Survival is a Full-Time Job [Open]

[Thorn]

Thorn had tracked down plenty of things before. From the moment that she could walk on her own four feet, she'd been trained to find the source of certain scents and to discriminate between them. She knew that to her handler and other humans, her ability to track scents was important. However, for her, faliure never had any lasting effects. It was disappointing, sure, but she still got to go home every night, fill her stomach, and just let the hours pass by watching television with Kevin or playing some silly game.

It wasn't like that anymore. In the past few months, she had needed to learn a new scent- that of live prey. Hunting was more thrilling than chasing after criminals- she could bite as hard as she wanted and there was nobody rushing to tell her to let go- but faliure carried punishment with it now. If she did not succeed, she did not eat. Furthermore, her duties did not end after a certain number of hours- day after day, minute after minute, it was her responsibility to hunt, to kill so that her pack could eat. Survival was something you had to work for every hour of every day.

She slowly crept through the snow, each pawstep carefully calculated. It was eerily silent- a snowstorm had just ended and the sun had fallen beneath the horizon, so not many creatures were stirring. Thorn, however, could scent a single being ahead of her- an unsuspecting hare, apparently searching for food. Briefly, the dog wondered what it was doing outside of a burrow- perhaps because the Keepers decided when winter was, the animals did not always have time to properly prepare for the long cold, she decided.

Thorn knew that she was very close to the border where all four retromorph territories met, as she was constantly reminded by the scents that wafted towards her from all directions. It was thankfully faint, buried by the fresh snowfall- she suspected that she could only detect them at all because of whatever the Keepers had done to increase her already keen sense of smell. At least they allowed her to tell for certain that the hare did not belong to Bellator- Thorn did not think that she could forgive herself quite yet if she had to kill another retromorph, although she was aware that someday, she could very well have to.

Finally, the hare came into sight, muzzle pressed against the snow and quivering slightly as it scented for food. The wind was to Thorn's advantage, she had made sure of that- the hare could not smell her if it tried. A moment passed as the dog crept closer- then another as she quickly closed the gap and snapped her jaws around its neck. There was a dying squeak as it squirmed to try and escape her grip, then nothing. It was completely still, and Thorn let it drop from her jaws. She shifted to human form, looking it over carefully.

It wasn't a very clean kill- blood dripped from its neck into the snow, making it obvious that something had lost its life to the Nilda. Thorn muttered a few harsh words to herself, before adjusting the body's position so that it would not leave behind any visible marks. She brushed some clean snow over the part that had been stained pink- she had heard that prey would stay away from places where the blood of other prey animals had been spilled, and she couldn't afford to figure out if that was true or not.

Thorn slung the corpse over her shoulder, and started to walk back in the direction where she had came, careful to step where she already had in order to replace her pawprints with shoeprints. There was no reason to lead any potentially hungry rival retros or rogues straight to the Nilda's base of operations.

((OOC: Yay! Anything really works here, I don't care what type of characters enter or what they're doing.))

[Cole]

It was so, so quiet. The sort of quiet that lay thick over everything, a shroud. The silence of a church could not compare to the silence of nature beneath the shield of snow. The birds were absent, the air so cold it felt like a knife to the lungs. Each breath scratched her throat. Cole wasn't cold, however. Or at least she would not acknowledge it if she were. The sound broke only when a bough would snap beneath the heavy weight of the snow, or the wind would whip wickedly out across the fields and flick up tornadoes of white. It may have been stupid for her to be on Nilda territory but she didn't think so. The land was mostly over-hunted due to the large population of carnivores in the area but she had taken to stalking the borders in wait for Nilda who were in the process of dragging home a catch. Food was scarce and Cole was not above stealing if it meant providing for her people, even if her job did not entail food-catching. She had formed a sort of understanding with her leader, however. They more or less allowed her to do what she wished, so long as she didn't break any rules and pulled her weight. The result was that Cole tagged along often with scouting and hunting parties and, sometimes, trailed off on her own. She had been outside of Fallen territory for well over a week now, which may have raised concern if it were anyone aside from Cole. She had informed Hush that she would be gone for about so long of a time to keep him from worrying. The thought of running still came to her, more often than she liked, but something kept her returning to Fallen. It was not present currently, however, as she loped across the open field toward the fresh scent of blood. It did not bother her to bully the retromorphs; they only concerned her when she found large numbers of them and, from the smell if it, this was a dog hunting alone. Cole would have been a liar to say that she wasn't looking for a fight. She could recognize the scent of hare and she knew that whatever meager catch this Nilda had secured was not worth the effort of stealing. Regardless, Cole continued to pursue her quarry, her paws spread wide over the hard surface of the snow. It still crumbled beneath her weight, much to her dismay, and the vivid gold-red color of her fur did little to disguise her. It was convenient that much of the grass was long enough to sway above the deep snow, adding miniscule camouflage. Cole took a wild guess on the direction that the Nilda was heading before making a wide loop, remaining downwind for the duration. If everything went as planned, the leopard would position herself directly in the pathway of the huntress, sprawled out rather indolently on her stomach. Cole had to do something for entertainment.

[Thorn]

Thorn was quite careful with her hare, making sure that the blood didn't drip onto the ground. So much for trying to cover her tracks if she had a trail of freaking blood following her straight back to the Nilda's base of operations. She could come back to the area if she did end up letting too much blood spill onto the ground, but she wasn't particularly keen on the idea. She wasn't afraid of the border- the retromorph actually enjoyed exploring up to them and occasionally beyond- but she was really more than content to go back to the rest of her pack and just lay down and rest for a little while.

Her kill wasn't particularly impressive, she knew. The Nilda probably wouldn't fault her for it- she an excellent hunter for the time that she had spent in the Menagerie, and prey didn't grow on trees after all, especially not during the winter. Admittedly hunting near the border hadn't been a particularly wise choice- the lake was a more reliable and closer source of food, and there was the chance that a retro from another group could come across the border and try to attack her. Analoya was really the only threat there, but they did have a treaty with Nilda for their fresh water. Were they really going to attack a Nilda member and risk angering either the pack or one of their superiors?

The thought went through Thorn's head right as her eyes caught sight of golden-red fur, somewhat covered by grass although still rather easily visible with the snow underneath. They were downwind from Thorn, but at the same time were right in her path. There was no way that the retromorph could've seen, heard, or smelled her ahead of time, and at this point it looked like stealth wasn't exactly a way out of this situation. Running wouldn't be a viable move right now- this was Nilda territory and Thorn was one of Nilda's fighters, so that would send a pretty bad message. At the same time, the dog didn't want to fight.

So she stared at the leopard for a moment while deciding on what was best to say. Now that Thorn was close enough to smell them without the wind, she could tell that they were not apart of Analoya, despite being a spotted big cat of some sort. They were either a rogue or apart of one of the Shifter Rings up north, so they were probably alone. Of course, there could be others with them- although at this point Thorn was pretty sure that she would've already seen them up ahead or smelled them from somewhere around her.

So, talking was probably not a bad option at this point. "Hi." That probably wasn't the best way to greet a random stranger that could very well want to kill her, but Thorn couldn't think of any other way to start a conversation to see what they wanted without the chance of seeming hostile or provoking the leopard.