WC 500+
With graceful, albeit frantic, movements, she leaped onto the porch, clearing all the steps in one smooth bound. When she spun on her toes to see the chicken tearing straight at her, she jumped again and landed on the wooden banister that lined the porch of the Chien Hotel. With horror she watched as the chicken began its clumsy ascent of the steps to get to her. She crouched, leaning against a support beam, and cradled the egg in her arms, not wanting the bird to get it away from her.
Certainly there was a much easier solution to this problem that was probably screaming at Niro or anyone who witnessed this bizarre scene. A werewolf being chased by a chicken? Surely even Orin could take on the hen, no matter how enraged with motherly instinct it was. Maybe she would risk a scratch or a peck in the scuffle, but she could easily rend it lifeless, right? But that’s not how it worked in Orin’s brain. To Orin, she wasn’t running off with the chicken’s baby, she had taken off with her new pet. A pet and a hobby that would help her stay close to her brother, keep them from growing apart as they aged, and keep him interested in her. Her hobbies were growing ever more boring to Niro, and though she never said it aloud, she knew it well – even if he wouldn’t say it except when he meant it in jest. Orin knew that after so many jokes, the jabs at her constant reading and writing weren’t just in jest anymore, her obsessive hobby was tearing a rift in their tightly woven fabric. This egg was the mending needle that would sew it all back together again, and the chicken was the mother of that egg. Orin could not simply kill her.
Aside from that, how could she tell her little baby ‘eagle’ later that she had stolen it and slaughtered its mother? She wasn’t sure how well birds could understand Luperci, but Marahute and Niro didn’t seem to be doing too bad. She couldn’t lie to her pet.
Yet she was visibly relieved when the golden eagle chick took decided interest in the rampaging hen. At first, she swallowed hard, thinking Marahute was going to come end the chicken right there! Then she realized, much to the same vein of Niro’s thoughts, that Marahute was not ready to fight, it. . . she, in Orin’s mind. . . was only playing – or observing for the future.
“Please don’t hurt it, Marahute,” she pleaded with the fledgling. It was all she could do to stifle her giggle as the confused chicken began running in circles. “Can you just chase it away?”
She directed her request at the whelp, then turned her eyes to Niro. She didn’t know how they communicated, or if Marahute would have understood a thing she said. Maybe her tone alone could have conveyed her meaning?