me? While you stand there all.." he was lost for words, though he motioned silently to the boy's entire behaviour and manner. Truly he wasn't thinking that he was in a position to debate, was he? Merys took a forceful and meaningful step forward, knowing confidently what effect it would have on his company, banking on his aversion for conflict and tohubohu. His own lip snarled, as he lowered his face closer to the trembling boy, speaking quieter, "I don't need you to tell me, Littlefoot. I am more than capable of following your scent alllllll the way home. I've already found you a second time, haven't I? I was just being polite, do you understand?" he spoke darkly, taking advantage of his position of power and allowing his annoyance seep through into his warning tone. He would not hurt the boy, in fact he hardly meant his subtle threats, but he wanted to make it very clear who truly had the upper hand here. 

Jesus, kids and their testing of his patience these days. 

He then removed himself quickly from the boy's close vicinity. He turned away casually towards the bank again, tail bobbing contently behind him, all remnants of malice completely wiped away. Before setting his paws down to brace his descent down the bank, he looked over his shoulder at the small wolf with one last promise, "But I will catch more fish than you."

founding member | 2016

Picture paints a thousand words and all that: roughly how I'm imagining this river

The guy was twice his height and nearly three times his weight; the smaller wolf had no misgivings about who had the stronger position, and who would win if it came to blows. Not that it could be called 'coming to blows' so much as 'beating on a crying worm', but the longer this went without violence, the more Duck suspected that it wouldn't come to that. He might have been a craven and a weed, but Duck knew a thing or two about arrogant wolves. He'd just never had the balls to exploit that knowledge until now.

So while the bullish wolf made a big song and dance of how much more powerful he was, of all the things he could do but was choosing not to, ultimately, the bait was taken. Not having trusted it to entirely work until the man had started to stalk towards the water, Duck let out a long, shaky breath, one he'd been unknowingly holding ever since issuing the challenge. Had he really just provoked this wolf into a competition? Was he mad? Even if it was the one thing he could ever hope to win, now that it had been accepted, every possible way it could go wrong started to bubble up like a writhing sea of horrible mistakes.

Then came the goading promise, as Duck watched the man prepare to head into the river, and his jaw clenched with furious determination.

It was on.

Without hesitation, Duck turned back to the river, heading for the bank a few yards down from where his rival had chosen. Peering over it at the river, he reminded himself of his earlier assessments and headed for where the beige rocks and stones gathered up on the bank were largest. Peering down at the rushing water, he looked for evidence of what he'd spotted earlier, and could still make out plenty of small smolt as they swam with the current. Perfect.

Ignoring the water, for now, Duck turned his attention to the largest boulder embedded in the bank, and stood just higher than it, digging enthusiastically beside and under it to help free it from the earth.

2/6

Merys took his eyes away from the cowering weed of a boy and began lowering himself the rest of the way down the bank. The shore did not give way for much room for horizontal positioning, and Merys paused on the incline to inspect the river. It would still be cool, and the frequent bends in its path would give him good bottlenecking opportunities. It was also relatively shallow, giving Merys an idea of the kind of fish he might be finding in its waters. While he had agreed to catching more fish than the younger male, he had done so without an idea of what he was working with, and would need to do his homework quickly. It was evident the scrawny wolf came here often, so it likely that he would be better versed in the fishes' patterns. Nonetheless, Merys had a fervour for hunting, and he would not pass up a unique opportunity to do some now. 

Being late-July, Merys gave thought to the spawning species that enjoyed shallow and quiet waters. He narrowed his eyes in concentration as he paced the riverbank, investigating an ideal spot to entrap his fish, and to give him the best chance at snapping them out of the water. His eyes glanced up for a moment at his competition, digging furiously at a boulder. What, was he going to squish the fish? He furrowed his brow at the automagical technique that was lost to Merys, and while he would have loved to judge the wolf a little longer, he could not afford the time. 

