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 Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:06 am
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"I'm telling you you're doing it wrong," Najia repeated, frowning at her brother. He'd already taken down the little prairie dog. The creature was hyperventilating now, its eyes rolling wildly. "Mama's already going to be mad you went hunting without her to watch you. You shouldn't make her more mad."
The cubs had been instructed on the general details of hunting by their mother, but hadn't been allowed to go out on their own yet. Najia thought it was because Pur'Jed knew they were too small to bring down most prey themselves, but Ru rarely paid attention to that. Najia had watched him take the prairie dog out almost easily, but when he'd had the chance to make the kill, he wasn't taking it. The creature's heart might burst before he even got around to it.
"You're just scaring it now. Get it over with or let it go." Najia's claws flexed out and back in, but she didn't make a move to do the job herself. She wasn't as good at hunting as her brother, though that would change with time. Pur'Jed was good at everything, and of all her siblings Najia took the most after her mother's best attributes. |
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Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:34 am
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 Pur'Jed knew she really ought to go out and hunt sometime today. There were four people to feed now, and even if three of them were smaller, they still ate enough that she couldn't get by with only hunting once every few days as she had done while pregnant. She was just putting off hunting right now because she wasn't much good at it and therefore she didn't like doing it.
Hunting was an activity nobles only engaged in for sport in the Suka'Fumo, and Pur had never been one who much enjoyed the sport. She'd gone to a bit of trouble to learn how before she left to have her cubs, but there hadn't been time to become proficient at the sport. That was why there were servants and such things. No matter how practical she had tried to be, Pur hadn't been able to really attend to her lessons. It had felt like a game.
But now it wasn't a game, and she had cubs to feed, protect, and generally care for. She didn't know exactly where her cubs were right now, but they were withing earshot. Actually, her ears had detected the sound of one of the girls' voices raised in irritation. She supposed she had better see what was going on, before someone got hurt. No one had been seriously damaged in her cubs' tussles yet, but she worried a little about what Ruzanski might do if he lost control of his temper. He was a strange one, and made her a little uneasy. It was a good thing he seemed devoted to his sisters.
She stood up and began to make her way over to where she heard her cubs.
 Ruzanski continued to hold the prairie dog down with both paws, but he turned his attention to Najia. First his eyes slid in her direction, then his head followed them. He had learned that sometimes it creeped the girls in his family out when he did that, and sometimes if he creeped them out sufficiently, they stopped making a fuss about whatever they were fussing over. Of course, they'd just fuss over his creeping them out, but it was different at least, and something he might be able to distract them from.
His prey's heart pounded so hard and so rapidly that it felt like it was humming against he paw pad. It was exhilarating to feel that kind of power, and to know that at any minute he could bring the scenario to whatever conclusion he wished. He could kill his prey now, or he could let it suffer a little longer, or he could see if its heart would really explode if he scared it enough. So many possibilities.
"She's not going to care. Or find out. Unless you decide you're going to run and tell?" He made it into a challenge. "Besides, don't you want to know what will happen?" he asked. |
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Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 9:45 am
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"I know what will happen," Najia said, pushing past the small thrill of fear her brother's glance gave her. "You kill it and we eat it. And you know I hate it when you look at me like that!"
No, Najia wouldn't go squealing to Pur'Jed, although she really thought she should. It wasn't right, making the prairie dog suffer when they were going to make a meal out of it anyway. It was already giving its life up to its betters, why make it give up more? Ru should know better than this.
Najia did approach her brother now, but her steps were unsure. Where was A'ta when she needed her? It was easier to distract their brother when it was two-to-one, even if he was a boy.
"Ru, kill it or let it go." There. That was better. She had a note of command in her voice, the way her mother sometimes did. It certainly suited her personality, anyway. Najia didn't back down once she'd set her mind to something.
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Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:57 pm
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Pur drew closer to her cubs and could see that Ru and Najia were disagreeing, but she couldn't immediately see what they were disagreeing over. Najia was saying something about how he'd kill it and they'd eat it. She was positive that wasn't a good thing. Something told her that even if Ru had caught something safe for them to eat, the fact that he'd caught it and not chosen to kill it yet was clearly distressing Najia.
