the kingdom comes crashing

Vesper · 04-05-2012, 05:21 PM

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The great black-necked bird’s wings floundered weakly against the tall grass as the small predator chased after it. For a moment, flight seemed possible, but gravity pulled the goose back down to earth. It whirled and flared its uninjured wing, a hiss escaping its beak, but the coyote took no heed of its defiance and leaped at its throat. Fur and feathers floated on a soft breeze as they tumbled in the grass for an instant, but despite her prey’s buffeting wings, Vesper made quick work of killing it.

Feathers hanging from her whiskers, the Optio lifted her head and looked around. Some other predator had injured the goose before, likely a bird of prey, and so she only took a second to scan the skies before focusing her energy into a shift. While this was once a labor that took up to twenty minutes, she completed it much more quickly now. She’d forced herself to get used to optime, but after the attacks, she did not want to venture outside the territory in her least favored shape.

Her fingers moved more clumsily than others’ did, but Vesper managed to pluck the feathers from the bird. She might lay aside some of these for fletching, but most were claimed by the wind alongside her shed tufts of tawny fur. Once she’d removed a sizable handful, she sank her teeth into the meat of the bird.

Her would-be peace was disrupted finally by her thoughts. Discipline had kept them at bay for long enough; she was a subleader, and she had to think. The wolf Ithiel and the others had come across on patrol had to be connected somehow with the group that had driven in through the Dampwoods toward the mansion. She was worried that more attacks would come, but she was also worried about sending her scouts out. Some, such as the Caelum and Zana, were experienced enough—but she thought of Wraith and Nathaniel and Emmanuelle too. She couldn’t bear to see the youths hurt.

She had to keep training—herself and them. She twirled a feather between two finger pads and swallowed, looking up to the horizon. There were many she sparred with, some as a mentor and some as a student. Her scouts, Ezekiel, Helotes, Myrika… She couldn’t bear to see any of them hurt. And, for once in her life, it was because Vesper really did care for all of them. They weren’t a symbol of the innocent and persecuted, like those she normally ached to defend, but true friends she thought she might die for.

Her blue gaze flicked back to the goose in her arms, to the naked patch on its once-white breast, the fang marks rending flesh from its meat. She went back to eating ferociously until her dark-dappled chest was red with blood.

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