Machidael is by Nat!
Machidael suspected nothing from the woman. Her kind, when warriors, always made a boasting show of it. All the female raiders he'd known had been such -- they wore trophies of their kills and flaunted their status as raiders more often than they even raided. The leader of the raiders' clan had been a woman, and even she, strongest of the she-beasts, had fallen bloody and lifeless, speared by some idiot peasant. At least she had the good sense to die in battle and with the taste of glory, rather than suffer a phthisis of her power and strength. The old once-warrior men and sometimes (albeit rarely) women in the clan had been worse than even the boastful types.
Having already picked at the carcass, he had no intention of joining her, and instead stood awkwardly at beside the corpse on its opposite side, gazing down at her with cherry red eyes. Her ghost-paleness still disconcerted him, and Machidael studied her with sharpness in his gaze, his gaze more bloodied and deeply red in coloration. They also lacked the otherworldly transparency of her colorless eyes. The pinkness of her flesh was pleasing, however, and he could imagine there were pale tinges of pink elsewhere on her body, too -- in far more pleasing spots than the tip of her nose and the pads of her hand. Machi imagined them and a grin, almost happy and glittering with the gold of his tooth, appeared on his small muzzle.
Her thanks was received with a monotone grunt, and he seemed not to allow its distraction from sizing her up. He did not prefer women -- his tastes tended more toward masculine, and Machidael enjoyed males he could dominate (and therefore avoided wolves, who typically outsized him by a great deal, as a general rule). It was no wonder coyotes appealed to him, then. The jackal was never one to refuse opportunity, however, and as she was pretty enough to raise his desire, he could certainly indulge himself. He grew restless and dissatisfied with his own play after only so long, and that time had since past. It pleased him to have found one willing to engage him, and one of quality, at that.
Perhaps he was too busily engaged with appraising her body and imagining its rose-tinged features, which were soon to be his for a time, to see her intent -- or perhaps she simply made none of her intent known. Machidael never knew. He was opening his mouth to suggest they both might accomplish their ends at the same time, if she would only shift her position a bit, when there was a sudden movement. Drawn out of his desirous imagination and formation of his inquiry too slowly to truly react, Machidael jerked out of purely masculine reflex. If he lacked in this instinctual flinch, he would have lost the thing which made him unequivocally male -- and an eye, too (but that seemed less important in the grand scheme). As it was, the small blade tore through his thigh. The other flashed mere inches from his crimson-hued eye.
The salty scent of blood, which had been growing steadily more rotten since the deer's death, was suddenly renewed, and Machidael knew it his own blood-scent. The slickness was palpable along his thigh, and the searing fire of the cut more so. He realized his own lips were snarling, and he added a cacophony of growling and half-yowling to the expression of fury. The hybrid crouched half-way and swiped at the blood with a hand. Bitch, he hissed. Fucking coyote bitch, he added, more colorfully, and followed it with a string of slurs and promises to fuck her bloody in Arabic, despite knowing they were probably incomprehensible to her. He flicked the excess liquid off his hand and onto her pretty pale coat.
The skinny jackal took a step, funneling the pain this caused in his injured leg into the ferocity of his snarl, and took another edging around and away from her. He needed his knife, or, better yet -- his spear. His crimson-colored eyes flicked to both in turn, though they visited the pale coyote between both, wary of her motion. He took a step forward on his uninjured leg and held the other hand against the injury, trying to to stave off the bleeding. Some of the fire was starting to leave the wound, but he needed a weapon all the same. Machidael was a brute fighter and capable of downing an unarmed enemy of similar size even when he himself was unarmed. Still, the rust-furred jackal had thrown the spear, watched it pierce the chest or belly or leg of some distant foe, and sliced too many throats with knives of his own not to be wary of even her little blades.
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