Spring is a time of rebirth but it is also a time, like all the other seasons, of death. As young are brought into the world they kill the mothers who whelp them, others wither away failing to thrive because the bodies or parents they have been given are inferior. The world blossoms on the back of bloody struggle and whatever beauty can be found in survival has a shadow of brutality.
He is watching a long red weasel approach the grassy nest of a young rabbit family. The parents are missing, but would likely hide from the fierce little beast anyway. The mustalid sniffs around the nest and then scratches away grass and the downy fur plucked from the breast of the absent mother. It savages the small blind cottontails, tossing curled mewling newborns aside and then pouncing after them to break and bloody. It makes a fine game of a total of seven murders. At last, with its white underside stained with gore it selects just one of the corpses and takes it away, dragging and carrying intermittently. Others will make use of the left behind.
The smell of blood hangs among the trees like a dank, still fog. There are hours until sunrise will color sky red-orange and stars still linger peeking through the dense canopy at the blue monster who now inspects the dead, tasting blood and fur. There is nothing to interest him in the flavor of the kits and he wipes a wet smear away from his dark mouth before stepping over them and continuing along under the juniper where the grassy nest lies. He breaths in the scent of the trees scaley limbs, head low to duck them, muscle rolling slowly beneath his shadow clouded hide. Tunnel, having split off from Shroud for the moment (though they will come together again in a few nights) stops alone to gaze steadily out from beneath the tree, toward the sound of someone making their way through the forest in the dark. Another? Very well, demon, bring them forth.
