Hard Eyes, Lean Hearts

There was hunger in the Tundra.
 
The frozen north was already a harsh place, with driving and frigid winds, snow that stuck in the eyes and obscured the tracks of beasts, but the hunger… When the blizzards became fierce and long-lasting, plants were covered, and so the herbivores left or starved. And as the herbivores faded from the lands, the bellies of predators rumbled longer and longer.
 
And the hunger made the cold colder, and the nights longer and more lonely, and it made every predator feel the edge. Enemies were far quicker to fight, swifter to spread their territory to find any meat they could, and even friends gazed at each other with hard eyes and lean hearts.
 
But, in at least one part of this awful cold waste, there was warmth. There was blood on the snow.
 
The huntress who had chased this prey down had worked hard, and the chase had taken both predator and fallen prey to the edge of a treeline, where the prey had taken a hard turn in all the wrong ways and crashed down into a snowdrift. The predator had been close behind.
 
And now, here under a scraggly aspen, there was warmth, and meat to satisfy the hunger in the Tundra.

@Orlaith
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She fucked up. Orlaith didn't realize how entirely close the tundra truly was, and by the time she entered.. A blizzard held a reign onto where she was. She couldn't easily leave just yet, had to bunker down in a cavern for some-time. Unfortuently that meant a lack of prey as well, as time went by and her stomach growled, only having to simply accept it's hunger and patiently wait it out.. Fortunate was upon the warrior though, for maybe a day had passed and she could finally come out.

Though the most important topic was the hunt. 

She found something, that salivated her mouth at the mere' thought of dining for it. Awfully hunger to boot that the patience for a true hunt was not within favor, for the prowling and stalking was avoided and she simply charged with the pure smell of one. Although, Orlaith wasn't the fastest hunter, she had the strength and stamina to try and win over that.

But one wrong turn, one moment where she did not see — someone else decided to snatch her prey. Already irritated, angry and hungry, she would turn that corner with a clear snarl upon her face. Her tail lashed, her fur ruffling upwards with a clear hostility as she bared her fangs against the other, someone who stole her very prey.

"What the fuck, bastard?"

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The prey-thief maintained her position on the opposite side of the fallen kill from Orlaith. She was smaller than the Mackenzie Valley Wolf, though surely most wolves were. Where Orlaith was comparatively massive and proud, this creature with fur like coal-stained snow was hunched and lithe and cringing. Her teeth were thin but sharp, almost as though she had borrowed them from some meat-ripping river-fish, and her dark eyes failed to match the beauty of Orlaith’s tree-green orbs.
 
Laska heard the words, and in the midst of an aggressive growl, she tried to take in the larger female’s scent. She hadn’t smelled this woman before, and Laska believed that this territory was largely unclaimed… There had been a few old dried scat-markings here and there, but they were unmaintained, and failed to frighten away the hungry Laska.
 
”Slow… Big.” Laska snarled between her throaty vocalizations. She couldn’t growl like Orlaith could, however, given the comparative sizes of the lungs they were each working with. Laska licked her lips, trying to devise a tactic here… She wouldn’t win a fight against Orlaith directly, but she could use her speed to try to harry the larger beast, and make this battle not worth her while. Laska grinned. ”You want to eat it? Go ahead...” The white-furred she-wolf waited to see what Orlaith would do next. If she rushed at Laska, the smaller wolf would bolt, but only to a safe distance, at which point she’d come right back in...

Note: Archiving this thread after OOC mutual agreement with Orlaith's author.
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