Somehow for the most part, Hezekiah had managed not to get his bandages wet. Of course, the thick, summery canopy of the forest had been nice to hide beneath and at some point between the first and worst parts of the thunderstorm he had retreated to the caverns to stay dry. Any other time he wouldn’t have minded if they had gotten wet or even a little tattered on the edges, but he thought that the least he could do was not get them ruined when Kaena had been nice enough to patch him up in the first place. So once the rain had stopped, save for the run off that still dripped and trickled from the leaves, he was right back out to wander.



Hezekiah had moved about since he had come around somewhere in the late morning, but his progress initially had been to looking around the caverns and then the nearby forests. His memory of how he had gotten from Inferni’s borders to wherever he had been bandaged was fuzzy enough; his first goal had been to figure out where exactly it was that he had come to. Obviously, after some time of wandering in that forest, he knew it wasn’t there. He remembered Inferni’s border; he remembered the pikes and the skulls. But it was slow going getting out there — he had never felt so stiff and sore in all of his nine-month life, and waking up that morning in half of the pain he had come around to yesterday afternoon had been surprising.



It was out where the trees began to thin and he got the first semblance of familiarity in an unfamiliar setting. He remembered briefly how the outskirts of the forests in Inferni began and he knew that he was getting closer to where he wanted to begin retracing his steps. But a few more yards changed that plan entirely. Somewhere in the brush ahead he distinctly heard the cracking of bone, and within a couple more steps the smell of blood infiltrated his senses. Ingrained curiosity got the better of him and he drew in closer until the point where he could see the contrast of other colours than the green and dark, damp wood of the forest.



What he noticed first, was the beheaded body of the wolf, all wet and clearly stiff. Beyond it, the one who had dismantled it, who was built clearly like a wolf himself based solely on build and the dark agouti strains of fur that came together to make a indiscriminate design from a distance. But there was just a touch to this fellow that said he was also distinctly something else, which so far Hezekiah had attributed to Inferni. They called themselves coyotes, but so far he felt vastly like the odd man out and for more than one reason. But despite his better guesses that this wolfish-looking hybrid was also apart of Inferni, he stuck to viewing him from the cover and (poor) safety of the brush, curious of what he was doing and why exactly.

Staying as still as he possibly could, Hezekiah almost held his breath when he felt the beady crimson eyes pass over where he was standing. While he had no doubt been noticed, he still didn’t make himself present or any more visible than he probably was. Nevertheless, when the gold and red-tinged man decided to move on with body and all, Hezekiah was compelled to follow after him… at a distance. It was his inner force of habit, shadowing whatever it was that struck his fancy rather than having the all out confidence to simply ask the what and why questions.



Sticking to the denser foliage, he forfeited speed for silence, even though his silence was questionable at best. He was not very stealthy when it came to his Optime form even more so because of the injury he was sporting on his left side, but he was confident that he wasn’t doing so badly. Surely not. He hoped not. Shifting to something smaller and easier to work was simply out of the question and just so long as he kept some sort of sign that the fellow dragging the corpse was nearby, he was find from trailing him from a distance.

Eventually the cover of the foliage failed him, because out near the borders it thinned significantly and he was forced to put even more space between himself and the intriguing hauler-of-carcass (as he had been momentarily dubbed). Which was fine too, Hezekiah realised, because he didn’t exactly need the visual sign to follow him. So when the corpse was flung over an edge and its carrier moved on, he stopped to try and see where it had been thrown to in the nearly faded light to no avail. The smell of it, just a touch, was still lingering on the humid air. It even lingered a bit once Hezekiah had started back after his initial target of sorts, but soon it either faded or he became accustomed to its smell. It was a peculiar sort of stench, borderline foul enough to twist his stomach into knots, but not enough to make him turn away.



And truth be told, he was mostly interested in seeing where the body had gone simply because he had never really seen a dead body up close. He wasn’t sure if it was something to fear, although logic mostly overrode any impulse to do so. It was dead, it couldn’t hurt him, it couldn’t even talk to him. But there was still that inkling that just maybe it would do something all the same, stiff and dead or not. Nevertheless, when he came across the wolf-y Inferni resident, he was quick to slow his steps and make them more careful, though this time there really wasn’t anywhere to hide. Which in Hezekiah’s mind wasn’t too important since Mister Carcass Tosser was busy wrenching a limb down out of a tree and it was just dark enough that Little Earthy Coyote Boy thought maybe he’d just blend in if he stood still enough.



Never mind just how kind of creepy he probably was, standing in whatever shadow he could find.

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