[private] i got addicted to a losing game

[bolder]

Bolder has seen rabbits before but this pungent scent is not something he recalls.

Have they always smelled this way?

His dark nose keeps lifting into the night air, tilting this way and that as he tries to get a better direction on the smell. One pointed ear flicks back to his Aunt before his tail begins to quietly wag in eager anticipation of what might come next. Bolder had found his first lesson in shifting with Mazikeen exciting; he does not doubt that his second will be equally (if not more) so. The yearling pup starts to move towards the treeline, trying to think of how a wolf was supposed to move.

This shape has short legs and the ground is much closer than it has ever been. Having paws instead of hooves is an odd sensation as he tries moving softly over the new-fallen snow. The young shifter turns his silver eyes back on Maze every so often, watching her with a sharp stare. There is a moment of surprise when she mentions that they wouldn't have to hurt the rabbit. It hadn't occurred to him that they would and yet Bolder - having never any real amount of time with other shapeshifters - realized that he didn't know what they did when they became other creatures.

He had never let himself think about it.

With his ears flicking atop his head, Bolder focused on listening for the rabbit. He could smell it - the scent much clearer now that the Alpha had explained it to him - and his padded feet itched to move towards it. Mazikeen hunted them and then let them go, she explains. That makes sense, the boy (somewhat naively) thinks. At the end of it all, they are still just horses. He's never eaten anything other than the forage that grows in Taiga. And what the pale wolf tells him confirms what Bolder has always thought of his Aunt: that she would never willingly hurt anything.

The smells, the sounds, the instinct now singing in his magical blood - these are all new things to Bolder. "Do you think we can still catch it?" he asks in a hushed voice. (He doesn't doubt Maze's hunting skills but he is inexperienced. The young ward doesn't doubt that he could cost them their quarry.) Continuing to think a whole trail of thoughts, another comes to the forefront of his mind. The treeline would make it hard to find the rabbit; even harder to run after it. "Maybe we could drive it out," the young wolf considers, his youthful expression brightening with determination and the thrill of the chase as he looks to Mazikeen.

@Mazikeen