The Cougar Eye Black Magic

For @Mako | Broken Clouds 80.6 ° F, 27 ° C
scouting dem 1/3

The scent had been rather noxious but it had drawn her nonetheless. The spring appeared not long after she'd left the treeline behind her, and she'd stopped to get a good look at it with a quirked brow. Why on earth did that thing smell so...absolutely horrible. The stench of sulfur stung her sensitive nose and it wrinkled up distastefully. If she was hoping to find any trace of a herd suitable for hunting, it surely wouldn't be around here.

Going out of her way to investigate the putrid body of water that looked like something from another dimension initially seemed, to her dismay, like a steep inconvenience. But as it were - luckily for her - the barren, dry mud surrounding Tutleback Lake's little gem was telling. Weathered four-toed imprints trailed in a rather straight path right past the Eye, from the direction of the Pass to eventually disappear into the grasses more toward the lake. Looking about to make sure she wasn't being tailed by coyotes or vulnerable out in the relative openness of the area, Lyanna eventually padded closer with her nose to the ground to get a better feel for whether or not the tracks would be useful in helping her scout out a worthy target for future hunting.

The scent wasn't entirely faded, though there hadn't been much rain to wash it away if it had been older than she'd gauged. Eyeing the path the caribou had taken westward, she supposed there was enough daylight left to press further in that direction. Maybe she'd catch a break.

(ooc note: takes place before whatever happens with Cancer)

Oh, he recognized that look anywhere. The intense gaze, the purposeful stride. He watched the female for a bit as he hunkered down in the shadows atop a ridge downwind from her. It was obvious that she was a hunter in pursuit of prey. And even though Mako's nose wrinkled distastefully at the sulfurous stench of the hotspring that wafted on the breeze, he wasn't too nose-blind to miss the swampy scent of Shallow's Edge on the other wolf. Mako huffed, puffing his chest out as he rose and strode out from his hiding place, tail waggling tall over his backside.

"Hey!" He barked as he loped down the hill towards her. "You can't-" He started, stopping a short distance away from the tawny wolf. She was pretty, but- "You can't just hunt here." He stated bluntly. He narrowed his eyes at her. "Askan said we couldn't hunt in the Falls, but now you're all just coming up here instead?" He huffed in annoyance. Maybe he sounded a little petulant, but that just wasn't fair.

(This post was last modified: Aug 01, 2018, 11:16 PM by Mako.)

A young fawn has gotten separated from its herd. Hunt Opportunity, +8 Health

scouting dem 2/3

The tracks she'd been examining were plentiful and promising, the smaller ones of young and targetable calves intermingled with the larger adult prints. With hard work and maybe a little luck, she was sure she could trail the herd and catch up to a more current whereabouts in a matter of days. But.

"Hey!"

Her head shot up immediately. The boy whose voice had suddenly broke across the silence of the place was making his way over awfully fast. He'd done well enough hiding out in the shadows, downwind at that, that she hadn't even noticed that she wasn't alone. How long had he been watching her? Creeping around up there. As if his bark hadn't been interruptive enough, the next words that came out of his mouth started with 'You can't..."

Wrong.

First of all, she didn't take orders from anyone outside of pack lines. Secondly, as far as she could tell these were neutral lands, as the scent that came off of him when he'd decided to finally announce himself was found nowhere else here but in the wind that blew from his direction. And lastly, the blunt tone of his voice was quite rude. So. As he came prancing over with his chest poked out and his tail high enough to appear like he had some right, her eyes narrowed upon him.

Lyanna swayed her weight around to face him, her ears pressed forward atop her lifted head defiantly, her own tail rising right up to catch his attention. The expression of her face was uncharacteristically hard, if not stone cold. If it hadn't been for the mention of Askan's name, she probably wouldn't have given him any time out of her day - what with him coming at her like she'd strode a mile into his pack's borders.

"I think it's plain to see that there isn't any hunting happening here," her brows lifted pointedly as she calmly looked about in both directions, where there wasn't anything to kill as far as the eye could see, as if confused that she'd been the only one to take notice. Lyanna was hardly difficult to get along with or hot headed, but...this one...he'd just jumped right down her throat, like he didn't have the manners to approach a lady and simply inquire as to what she might be doing. If he had, she could have simply informed him that she was tracking the caribou that had come through. But nooo, he had to act like some jack ass.

When her gaze did return to him, as - incredibly handsome as he was - it dared him to bark one more accusation in her direction. "I'm well aware of Askan's will. What I don't understand is why you're charging over here with a stick so far up your ass that it's a miracle you even made it this far. Were you spying on me?" she pointed out with an incredulous vibe to her words.

(This post was last modified: Aug 02, 2018, 12:48 AM by Lyanna.)

@Lyanna

Mako's brow furrowed as he listened to her. She thought he had a stick up his ass? Sure, maybe he could have phrased things a little bit nicer but she was the one getting all ruffled up about it. Mako sputtered, his face quickly heating up beneath his fur at her next accusation. He wasn't spying on her! 

