78th Day of Fall, 511 A.V.
The dark expanse of the Northern Reaches lay still and silent as the purple and red hues of early morning light crept their way into the dying night sky. The faint light silhouetted the features of the harsh northern region and gave light to the pearly landscape. The air was bitter with cold and all the wildlife were safely warm in their dens or nests, save two.
Snow sprayed chaotically from where the white paws of a winter fox pattered across the hardened surface. It's breath left swirls in the air as it barreled away from it's pursuer. The white fur of the fox blended into the snowy ground but that didn't help it much against the deadly eyesight and nose of the full grown snow leopard thirty feet behind it.
The cat tore gracefully after the fox with a determined focus that left little room for anything besides prey and predator. It's smoke grey fur and black spots shifting as it ran, leaping across the crusted snow and leaving huge paw prints in the powder. Ears back and eyes like grey slits, he moved in on the fox. The fox kept slipping closer and closer to the shadowed tree line. Olek pushed himself faster, if the fox reached the tall majestic pines of the nearby forest he may not catch it. That would be wrong, he had been at the chase for so long already.
Olek snarled to let the fox know it was not in the clear yet. The leopard shifted his course to herd the fox more towards the open field of now golden snow than the shadow shrouded forest of pines. The sun was now shining from the east, giving a hearty golden sheen to every surface and warming the crisp morning air.
The fox made it's fatal mistake. It chose to bolt down a slope into the middle of the field rather than continue through the softer snow toward the trees. Olek snarled in victory, for he already knew the game was his. He leapt down the slope in one swift pounce, landing in a flurry of snow and fur. He had the white body of his prey pinned down with one huge paw. Briefly he sensed the struggle, the pain, the fear of death, and pitied the animal it's fate. He enclosed the fox's throat in his jaws. In a moment of liquid warmth and sinewy pressure he pulled the smaller animal's throat out and it died instantly, silently.
There Olek crouched, still clutching the warm corpse of the fox. The red scar he and the fox had cut in the snow was now stained with the bright red of blood. Olek got up and slunk away from the kill a few feet. He blinked and growled as his body began to shift and swirl in a mirage of bright white light. The light flickered in the air, glinting off the snow below. In another moment there was a tall, youthful man standing over the fox, naked as the day he was born.
Tall and thin he was covered in lean muscle made from a lifetime of living off the wild and he bore the trophies of his past. He was covered in shining strips of scarred flesh, particularly on his back and legs, but they extended even to his otherwise unmarred face. He ran a hand across his chin, wiping the foxes blood away and spitting out the tangy iron taste.
He frowned and scratched the back of his left knee with his right foot, balancing for a moment on one foot before hoisting the fox over his shoulder by the tail and turning to walk west.