A Meeting of Beasts (Zareah & Nastarai)

[Aiken]

Aiken twitched his head up to see a branch falling from above. He reached out with both arms to catch her rather lazily, gently pulling her from the air and the imminent impact below. He set her down gently on the ground with her back against the tree.

He crouched down with his arms resting on his knees, looking at her face. He sniffed a few times, still trying to figure out what her other form was. He was intrigued by this new discovery, yet at the same time, annoyed that he didn't know what she was.

"You should be more careful you know," he said, standing up and retaking his spot against the tree. He didn't know what to make of her, and his confusion only added to his nerves.

"How old are you anyway? You don't look fully grown yet, so you can't even be a year old. Did you get lost or something?"

[Zareah]

Still shaking rather badly from both her fall and his brief closeness, it took her a moment to form an answer. “I-I’m sorry,” she stuttered as she collapsed into a sitting position against the tree and pulled her arms around herself “I was born…” She trailed off for a moment, trying to think up an accurate time, but finally settled for “The end of the last, this season, summer? The end of last summer, I think, or the beginning of the next one,” She tilted her head, and frowned at the next question, lost? “I’m not lost, why would I be lost? I know this area, I won’t get lost here the river with the sweet yellow fish is right over there,” She said it as though it explained why she couldn’t possibly be lost. Her stomach growled again at the thought of fish.

[Aiken]

Aiken was confused. She was this young, but she didn't have a pack or family. Was she abandoned? He didn't understand what something so small was doing alone. "What I meant was, shouldn't you be with some sort of family or den or pack or whatever your animal is? Have you bonded with a human and your just on the hunt?"

He looked down at her, small and somewhat frail looking in comparison to himself. If anything, she shouldn't be out without a lookout of some sort, to warn the others of his kind. He listened to her stomach growl and almost laughed. His own hunt had been interrupted more than enough times over the last few weeks. At least this time he was on the opposite side of fate.

[Zareah]

She looked up at him, and frowned thoughtfully. “No family, no den, no human. Humans are scary. They are big and they make loud noises and chase me and throw things,” She put her hand on her stomach and stood, now that she was relatively sure he was not going to eat her, she was becoming curious about him, and realizing how lonely she had been. She touched his arm lightly for just a moment, “Hungry… come to river?” She took a few steps towards where she had pointed earlier and half turned to look at him questioningly.

[Aiken]

Aiken didn't exactly know what to think. A Kelvic without a pack or bond-mate seemed more than just odd. She must not know anything about how her existence had come to be. "Sure. Lead on."

The wolf-man jumped forward, shifting in mid-air and landing as a large, gray wolf. He looked to her, waiting for her to change as well. He might have also expected her to walk on as a human, but something about being in the wild compelled him to stay as a beast.

[Zareah]

She started slightly at his display, and froze for a moment, ready to jump back up the tree. He was watching her, as though expecting something, then she remembered, lead! He must not know where it is, she nodded to herself and began walking, dashing off every once in a while to examine one stick or another.

By the time they reached the river she had gathered several and a rock with a flat surface that looked like it should have been too large for her to carry. She plopped the rock down and quickly sharpened one of the sticks, then crouched down by the water. She waited, still as a rock, until a fish got a little too close. There was a splash and she, not trusting it to stay on the stick, reached into the water to crush its head in her hand before pulling the bloody mess out of the water. She turned and offered it to the wolf.
"Watch for the back, it's got thorns on it,"

[Aiken]

Aiken sniffed the fish. It smelled strange, and did not appeal well to his senses. He scrunched his nose and backed away, shaking his head. Rabbit or venison was far better smelling, and he wasn't about to try to override his instincts and strong olfactory senses to try a taste. He sat back on his haunches and shook his head.

He put his face in the water, washing the collected dirt and grime. He took a breath above the surface and looked at the smoothly flowing surface. He could see his reflection, but it didn't occur to him that he was looking at himself. He snapped at the water, only to see it ripple to shreds and reappear. He gave up on figuring out what he was seeing and looked around in the midnight lighting. There was nothing too special besides himself and his new acquaintance, a few trees and a big rock in the middle of the river.

[Zareah]

She shrugged at his rejection of the fish and sat down with it. She picked off the spikes on its back and picked out the brain, which she ate first, then she began ripping off bits of flesh. She smiled as the tangy blood dripping down her chin, this was one of her favorite meals. She noticed a frogg hop by and put her foot over it, nearly squishing it then almost letting it go. When she finished the fish she tossed away the remains and grabbed the frog, it was now nearly dead, but still struggling. She took it to the river and washed the mud off it and then ripped off one of its legs and chewed on it. She tossed the rest of the frog out into the water, where it was promptly swallowed by some large, something.
She looked over at the wolf, he was examining their surroundings. Now that her belly was full she was feeling a bit lazy, and strangely enough she was begining to feel safe around this man, or wolf. This Kelvic. She sat down on the rock she had used to sharpen her fishing stick and smiled to herself, then a thought struck her, “If my parents were human, how am I not? I’ve never seen another animal give birth to something different from itself,”

[Nastarai]

Nastarai heard running water off the road. "Come on Namali, let's go get some water." She guided the horse toward the sound. They reached the river pretty quickly and she dismounted clumsily.

Namali cantered down the river's edge playfully. "Namali! Stop! We need to get back to looking for a campsite!"

The young horse continued forward, stopping occasionally to let her catch up before taking off again. Namali stopped at a cluster of overgrown brush. "You need to stop, horse. I will not give you sugar if you do that again."

She looked up over the river. It was getting dark. Namali's coat began to glow dimly. They needed to settle in soon. She pushed her way through the brush, leading Namali by the reigns. A clearing stretched out before them. She looked about , taking in the clearing. A large wolf and unclad human were across the clearing. She drew her suvai and backed toward the bushes, trying to turn Namali. Namali pranced nervously and whinnied. Nastarai froze.

[Aiken]

Aiken watched her play with her meals. Clearly, she was feline, or feline in nature. No wolf or dog he knew would waste time picking things apart over ripping through skin and eating what they would want as they went.

He sighed, or what might have been a sigh, coming from a wolf, and looked at her face. He was starting to understand why she knew so little about herself. He shifted back to humanity and sat down. It was starting to be a little much, but killing frogs still wasn't on his list of ways to regain energy.

"Its sort of complicated, but my mother told me once." He leaned back on a tree nearby, physically tired now. It would seem that he used a little too much energy during his hunt.

"At some point, Marcus Kelvic did... some magic thing. It gave animals the ability to shift to human form. That's what we are. Whenever they would mate, they would produce another, not always the same kind. But then there was a big war, and the magic was messed up. Now when we mate, they might just make a regular human. And when a carrier of the Kelvic magic that's just a human mates, they might make a Kelvic. That's what happened for you, I guess." Aiken sighed. He didn't want to feel obliged to help this cub, but he did. She was so misinformed to herself that it made him worry. He couldn't understand why, and it confused him further.

But all that went away as he heard a voice in the forest. He smelled the air. It smelled like a horse and... something he didn't recognize. It smelled of beauty and women. Only women. "Someone's here. Can you smell it?"