"What?! Of course not! Why would I be spying on you, you're the one with a stick up your ass!" He quickly jumped to defend himself from the accusation, puffing up and jutting his chin forward at the accusation. "If you're not hunting, then what the hell are you doing? What, you lose her favorite chewbone out here or something?" He huffed and rolled his eyes dramatically. If she was trying to pull one over on him, he wasn't taking it. He didn't mean for it all to come out so confrontational, but he found it hard to keep his cool.

(This post was last modified: Aug 03, 2018, 12:42 AM by Mako.)

@Mako

If she wasn't suddenly so furious, her mouth would have gaped open in shock.

"Uh!? I'm the one with a stick up my ass!?" she exclaimed. Come to think of it, no one had ever even said that to her before. Her - a stick up her ass. How preposterous.

"Well if you hadn't been just creeping around up there like some sort of stalker, hiding out alone like you have nothing better to do, you wouldn't have known I was even here!" Her voice was rising. "I obviously am not causing any harm, and for all you know, maybe I was just coming along to piss all over your little shit hole here." The spring. Her hackles rose, her tail curling up over her as her lips curled right over the teeth that were waiting to sink into his pretty little face - which made his insult that much less tolerable. Lyanna was lady enough, she would have never caused such an uproar, and in a place that didn't actually belong to anyone. But she'd had a long day, she was tired enough before he'd sent her blood pressure skyrocketing, and she wasn't going to take any more shit. Not from anyone, especially not some boy she'd never seen before in her life.

"Say something else," she dared him, "and the bone I'll be chewing on will be yours." Her words followed by a foreboding gutteral growl as nasty as the stench rising up from the spring.

(This post was last modified: Aug 03, 2018, 02:27 AM by Lyanna.)

Mako's scowl managed to etch itself deeper into his features, white eyebrows pinching closer together as the skin along his snout wrinkled. He was too deep, and far too proud to back down now. Why was she so convinced that he'd been spying on her, when all he'd been doing was looking out over potential hunting grounds. He was a hunter, damn it, not a stalker! Besides, she never did give him an answer to what she was actually doing up here.

It was clear she wasn't going to listen to him trying to defend his own honor, too caught up in whatever conclusions she had already jumped to. Her yelling was starting to get on his nerves, his head swimming. The entire situation was already so juvenile, and unfortunately Mako wasn't quite above resorting to a juvenile solution to get her to shut up.

"Chew on this!" He grit out, lunging forward as he lowered his head, shoulder poised to ram into the female. 

Scuffle post: 1

(This post was last modified: Aug 07, 2018, 10:15 PM by Mako.)

Her words - even if she hadn't fully intended for them to have come across so venomously - seemed to have sealed the deal. She'd managed to piss him right off, and he returned the gesture with a little venom of his own. His lips wrinkled, the entire look on his face becoming rather foul, and then it began.

"Chew on this!" -She was absolutely ready to.

The Surge wolf bounded forward, shouldering his weight into her. Lyanna had just enough time to widen her stance and lower herself to receive the blow, which knocked her well off her axis but not before she'd leaned just enough to attempt to snatch a bit of the side of his neck in her mouth on her way down. Her paws drug the ground before leaving it and she flew backward, landing on her side and skidding across the dirt with an ooof. Seeing red didn't even begin to touch on how she felt about being manhandled by a boy substantially larger than she was. No matter, now. In a split second she was back on her feet, wasting no time in closing the little distance between them.

She went in quick and low - as he was such a towering oaf - craning open her jaws and aiming to sink her bared teeth into the thick muscle of his chest.

Mako felt his shoulder make contact with the smaller wolf, her teeth just grazing the fur of his neck before she was shoved out of the way like a ragdoll. Unfortunatly he didn't have time to gloat, his eyes widening as she was back on her feet and zipping towards him. He let out a surprised yelp as she bit into his chest, her teeth finding a tender scar from where a deer had kicked him months ago. He clenched his jaw, biting back a whine before it could escape his lips. He didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing it hurt like a bitch.

Now that she was so close though, Mako didn't have far to reach. He parted his jaws and aimed just behind her skull in an attempt to grab her by the scruff like an unruly pup.

Scuffle post: 2

(This post was last modified: Aug 07, 2018, 10:15 PM by Mako.)

The yelp that escaped him when she'd managed to grab hold of his chest was, quite honestly, a little satisfying. But before she could ruminate on the pleasure of it, she'd managed to put herself in a bind. The larger male had clenched the scruff of her neck in his jaws, and despite her best effort to wriggle free her paws really just slid over the hard, dry ground without giving her any leverage.

Thinking as quickly as possible, Lyanna bent her legs to let her weight hang from his mouth for a second before angling her head as best she could - given that her neck was rather immobilized - before pushing upward with all her might in an attempt to butt the side of his face with the top of her skull.