"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
He is here on a hunt. What he is hunting for however, could be several different things (hunting for something to kill – whether creature or horse, hunting for something to cure his boredom, hunting for some trouble to get into, hunting for the pure motive of companionship). Since his lessons with the decaying monster, the trickster’s thirst for murdering developed into something even more dangerous before (it turned from a hobby into an instinctual need, it evolved from every so often to daily, it was twisted from brutally to the point to manipulated several different ways). He’s following the scent and sight of dripping blood. From the smell of the tracks, it is a young elk (perhaps one mauled by a hungry coyote but lucky enough to get away) and his salivary glands work quicker at the rich taste in his mouth.
The trickster’s bruised eyes (the left blue and white, the right blue and black) spot the prey several feet within the border of a kingdom. His nostrils draw in a slow, analyzing sniff. It has been long since he used his olfactories to detect where he might be in the land (too long they have been put to slumber, sunken and unused against a bed of tree trunks and decaying leaf matter) and even longer since he tried to determine a kingdom’s border based off the scent. Perhaps the only way he truly recognizes his location is by the landscape around him.
The chill of winter still hangs in the air, but it is slowly replaced with springtime. Melting snow lies among puddles of water, sprouting hardy plants from the tough soil, and the plains are uncommonly flat and empty. The Tundra. He wonders who rules here now (not that he’s ever truly kept up with who is in control of what kingdom; it’s all senseless babble anyway) but shrugs the thought away in favor of more hunger-satisfying ones.
With careful calculation and deft, practiced precision, the bleeding young elk is bleeding further and no longer breathing. The trickster decides for a meal-like approach and bluntly tears into the prey’s warm belly (enjoying the way the intestines spill from its splayed skin and the rush of blood that comes with it). And then he slurps up the remains, leaving the none-beating heart alone in its chest cavity (leaving it for the monster who will never eat it, but it is a constant reminder that the trickster is the student and not the teacher).
He pays no mind to who might catch him (spilling innocent blood on a kingdom’s land and then, goodness, eating it) and indulges in his meal with unabashed glee.
08-05-2016, 03:59 PM (This post was last modified: 08-05-2016, 04:00 PM by Romek.)
ROMEK
”That’s a bit fucking grim, isn’t it?”
Romek appears from the darkness with an unreadable expression across his dark face, taking in the scene before him. A stallion (who, for some reason, looks quite familiar) with his head in the chest of some poor horned animal, slurping up shit-filled intestines and god knows what else.
The tiger purrs within him.
He is no stranger to blood and guts and gore, but he does wonder how this equine can stomach the meat. He has made kills of his own, naturally, but upon shifting back, had ended up with the most awful stomach ache of his life as his insides struggled to digest the massive amounts of meat consumed. His grass-eating body had just not been prepared for it all.
And, of course, there is the not-so-small matter of this happening on Tundra lands. Romek’s golden eyes (so reminiscent of his sire, Nocturnal – but then, he could very well be a clone in most aspects) evaluate him, and his bloody glory, passively. The elk-eater does look familiar, but Romek can’t quite place it. Years and years must’ve slipped between their once-meeting, and now, sand fills the gaps, the North freezes it solid and—
”Lokii,” he says, putting the name to the face finally.
But then, you wouldn’t forget one of your mother’s murderers, would you?
The trickster’s history has rarely showed up to bite him in the ass (there have been the select few of times, but none of them serious or noteworthy). The ones who do remember him from the days of Valley-fighting, Desert-entrapping, and innocent-murdering are either dead or hiding. None of them come out to fight his skinny body, despite all the revenge-worthy things he has done. He rarely looks back on those days as a personal reflection (although the look of surprise and enjoyment on the pink queen’s face is something he visits frequently, as well as the trait-battling day and the following sweaty night spent with the golden-eyed warrior) and never really thinks much of those times.
The sound of a stallion’s voice causes the trickster’s bruised eyes to open and his angular head to swing around. The gold eyes embedded within the stallion’s face are a loud echo to a time the jokester struggles to remember. His stomach gives a low growl (a passionate mixture between hunger and anger); although eating meat has been getting easier on his digestive system, it has been a long time since he last indulged in his bloody desires, and the elk isn’t quite agreeing with him just yet. He eases his tricks into his own mind, forcing away the beginnings of stomach pains (he’ll keep that trick dancing in his mind until the pain wears off and he feels better later; for now there are much more immediate matters).
His skinny silver bay body twists to turn, meeting the colorful stallion head on. The trickster licks his lips (stopping the blood from dripping down his chin, but leaving a dark stain against his mouth) and shakes his mane out in a casual manner. He’s never been one to care about kingdom borders or what they might do with him if he crossed them (he didn’t care about them when he was a yearling prancing into the Valley, he didn’t care about them when he was paraded into the Deserts like a trophy, he doesn’t care about them as he sucks the meat and blood from a kill made on Tundra land) and it is very obviously portrayed in his casual, relaxed body language and the way he smiles slowly, teeth stained a grim shade of dark pink.
He tips his sharp head to the side, bruised eyes mildly curious. “Well shit I thought everyone who knew me was either dead or dying.” He chuckles then, a slippery sort of sound mingled with gory amusement. “Who’re you?”
