The second time they crossed paths, she was much more presentable.
Or at least, ever the skewed individual, that was how Edgar would have described her.
He’d tracked something into the depths of the forest, though by the time he’d wound himself through the thick bracken and brambles overhead, his kill had been stolen– or, that was the word he would use. In truth, she’d merely been hunting the same thing from the opposite way; though they’d met in the middle, she had ultimately been closer to it.
“Oh?” he asked, standing in the mouth of the clearing, watching her feed. The sound of his voice was like a bolt of lightning; it caused her spine to straighten, tail automatically coiling into a defensive position before she turned around to regard him, her fur matted with blood. “That was mine.”
“Was,” she said, a paw swiping across her face to rid it of as much gore as possible. “Past tense.”
He should have been annoyed, should have displayed his dominance in a fit of rage, but he felt his mouth curl into a grin. Who are you? I like you.
This time, when he took a step closer to her, she didn’t retreat.
“It isn’t wise to hunt alone,” he remarked, ears stood tall. They hadn’t picked up on any other sound as he’d entered the clearing, giving him the solid impression that it was just the two of them there. It hadn’t taken as long as one might imagine for him to learn the ways of the wild. Some would argue that he’d been an animal long before he’d occupied the body of a lye. “Where are your creedmates?”
“I don’t have them,” she replied, voice unflinching. Even so, he could smell it: that hint of trepidation; the apprehension that accompanied a lone soul in the midst of a confrontation. It led him to a startling truth: she really didn’t have anybody to come to her aid. The thought made him grin wider, approaching until he was sitting beside her. A crooked leg of the dead separated them, though the gap was small, barely mindful.
Up close, she looked all the more intriguing to him. He could see small indents in her ashen fur, proof of teeth and claws, and the hint of multiple different scents clinging to her had him assuming that she was either a whore or she’d had a close shave with an unsavoury group of lyes. Whatever the case, she had wound up injured, small and kitten-esque even in his wake. What interested him the most, however, was the patterns in her fur. Though the area around her mouth had taken on a crimson sheen, the light grey mark resembling a heart beneath her eye drew him in. He realised with some amount of intrigue that she had a similar marking on her chest; it lined it attractively, the sides curving behind her legs, leaving her underside an adorable grey.
You had a Signature*… but something clawed over it. Did you do that?
“ … you truly don’t belong to anyone?” he asked, one paw settling atop the carcass he’d been dead set on since noon. When she didn’t respond, his claws sank in, drawing meat from the fleshy body, teeth bared in a wide smile. “Nobody to come and help you?”
“I don’t need help,” she spat back with a glare.
“Why are you so aggressive?” he quizzed with a chuckle. “I could kill you for commandeering my kill, you know.” Come the end of things, she could do nothing to keep him from feeding too. If she struck an issue with his imposed sharing methods, she knew it was likely that she would face the wrath of a far stronger lye. Even his expression was enough to put her on edge… though she didn’t want to bend to his whim, she also didn’t want to annoy him too much. After eating her fill, Grace stood up from her spot, taking a few calculated steps away from him.
“You can have it,” she commented dismissively. At the very least, the illusion of choice was there. She watched his head swivel in her direction, black sclerae seeming all the more dark when accompanied with such a ghoulish smile.
Why do you look like that? What are you so damn happy about?
“What an angel.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Struck a nerve, dear?”
She’d been doing so well. Though cold and unresponsive, she hadn’t revealed her anger until then. It caused her face to slacken, the uptight scowl there melting into a resigned line. Part of her wanted confrontation; awaited the swift pierce of his claws and teeth with breath so bated that it made it feel perverse. As tough as she was, she was certain that he didn’t miss the hint of anguish she carried along with her like a small block of concrete, like a stone in her pocket, its weight manageable but present nonetheless. It followed her cleanly, even as she turned her back on him and left.