The small Haskel had been practicing his hunting lately, and tracking was becoming a routine part of that. While he’d yet to make a kill, especially with most of the small animals tucking away for the winter, he did practice chasing adults’ tails or pouncing on Hati or sometimes stealing Liam’s dead animal stitching experiments to see if he could make more wounds. He’d heard that finding prey was just as hard as actually stalking them or wearing them down, and so he’d lately set to following the scent trails of pack mates around the territory.
Terra was his unknowing target today. He’d gotten up, headed outside, and seen that she’d gone off by her smell. He waddled along now with his nose to the ground and his tail wagging quietly behind him, not catching up but not losing her scent trail for once, either. It hadn’t snowed lately, so there was no frost on the ground to disrupt his groove.
He was proud of himself as the scent became fresher, but almost as soon as he had the thought, he bumped into something, which rocked and toppled forward. With a yowl the boy leaped backwards, coming face-to-face with the sneering head of a Japanese dragon. Reflexively, he reared on his hind legs and batted at the broken stone to deter it from attacking, not wanting to hurt his teeth, but then he realized that it was just a statue—not something that wanted to eat him. Huffing loudly, he took another few steps back then actually looked around.
“Whoaaaa!” Skoll hadn’t seen this stone wall before. More statues lined the grass and he could see a frozen pond just inside, shadowed by a red bridge. Other buildings made up the temple, so oddly foreign and magnificent compared to the hotel or his family’s residence. Did anyone else know about this place? Had he been the first to discover it?
The smell of Terra answered that question as he was reminded of his reason for coming here. The boy looked around then bounded across the lawn, keeping an eye out for his pack mate while taking in all he could of the temple architecture. He wandered inside, jaws slightly parted in awe.
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