Between two raised rocks that peeked through the river's surface, Merys saw a mini jackpot that would aid him from the beginning. The fish that had pooled behind the two large rocks were stagnant, barely swimming. Upon further inspection, Merys decided that they would have to be pink salmon, nearly deceased days after their spawning. It was the right time of year, and they looked to have the pink stripe and humpbacked shape to them, as best as he could tell through the rippling waters. To test his theory, he placed one paw in the water, anchoring on the wet gravel. While they flinched in the slightest, Merys could see that they were groggy and unenthused. His maw hovered over the water, then quickly snapped one out. The fish twitched lazily, already near death as it was. Merys adjusted his grip to clamp onto its head, and looked down to the remaining couple of fish. He smiled through his prize, and threw it to shore. He wondered if dying fish counted as cheating, or simply strategy? He returned to the rocks, enjoying the slightly spooked nature of the salmon, though still too slow for his returning jaws.

founding member | 2016

3/6 @Merys <3

There were no guarantees that it would work. The neat setup he had back at his regular haunt was on a much smaller scale, and had required very little adjustment to function; the three rocks had already been in place, they'd only needed to be nudged and tipped over. It wasn't quite so trivial to push around a boulder which probably rivalled his own weight... it was a good thing gravity was on his side.

Duck resisted the urge to glance to the side to see how his rival was performing, or whether he was watching and judging Duck's unusual opening action. You know what a fish is, right? He could hear it. That they live in the water, and not underground, right? By the moon he hoped this would work. At least a little. At least don't let him look like a massive fool.

With about half of the earth dug out and loosened from underneath the rock, he stopped, and placed both forepaws against it. With a deep and held breath, he gave it a testing shove. It rocked back, just an inch, but it was enough - he let it fall back with renewed enthusiasm, pleased that he wouldn't have been foiled this early on. This time, he put his shoulder against it, and with a carefully and increasingly applied pressure he pushed it free, and then watched it roll almost-leisurely down the bank and land in the water with a single splash and dulled thud.

The water was shallow enough at the edges that it was barely one-quarter submerged. Not wanting to let it settle in that spot, still slightly against the bank, he hopped down and shoved it again, rolling it once over the (fortunately not soft-mud) of the river's floor and let it sit in the water.

He stepped back and observed the change. The river's bed was uneven, and while it was deeper in the centre and shallow to the sides, there were numerous trenches and dips and undulations in its floor created from the constant movement of water. His rock blocked off half of one such shallow trench, which now flowed between the two-foot gap between the rock and the bank. Far too wide to be any kind of bottleneck, but as he retreated and let the tiny fish adapt to this sudden change in the topology of the river, he was pleased to see that a good number of the smolt which were swimming through that trench chose to move through that gap.

Now to narrow it. A faint plop drew his attention, and he glanced up to see the other man tossing a sizeable catch onto shore. His breath hitched, but he fought back the urge to get petulant and panic, because it wouldn't help, and he was making progress. He was perfectly likely to lose - but if he got flustered now, it would be a certainty.

Forcefully averting his gaze, he hopped back up the bank to the next-largest boulder, and began to repeat the process. This one was a little smaller than the first, but better, for it was less round and more like a long spheroid. Like a heavier version of his favourite of the three stones back home - the most useful one.

Sorry for the wait!  ;__;  4/6

The thudding-splashing sound of boulder meeting water broke Merys' concentration as he set down his third fish spawn-drunk fish on the shore, having just ambrosially crunched it satisfyingly to ensure that it did not escape back in the river. He glanced over alarmingly, not convinced that that was a normal sound to be hearing during a fishing competition. What he saw was the young boy digging boulders and pushing them into the river. What was he.. Merys narrowed his eyes at the idea, trying to understand why he might be at such a silly thing. They did agree on fish, right? Not beetles? But the boy's enthusiasm as he hopped across the water to start digging his forepaws under another gave him pause. 

