here comes a candle to light you to bed
here comes a chopper to chop off your head
They do not respond to his words. There is not even a hint that they have even heard them at all. These monsters don’t understand spoken language, any equine part of their brain had been long since scrambled. The larger one was a true horse once and there are memories locked up in a cage. Or maybe they aren’t even locked up, she just does not possess the ability to comprehend them. The smaller one had never been normal. The only thing even remotely normal about either of them are their hooves, as if the top half of them was wicked enough that giving them claws as well would just make things a little too easy.
Still, those hooves serve them all. And now they do not miss a beat.
He moves, scrambles backwards, and in a sense it pleases them. Neither of them enjoy easy hunts - there’s no challenge. Like any animal they need enrichment, and Anaxarete is hardly going to fill a pumpkin with raw meat for them to toss around and puzzle out.
(Though it’s not out of the realm of possibility)
They shift their movements to follow him, silver teeth dripping with saliva as they snarl. For a moment they are beside each other, mother and daughter, each fierce and utterly feral. There is no reasoning with either of them.
And then the larger of the pair lunges high - snapping with the hopes of finding his face or his neck. Prey rarely expects a strike to the face and she has fond memories of a deer she took down by clasping her larger jaws around it’s face while the smaller jaws punched through the skull repeatedly as she jerked her body to break its neck.
If she could wonder, she might wonder whether a horse could be taken down the same way.
Meanwhile the smaller lowers her head and surges forward to snap at his legs with her own dual sets of teeth. All the while those wicked knife tails flick back and forth behind them like wagging puppy tails, only menacing to the last.
ripley & nostromo
XXVIII----- |