Personally, Pur was indifferent as to the fate of whatever creature Ru had captured, and the spoiled noble in her said that if he wanted to take over hunting duties, she had no cause for complaint. However, the fact was that he was at least half of noble birth and he was only a cub. He shouldn't be hunting and he shouldn't be upsetting his sisters. Hunting was her responsibility, and it was just bad manners for him to upset his siblings.
When she was close enough to see, it didn't much surprise her to see Ru had caught and pinned a small rodent of some sort - a prairie dog? - and was simply holding it there, afraid and screaming. The sound of its screams was unsettling her deeply, although she didn't see any obvious blood. How had he captured it? Claws sheathed? On one paw, it was impressive. On the other...it was just unsettling.
"Ru, do as your sister asks," Pur said, stepping up behind Najia.
-----
"It's just a prairie dog," Ru pointed out. "Hardly enough for all of us to eat."
He managed not to pout or grumble, even though he felt put-upon. He was doing his very best to be helpful and learn useful skills, since the family was so small and their mother obviously didn't like to hunt. He was trying to be useful. He liked to be useful. But being useful was all about noticing the details, and he's apparently failed to notice a few key ones here. Like the fact his mother would be siding with his sisters, of course.
"But...if you say so."
For a moment he increased the weight and pressure he put on the rodent's chest. He didn't weigh enough to break its ribs with the force he exerted that way, but he could make the creature wheeze as its ribs constricted around its lungs. That was interesting. But not the point of the exercise. He was supposed to kill his prey. Or let it go. But he wasn't going to choose the second option after going to all the trouble of catching it to begin with.
His claws flexed in and out, piercing skin but not to a fatal degree. Then he dragged his paws down the prairie dog's body from chest to groin. It was supposed to have killed the rodent. That it wasn't yet dead was interesting, but Ru got the feeling he wasn't supposed to experiment further with this interesting development. Instead he snagged the almost-corpse with his bloodied claws and bashed it against the ground, cracking its skull fatally.
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Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 9:27 am
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Posted: Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:49 am
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Pur watched Ru's display and wondered how much of it was because he had an audience and how much of it was a result of his own pleasures. She could see that he was pleased with himself, but whether it was because he'd caught and killed something on his own, because his manner of doing so had upset his sister, or because his manner of doing so appealed to him was unclear to her. As his mother, she was concerned about this, but there wasn't much she could do, seemingly, except to reiterate the importance of good manners and making clean kills.
Which was a joke. The kills she made were rarely clean. They weren't bad, or anything to be ashamed of, but an experienced hunter who had spent their life at the task would undoubtedly scoff at such a performance. Still, she and her cubs did not go hungry and they had never been in any real danger, to her knowledge. She had never seen anything particularly threatening, and anything she thought might have been a threat, she kept her cubs away from. Their den had been very carefully selected.
"Ru," she admonished. "Don't make a mess. That's not how proper people behave. And make sure you don't make a mess when you eat it, either. Good manners are important."
She looked over her son's head at her daughter. "If you like we can. Do you know where A'ta has gotten to?"
-----
Ru cast a quick green-eyed glare at Najia for putting him in a position where he had to eat the prairie dog. Not that he'd planned on wasting it - he was naturally thrifty when it came to things like that, and not terribly picky about his food - but he had not planned to kill it right away. He'd planned to kill it once he got hungry enough to eat it, which he presently was not.
"If you're hungry, you can have it," he offered, smiling beatifically. "I don't mind sharing."
It wasn't a matter of trying to be well-behaved and polite to impress his mother, though there was an element of that. It was more that he wanted to see how Najia was going to get out of it. He didn't want to eat the thing, and he doubted that she did either, but now that he'd done the gentlemanly thing and offered to share, there wasn't really a polite way for her to refuse, as far as he could figure it. Though she was better at the good-manners-noble-behavior thing than he was, so maybe she knew a loophole that he was unaware of.
"I haven't seen her," he said, answering their mother's question. "Not since before I caught the prairie dog, anyway."
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