A Chase at Dawn [Olek]

[Olek]

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.

[Olek]

78th Day of Fall, 511 A.V.

The snow numbed his bare feet as Olek jogged naked back along the open fields of snow toward his den near Avanthal. The sun shown brightly from the sky and reflected off the icy ground, giving it a shimmer in places. Olek smiled happily to himself, completely content. He had been successful and now it was time to reap the benefits. His face was pink with a healthy flush as he loped across the Northern Reaches.

He hoped he wouldn't encounter anything else this morning. Last week he had had to abandon a kill because a few slavers had trudged out into the open, covered in furs and carrying spears and nets. They had spotted him in human form and started at him. He slipped away easily enough as a feline, but had sacrificed a healthy buck and the two hours it had taken to hunt it down.

By the time the sun rose to near it's peak he was back in very familiar territory. He could follow the paths of the Vantha's herds back to the city easily now. He fell in behind one of the Frostfawn's herds of elk, following their scent as much as their wide path of disturbed snow. The elk trotted away from him, startled from the scent of the fox's blood.

They had nothing to worry about though. Olek never attacked the Frostfawn's animals, he knew they were different. When he had first found the frosty heights of Avanthal he had eagerly attacked one of the plump, healthy elk. He soon found out what Frostfawn thought of people who poach their herds. He had never attacked one again after realizing the subtle difference in scents.

He caught up to the lazy herd and passed them, weaving his way through a small copse of evergreens and smaller evergreen bushes. He gave the herd a wide berth so as not to disperse them and have some Vantha have to come out and round them all up again.

Instead of turning toward the distant wall of Avanthal, which was a grey streak of icy rock visible against the white backdrop in the distance, he turned toward an area in the opposite direct thick with trees and outcroppings of stone. One such outcropping was Olek's home. To say it was modest would be drastically trivialized.

The place was a hallow area underneath a mound and situated between two huge boulders. Olek had to crouch to enter and once inside could only stand because he had dug it out a few months earlier when he found the place. He lay the fox across a branch he had propped up between two slabs of rock. He reached for one of the rabbits he had caught yesterday and dropped it on the ground just outside the den.

Grabbing his old hunting knife from its place on his coat he smiled happily. The humans valued other beasts furs. He had figured this out while watching the Vantha inside Avanthal, garbed in the dead furs of beasts long past slain. He didn't really understand the concept. He couldn't see why anything would have to wear something else's fur. But then again, the Vantha didn't have a coat of their own, so he supposed it made a sort of sense.

He planned to cut the fur from the rabbit and maybe he could trade or sell it in Avanthal where the bears and the Vantha lived. He stared down at the dead rabbit with excitement. He gripped the dagger and began to cut carefully. Ten minutes later he was glad he had three more rabbits to get the hang of it before he had to skin the two foxes he had caught.

He held the bloodied rabbit fur up and looked at it with a slight frown marring his smooth features. His wide grey eyes stared at the rough edges and accidental slits across the fuzzy pelt. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't as bad as he thought it'd be. He rubbed the polar bear on the hilt of his blade before retrieving the second rabbit and starting anew.

An hour and a half later the youth had three rabbit pelts and two fox pelts in front of him, making the snow outside his den pink with a faint layer of blood and bits of gore. He had stopped to put his wool pants and shirt on, as well as the shoes he had stolen from the hunter so long ago. Now he crouched against the grey stone, gazing down at his handiwork. He nibbled upon the charred and cooked corpse of a rabbit, famished as he was from the hunt and the change from earlier.

All of the rabbit pelts looked particularly shabby, but passable. The foxes were visibly better, and might even sell for real money in Avanthal. The concept gave Olek a smile, though he did not know why. Money had always been an odd concept to him, since he was fearful of anyone who used it. The Hunter had been obsessed with it.

He cleaned the pelts by rubbing snow across them with his bare hands, stopping often to stick his hands in his pants to thaw them from the merciless cold. It always got to him more as a man than as a leopard. But being a man had its advantages Olek supposed. He would be able to enter Avanthal as a man. He still wasn't entirely sure why that was a good thing, but he felt Avanthal held something he had been looking for for a very long time.

Olek stood and looked to the sky, a storm was growing there. He went inside and donned his coat, pulling the torn hood over his head and hefted the animal pelts onto his wide shoulder. He turned his steps toward Avanthal.

[Cheshire]

Character: Olek Experience: Observation +1, Running +1, Hunting +1 Lore: Cleaning Pelts Additional Note: I cannot give you skinning points because you would have completely destroyed the pelts since you have 0 XP in skinning. Feel free to re-write if you like for more XP. PM me with concerns.