Chardonnay

The joy of hunting is a sublime one. It is surprising for an activity that , when done successfully, ends with blood and death. If you are fortunate, it will not be your blood and death.

I grew up on the hunt, at my mother's heel, beneath my father's wing, learning from them as only experience can teach. I learned how to track the scent of prey in it's prime, of how to gauge the precise angle of attack, of how to keep the sun at my back.

When the prey looks away, that is the moment. To shoot through bramble and thicket in the pursuit of agile mule deer. Of breaking ice after seals diving through their winding tunnels of hard-packed snow. To smash through shadows to cut off the escape of a trunker who thought it was clever. To skitter across shale and snatch from the air a golden-feathered bird, it's long pinfeathers glittering in the light.



Those are very shallow things, physical things. I cannot exactly describe the allure of the hunt, the joy of watching your familiar do exactly as you have trained it to do, of fighting back the beating of your heart in your ears at the distant whump of swan's wings. The rush of power and pride when you wrestle down croakers in the swamps, the satisfaction of bring back brace after brace of game to your Clan.

It is hours of hard work, of near misses, of ambushes misplaced.


The roads are long and they are lonely.




Chukar should have been abundant at this time of year, nesting among fronds of bamboo or scratching up grubs and seeds among the grasses at the edges of the forest. Chardonnay had been counting on bringing back a brace or two of them, or bushrunners, and had come up empty but for a few partridges, and they were mostly fluff and bones best suited for broth. The breezy scent of gale wolves she had picked up all through this valley likely had a lot to do with the poor hunting.

It was a pity she had had to pass up the slightly better hunting hydra scorpions had offered along the delta, but there were few wholly insect-eaters in her Clan, and her wandering clan had roamed into deeper forests.

It was times like this she wished she had also not left her familiar with her lairmates, but there is no use in having regrets. There was hunting to be done, and you use what you have.

She crouched low to the ground, and opened her senses, taking in the sounds of field mice scratching against their burrow walls -too small-, the cry of tolbunt roosters -too far-, she pushed the scent of crushed bamboo leaves to the back of her mind and took a slow breath inwards: "Gale wolves..." She thought, languidly, "the source of those summer storms and fading. Grassland trunkers... perhaps a day's long run away... and...?"

She opened her eyes and let out the faintest growl, "Another Clan. And close."

Sapling Speaker

Familiar

Elemental acolyte of the Gladekeeper. (Greenskeeper Gathering Holiday Item 2016.)

0

Blackline Bicorn Whale

Familiar

Known for migrating to the warm waters off the coast of Blacksand Annex, Blackline Bicorns compete with the native Ashen Bicorn whales for food. (Colored by Slashfiend.)

1250