The sun had set.

He only half registered it, his vision darkening as he sat upon the little silken nest he had constructed earlier for the purposes of weaving, not feeling up to moving. Today had been quite a mess, him getting in an overly agitated state all for the sake of not being able to read. It sounded so silly, in retrospect - he had gotten worked up over nothing, in a foolish attempt to outrun his feelings, as if that would get him anywhere, and now all that anxiety washed over him in a wave, crushing him, keeping him down. He could practically feel his outlook on life darkening as the sky did, thoughts of his own fleeting place in the universe taking hold for just a moment before he shook them off. It was useless to think in a nihilistic manner, he told himself; life was full of meaning. You just had to find it, and grow into your role.

He thought he already had, but apparently he thought wrong.

Like a terrible machine finally shuddering to life after years of lying dormant, the spider moved, limbs sluggish at first, before coming up to speed with his brain, stretching and crawling towards one of the trees he had anchored his nest on and crawling down it. Abathur was, as his stomach told him, hungry. He wasn't oft starved for food, but his flagrant overuse of his spinnerets had left him just a touch starved of nutrients - and the rabbit he had been feasting on for a few days now was gone, leaving him in need of a good hunt. It was for the better, anyways. The feeling of taking a feral's life helped satisfy a strange dark need for bloodshed, a current of thoughts that occasionally surfaced, running parallel to his usual ones. He wouldn't ever hurt anyone, no, he just had to sometimes vent that feeling into the hunt. Nothing wrong with hunting those that couldn't think, couldn't truly grow.

Upon landing, he immediately felt something - a small presence, vibrations through the ground, some sort of medium sized rabbit by how it moved. That would do, he thought to himself, creeping forwards slowly, making sure to keep his presence as low as possible. It was dark enough to where he would be unable to see even if his eyes weren't on the fritz, which meant he was relying totally on touch. He tried not to consider the possible reality that this could be the primer for the rest of his life, groping around in the dark for some foothold as he tried to carry on, instead focusing on the placement of each of his legs, reaching forward and pulling himself closer and closer to his quarry, until, with a huge push forward, he rushed and sank his fangs into the hare's flesh, feeling it start to struggle suddenly, kicking out and catching his head, before it fell over, paralyzed. He didn't doubt that he'd get a headache from that kick, frankly - but at least his instincts were still honed enough for him to eat. Quietly, he set about covering it in a silk cocoon, letting the ambience of the night set in.

Sometimes it was far too quiet for his liking - too little sound, leaving him too able to think, especially now, when the last thing he wanted to do was think some more.

tags - "speech"

The mere concept of not being interested in every single person you interacted with was a very foreign one, to Abathur. He was an easy person to intrigue - and even though the sudden onset of blurry vision had an effect on his life plans, and his mood in general, he was still very intent on learning a whole lot.

So, when he heard the soft footsteps of someone nearby, and (more intensely) felt said footfalls through the ground beneath him, he was immediately struck with the intense feeling he got whenever he saw someone, the intense overload of questions in his head. "Who is there," he called, turning to the source of the sensation with intent present in his paling green eyes.

From the weight of the paws, they were either very heavy or carrying something, and based on the dragging feeling he could feel behind them, as well as the distance of the paws from each other. It was a canid, he knew, so that narrowed it down. Leroy wasn't one to hunt, he didn't think, nor was he one to not make conversation, and he wasn't privy to many other canines, so that just left the hyenas. Snarl or Vathmos, then, two people he hadn't separated the pawsteps of from each other (since, you know, he was still new to this whole touch-based navigation thing). Either way, the truth would be revealed when the subject of his internal questions talked, and either his hypotheses would be proven correct, or he would have skills to develop.

tags - "speech"