03-18-2020, 09:02 PM
[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]He had missed out on so much.
The mother had given birth to children. She had already introduced him to another child of her own, the little one he'd met on the beach. Had she told him that there would be others? Had he the right to know? He felt - nothing. It was easy to drain himself down to the bare essentials: Walk. Breathe. The blood-smell was a heavy weight in the air that filled his lungs like water. Walk faster, now. He's charging the thick brush before he can feel his paws moving, thinking of the mother's gentle face, the scent of amniotic fluid and rust-blood settling like the humidity in his pelt. Cognizance is a luxury; he only knows how to move, to hunt down that scent like dying prey. There's a distant, sick feeling that will drop in his stomach someday, when he has the time to reconsider the comparison.
It's barely a tree that he meets but a fortress, sprawling buttress roots shadowing the few that had gathered at its trunk. Ahab sinks back into himself, feels the ground beneath his paws and listens, with great care, to the soft mewls that echo through its hollow belly. "Roxanne -" the massive bear drags his claws up the tree trunk, hoisting himself just high enough to peer into the rotting den. He almost clamors up to lift her, to bring her to safety so that she might deliver in peace, but the sight in the dim lighting astounds him.
His expression goes soft. Oh, they are so small. Smaller than Roan when they met, when he held out his paw to show the little kit that he was hardly the size of his palm. Ahab seeks out the right words and fails. Instead, he only stares, mumbling out, "You - there's children. Your children."
The mother had given birth to children. She had already introduced him to another child of her own, the little one he'd met on the beach. Had she told him that there would be others? Had he the right to know? He felt - nothing. It was easy to drain himself down to the bare essentials: Walk. Breathe. The blood-smell was a heavy weight in the air that filled his lungs like water. Walk faster, now. He's charging the thick brush before he can feel his paws moving, thinking of the mother's gentle face, the scent of amniotic fluid and rust-blood settling like the humidity in his pelt. Cognizance is a luxury; he only knows how to move, to hunt down that scent like dying prey. There's a distant, sick feeling that will drop in his stomach someday, when he has the time to reconsider the comparison.
It's barely a tree that he meets but a fortress, sprawling buttress roots shadowing the few that had gathered at its trunk. Ahab sinks back into himself, feels the ground beneath his paws and listens, with great care, to the soft mewls that echo through its hollow belly. "Roxanne -" the massive bear drags his claws up the tree trunk, hoisting himself just high enough to peer into the rotting den. He almost clamors up to lift her, to bring her to safety so that she might deliver in peace, but the sight in the dim lighting astounds him.
His expression goes soft. Oh, they are so small. Smaller than Roan when they met, when he held out his paw to show the little kit that he was hardly the size of his palm. Ahab seeks out the right words and fails. Instead, he only stares, mumbling out, "You - there's children. Your children."
[align=center][div style="text-align:right;width:59%;font-family:verdana;"][font=verdana][size=11pt][color=transparent][url=https://beastsofbeyond.com/index.php?topic=13462.0][color=black][b][i]LET HIM WHO THINKS HE KNOWS NO FEAR
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE
LOOK WELL UPON MY FACE