A week was a long time to go without a proper meal. Mercutio had snagged a few bites here and there in his brief foray into the settlement but it felt strange to linger too long in the human populated area. He’d received more than one look that told him people still saw wolf and thought wolf. Returning to the woodland, however presented the entirely new challenge, he’d never been a predator before. A man, yes, but that had come with the delightful perk of being able to buy game from other humans; even in this strange place Mercutio wasn’t placing his bet on running into any wolf merchants.
Hunting, it turns out, is not all that easy. Harder still when one was still struggling to feel fully at ease in a new skin. He’d been able to track down a few deer throughout the day but his attempts at catching them had been frankly ludicrous and left him exhausted and hunkered down as the base of one of the larger trees. There had to be easier game, he thought as sundown approached. When learning from their parents wolf pups surely had a few steps before they graduated to taking down elk, right? Yes, but they also had a pack to teach them, said the entirely unwelcome and unhelpful bit of Mercutio’s brain. It was the part that kept pulling up images of emeralds and sand dunes and splashes of water.
With an exasperated huff, the wolf flopped his head down onto his paws and tried to concentrate. Rabbits? Squirrels? He eyed one stumpy little mushroom dubiously and thought better of it. Nightfall, he knew, would bring a whole to swath of creatures to the surface. He could wait until then.
Hunting, it turns out, is not all that easy. Harder still when one was still struggling to feel fully at ease in a new skin. He’d been able to track down a few deer throughout the day but his attempts at catching them had been frankly ludicrous and left him exhausted and hunkered down as the base of one of the larger trees. There had to be easier game, he thought as sundown approached. When learning from their parents wolf pups surely had a few steps before they graduated to taking down elk, right? Yes, but they also had a pack to teach them, said the entirely unwelcome and unhelpful bit of Mercutio’s brain. It was the part that kept pulling up images of emeralds and sand dunes and splashes of water.
With an exasperated huff, the wolf flopped his head down onto his paws and tried to concentrate. Rabbits? Squirrels? He eyed one stumpy little mushroom dubiously and thought better of it. Nightfall, he knew, would bring a whole to swath of creatures to the surface. He could wait until then.
Mercutio
go take this the wrong way
you knew who I was
with every step that I ran to you
you knew who I was
with every step that I ran to you
