by Hopeflower » Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:05 pm
The thrush, busy stubbornly tugging at a worm, didn't notice her stealthy approach. She moved swiftly, silently, only freezing once when the bird paused to listen. She took soft, shallow breaths, trying not to move a muscle. The wind was blowing towards her, off of the lake, which was good. It wouldn't know she was there until it was too late. A pair of eyes watching from the cover of some bracken- the left red as blood, the other the piercing pale blue of ice - glittered at the promise of a good catch. The she-cat flattened herself further. Don't look this way, don't look this way...go back to what you were doing, the cat mentally urged the thrush. She had been still for a while - her cramping muscles proved that much - when the thrush finally went back to pulling at the worm, which was trying to escape down its hole. That was when she sprang. She leaned back on her haunches, and leaped. Her claws extended mid-leap, so when she landed on the bird, which had started to screech an alarm and spread its wings, she pinned it effectively. It fluttered for a moment before her jaws shut on the back of its neck. It was over with a single bite. She stood up, her catch in her jaws, and started back towards the lakeshore.
Life as a rogue had only been somewhat kind to Demontalon - she was a bit skinnier than she'd been when she had been a Clan cat, and there were a few scars on her flanks and shoulders from fights with other lone cats. There was a new tear in her ear as well, and a fresh, still-painful wound recently gained from a hostile rogue stretching from her neck to her shoulder. But she was getting by. She was getting better at swimming too. There wasn't enough prey on the island to support her over leaf-bare, so she went between hunting in her new home and on the shore. She shouldered her way through some more ferns, brittle and dry now, and stepped onto the shore, looking out at her old home. She couldn't help but wonder how the Clan was doing. How everyone she'd grown up with was coping after the disasters they'd been through.
"Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come."
"Talent is a pursued interest. In other words, anything that you're willing to practice, you can do." ~ Bob Ross
"The future is always uncertain and painful but it must be lived." ~ Unknown