Hotaru
nothing's fair in love and war
Sloppy. It makes her frown slightly, ego pained by such a declaration, and the walls around her heart bow inwards to tighten the space inside against emotion she didn’t anticipate feeling. Ones she doesn’t want to examine. “Even a proficient hunter cannot anticipate every outcome. Didn’t you learn that yourself?” She winces as the last sentence slips between her teeth, unbidden and poisonous, but manages to reign in the outward reaction of regret until it is merely a tightening in the corner of her eyes. Her disappearing act should perhaps be more surprising, but Hotaru has seen Wessex do so time and time again. The disorientation does not linger. Stepping closer to the deer herself now that Maea has decided she is done with the scene, Hotaru’s expression softens now that there is no audience to perceive it. “I have no magic to heal it even if I wanted to.” It is plainly said, but there is some shadowed part of her that picks the words for the sake of achieving some sort of forgiveness for an act she doesn’t truly regret. Instead she sheds her outer coat before letting her wings overtake her, plucking the garment from the shallows to fly it over and drape it over the deer’s head. It startles hard at first, but then the darkness tricks its mind and it goes utterly still and docile. Midair she shifts again, and the mountain lion descends hard upon the creature’s nape - angling powerful jaws for the vulnerable jugular to end the deer’s suffering swiftly.
