Our skin gets thicker, living out in the snow
CREVAN
He expected them all to be dead.
Every last one of them. Generations gone, in fact. Crevan finds it hard to believe that the feisty little shifter he left behind has barely aged - how long has he been gone? Or, how short of a time has he been away?
His head begins to throb again. Merida could be immortal like him, after all. She could simply be passing the time while another century has come and gone; not one of the flat-toothed pack animals here would consider her much of anything, if she chose to remain discreet and purely Fox. He means this in the nicest way - Merida was as crafty and witty as the second soul nestled close to her first.
She, like so few of the shifters around here, appreciated the freedom of a different skin. “It’s not the first time I’ve looked like this.” He mutters in a gravely tone. “And it certainly won’t be the last.” The wolf exhales as his companion flits away, feeling (for the brevity of a second) a tense sadness at her eager departure. Sleep is heavy on his eyelids though, so he readily succumbs to the darkness again and, this time, sleeps blissfully free of dreams.
Quiet paws bring her back to him, but it’s the smell of a fresh kill that has his eyes flicking open to glow hungrily in the encroaching darkness. Faint starlight swirls around her slender body, the halo of an expectant moon ringing her outline with silver fire. As she drifts away from him, Crevan adjusts; like two partners mimicking a dance he rises slowly on his forepaws and twists a stocky head over one thick shoulder to watch her present the hare.
“Some things have changed since I was gone.” He notices with stony composure - only, the tight press of his lips could be interpreted as a ‘smirk’. “I remember an unblooded curiosity; Now I see a rabbit killer in fine form.” He huffs, an attempt at laughter. With a delicacy he’d not mastered before, the taupe wolf hunkers down and gingerly relieves her of the prize. His wide jaws hold the meat limply, like Merida had before, and then his chin flexes and in one motion, he sears the animal entirely in half with a solid crunch of his teeth.
Both sides flop lifeless to the earth.
“Thank you.” He says afterwards, his nearly-black eyes rising to peer at her face. “Where are the rest of them?” Crevan asks as he slides once more to the ground, belly-flat. The one half of hare that belongs to him disappears beneath his looming mouth, a pleasant sound of tearing skin and snapping bones accompanying the action. Again his attention rises to the fierce she-fox, inquisitive eyes reading deeper into whatever she might say. His molars grind the bone to a soft paste as he chews; almost nothing is wasted when he eats these days.