He did not get it with the one boulder, but now seeing the opposite boulder's potential cleared it for him. The boy was making some sort of narrowing mechanism! Similar to the one Merys was using, but to a much higher calibre and grade. It made Merys' find look entirely unskilled and neanderthal. Without a second more, he tore his gaze away and dived back towards the water. There were only a couple salmon left until he would have to fish simply out of his mouth. Conveniently, he did not have as many similar boulders downriver where had placed himself -- nor would he allow himself to copy the scrawny male's tactic anyway. A munched at the water, clumsily grabbing the tail of a salmon. It slipped out of his mouth in his hurry, and he only barely caught it before it fell completely back into the water.

Stop it. Panic wins no battles. Head down, get to work. And so, he did. Four. He had four. Was there a time limit on this? How did this work? There was only one tired fish left in his water cavity, and he reached for it, he allowed his dark gaze to look upstream to gauge the boy's progress. You know, not that he cared.

founding member | 2016

5/6!

With the bottleneck made as effectively as he could considering the time restraints, there was only one thing missing. The fish he wanted were way too small to waste with head-bashing, and crunching them to kill them was always so... messy. Letting them air-drown would be quickest, but he'd need somewhere to keep them! And he had the perfect candidate. The round patch of earth left by the largest displaced boulder only needed a little more digging out before it became a totally serviceable if shallow pit, and now he was ready.

The requirement for concentration and planning was so high that he had actually managed to forget, for a brief moment, that this was a competition. Hopping back into the river, he caught sight of his rival in his peripheries and was brought back to reality with a cold chill - but then his gaze dropped to the water, to the smolt which were funnelling themselves quite happily through his narrow space.

A rare surge of confidence empowered the fisher enough to have faith in his own abilities and not obsess over how well the other guy was doing. That was his element - if he couldn't feel good when fishing, then when could he at all?

Now that all preparations were made, the actual work could begin. Duckweed took a steadying breath, placed himself just downstream of his bottleneck, and began.

With a practiced ease, for this was essentially what the boy did with his spare time, he snapped the first small fish from the water as it swam towards him. The disturbance caused a flurry of activity as the other fish in proximity hurried away, but he didn't care about those ones anymore. He tossed his catch into the pit and watched it flail and flip for a moment, but it didn't escape. That was good enough; even if a few managed to jump out, he should have some to spare. With new fish ever coming downstream and ever oblivious to what waited, so continued the pattern of spot, catch and throw, over and over, until he was no longer entirely certain of the count for he had lost track somewhere around thirteen.

Had they agreed a time limit on this? When was the stopping mark, exactly? Feeling uncommonly good about himself, he glanced over at his rival. Duck was normally the one to surrender or call for mercy, but he could keep going like this all day.

6/6

Merys had six fish. The five that had spawned and nearly died, and one that he was able to catch after watching the waters for some time. He was not sure how much time had passed, and nor did he know how much time that it was required before these shenanigans ended. The honorific fisherwolf had been confident that he would win, and they were both very clearly using different techniques for the competition at hand. Once the five year old finished placing the last fish in his pile, he gazed at it happily, the thick fish just begging to be eaten up. His tail flicked in satisfaction, and he turned his gaze down river to the scrawny weed of a boy.

"Alright, punk. Time's up," he called, his voice gruff. Altogether, Merys wanted to hate the bag of bones, but he was too lacking in sinister qualities to warrant much more than sheer pity. He could not see his pile from where he stood, but the boy had been moving strategically so there must have been some point to his chaotic thought process. Merys was curious to see how this turned out. His tail curled confidently, but it had the occasional wag. Despite Merys' previous demeanour, he wished the boy no ill-will, I mean, not really. He could use a hard life lesson or two, and it would end up going one of two ways: it would help him shape up and be better, or it would break him and only make him worse off than he is. In either case, it would happen eventually. There were big bad wolves out there everywhere, and they preyed upon the feeble, just like this boy. While Merys was not above teaching moments, today the boy had caught him in a fairly good mood, and so luck was in his favour. He trotted closer to the boy, curious to see how this had turned out.

founding member | 2016