charlie
Charlie keeps herself half a step behind and just to the side, close enough that her heat brushes Knell’s whenever the kitsune veers too near, but not so close that she steals the shape of the trail from her daughter’s nose. It would be easy, almost insultingly easy, to surge ahead and turn the lesson into a hunt performed for an audience of one, but where would the fun be in that? Knell has the scent now, or at least the first delicious thread of it, and Charlie lets her carry it, her own ears forward and tail held in a quiet, approving curve as the little thing pieces the world together one breath at a time.
When the snap cracks through the brambles, Charlie’s head lifts sharply, though she doesn’t lunge. Her blue eyes cut toward the sound, bright and alert, and there it is: a fat little flicker of piebald fur half-hidden beneath the thorny undergrowth, its body frozen in that deeply hilarious way prey has when it seems to believe stillness is the same thing as invisibility. Fear blooms from it a heartbeat later, sharp and hot and unmistakable, the scent spilling into the air like something sour-sweet as its hind legs hammer against the ground in a frantic thump, thump, thump that turns the quiet around them suddenly electric.
Charlie’s lips peel back from her teeth in a grin that is all predator and pride, but she stays where she is, letting the alarm do what alarms are made to do. The hare vanishes in a twitch of startled magic, reappearing several feet away only to blink again before its new position can fully settle in the eye. Around them, the undergrowth answers in scattered bursts: here a pale flank disappears behind a root, there a dark ear flashes and is gone, further off a round little body blinks out from beneath brambles and reappears at the wrong angle entirely before vanishing again, the whole hidden colony suddenly betraying itself in panicked little sparks of motion.
When the snap cracks through the brambles, Charlie’s head lifts sharply, though she doesn’t lunge. Her blue eyes cut toward the sound, bright and alert, and there it is: a fat little flicker of piebald fur half-hidden beneath the thorny undergrowth, its body frozen in that deeply hilarious way prey has when it seems to believe stillness is the same thing as invisibility. Fear blooms from it a heartbeat later, sharp and hot and unmistakable, the scent spilling into the air like something sour-sweet as its hind legs hammer against the ground in a frantic thump, thump, thump that turns the quiet around them suddenly electric.
Charlie’s lips peel back from her teeth in a grin that is all predator and pride, but she stays where she is, letting the alarm do what alarms are made to do. The hare vanishes in a twitch of startled magic, reappearing several feet away only to blink again before its new position can fully settle in the eye. Around them, the undergrowth answers in scattered bursts: here a pale flank disappears behind a root, there a dark ear flashes and is gone, further off a round little body blinks out from beneath brambles and reappears at the wrong angle entirely before vanishing again, the whole hidden colony suddenly betraying itself in panicked little sparks of motion.
so hey, let's be friends
I'm dying to see how this one ends
I'm dying to see how this one ends
Hella golden retriever energy. Small unrefined horns made of ruby. Regular spade-shaped tail.
