Fresh meat. I smelled it in the wind. Elk! I sprinted off towards my next meal. It had taken a fortnight of practice before I caught something real, but nothing had escaped my deadly jaws since. This elk would be no different.
I stalked towards it, wind in my face. Meat, I sniffed the air again. Fresh meat. My stomach growled silently. I carefully stepped through the fallen leaves that covered the ground. The forest was my hunting ground, and my prey was ahead of me. I crept closer to the unsuspecting animal and prepared to pounce. The elk looked my way...
...and I pounced.
My claws and teeth sunk into the hindquarters of my prey as it tried to flee. Blood sprayed from the open wound, and the elk stumbled and fell. Fresh meat. I quickly ended the animal's suffering with a snap of its neck. Solstice, Aerya, and I would all eat like vhalyri tonight.
"Excellent kill," the spider witch said when I presented her the carcass. "Now let the girl enjoy it with us."
I shifted back. My face shrank while my hands grew. My tail shrank, but my legs grew. My fur shrank to light fuzz, but my hair grew back on my head as long as it had been before. I grit my teeth through the pain... until a naked girl lay where the wolf had just been.
Solstice lit a fire with wood they'd gathered. "Control it, like we practiced," Aerya told her. The spider witch cooked my kill while Solstice helped me clean the blood from my skin and dress.
"You're pretty good at this, for a blind girl," I told my lover.
"I have to find some way to keep you nice to look at."
"You're blind."
"Others aren't," Solstice informed me. "Someone has to care what you look like, and it clearly won't be you."
"I was trying to give you a compliment, you know."
"I wasn't."
"Thanks."
Thanks to Solstice, the fire never got close enough to be any danger to the forest. Her magic kept us safe, and her magic cooked my kill. Fresh meat. My mouth watered as Aerya carved up the elk with a knife carved from bone.
"This is the greatest meal I've eaten in my life," Solstice announced through bites of meat.
"You always say that," I retorted. Every night for three months, she'd been telling me that. Every night since I'd caught my first kill. Every night since we'd left Sam.
"Well this time it's true."
"You always say that too."
"Even a man whose memory has decayed for a thousand years would remember that," Aerya added. "I do agree, though, this elk is exceptional. Fitting for such a date as this."
"What do you mean?" Solstice asked. I already knew.
"Today is the three hundred and fifty-third day of the year. The twenty-third day of the twelfth month."
"I'm sixteen years old today," I said.
"Happy birthday!" Solstice exclaimed.
"Thanks but... it's really nothing big."
"It is," Solstice argued, smiling largely. "In Elsinct, you'd be a woman grown today."
"Aye. In Sacreon as well," Aerya agreed. "In Viri, you're a child until you've slain another vir."
I nodded. Jaaran had hunted and killed a fox when he was thirteen, and dragged the vir's body all the way home. I've killed nothing but prey.
"If we didn't breed so fast, we'd have died out ten times over," I laughed and took another bite of elk.
BẠN ĐANG ĐỌC
The Wolf Witch
Viễn tưởngSora has no place in the world. She is meant to be a strong warrior, with the ability to shift into a wolf. She is none of those things, and looked down upon because of it. It brings shame to her, it brings shame to her family, and worst of all, it...
