"Find the bird. Take the bird. Living is preferable." She repeated the words of Jengo over in her mind. Aloud she occasionally muttered them as she turned each corner in search of a bird to serve as her prey.
Jengo had assigned her to catch the bird, and catch the bird was most definitely going to do. Without it she wouldn't "graduate" as Jengo had put it; and it seemed rather important that she accomplish this "graduating" before the sun touched the ground.
"Wait!" Jengo had been over alarmed as Yukiko slammed into him. He should have known better than that simply walking off was going to be easy.
"What happens when I... I... Gra..."
"Graduate?" The cheetah adjusted himself to sit properly once more.
"Yes, Graduate. What happens then."
"Well then..." A flutter of inspiration jolted him. "Why... Then you don't need me to teach you any longer." He said it in such a way that it appeared in an "as-in-matter-of-fact" tone. "You can go wherever you want after you graduate. Anywhere at all! But you must be certain to catch that bird for me. Hmm?" He tilted his head to watch Yukiko pleasantly nod repeatedly and laugh as she did such.
"Find the bird!" Yukiko exclaimed.
"Find the bird!" Jengo attempted to be falsely enthusiastic with her. As she took her hopefully permanent leave this time the cheetah turned with no plans of returning to see if Yukiko had actually succeeded or not.
Crunch! The sound of bird's wing snapping flew through the skies instead of the creature itself. The miserable small fledgling cawed and yowled out in pain at having lost it's chance for escape. Yukiko paid no heed and began immediately towards where Jengo had told her to drop the bird off. However she was forced to halt and realease her captured feathered -flightless- friend as it turned and pecked rather hard on one of her eyes.
"Yow!!" She yipped and backed from where she stood. A moment of shaking her head and she bared witness as the poor creature attempted to fly off to no avail.
Quick, she moved in to grasp it again in her jaws. Unintentionally Yukiko had jabbed her teeth into it's soft belly. The bird cried out in protest.
"Let me go! Let me go!"
"Quiet!" Yukiko sternly commanded her prey. She didn't like it when prey talked, it made her feel bad about having to end up eating it. Although she wasn't sure if she was going to eat this prey or not yet. As if to make up her mind she set the bird down, although firmly had it trapped under her paw with little room left to wiggle.
"I have to bring you to the snow Yeti." Yukiko explained. "I mean, uh, Jengo. That's his name. But I'm not going to eat you. Buurd." She attempted to say bird properly although she had temporarily forgotten the word and it came out a bumbled mess.
"Oh, please don't eat me!" The bird cried sobbingly. "I don't taste good, you wouldn't want to eat me!"
Yukiko cocked her head to the side on a slight tilt. "I already said I wasn't going to eat you. Stop arguing, you make my head go in pain." The hyena bent and picked her prey up once again, only to continue marching.
The clearing Jengo had told her to go to was only a few feet away now, she knew because the bushes here had been gnawed on personally by her. She was expecting the "snow yeti" cheetah to be awaiting with a dissatisfied glare on his features as he judged and examined her success with a "humph" and small hum.
But to her surprise, he wasn't there at all. In fact, a quick sniff of the air confirmed he wasn't even within the radius!
"Jengo?" She called out, again pinning the bird under her feet. "Jengo, I brought a bird. Do I graduate now?" She asked the air, ever optimistic that he lingered somewhere within the area his scent simply hidden from her somehow. "Jengo?" She called again, louder again and louder still. "JENGO?!"
The bird scurried off as it realized that Yukiko wasn't paying attention to it. The hyena didn't mind as she looked in a panic to the left and right in search of her cheetah companion. "JENGO?!"
A few minutes of utter and complete silence made Yukiko lose all her confidence that he remained. Shockingly it also managed to scare her. What was she to do now? Without Jengo to teach her how to survive she wasn't sure what to do out here in the green-snow-land. Oh, wait. He called it grass hadn't he? Yes, what was she to do here in the grassy landscape that she was ever-so unfamiliar with?
"JENGO?!" She screeched again, a more stern and demanding tone with it. She simply couldn't wrap her mind around the facts. Jengo left her? He abandon her?! How could he do such a thing to her like this? It was very un-Jengo like of him to do so! She thought all snow yeti's were honest! He had taught her that and she had chosen to believe him. But now, now was she to believe anything he had said to her?!
"JENGO~!" She called out, an echo in the form of a howl on his o. To no avail she flattened her ears when their was no response. "Jengo..." She sobbed, and noticed her shouts were in vain. She had only caused the forest to stir in silence as it waited for her to calm down.
Yukiko then had an epiphany, and miraculously it convinced her not to break down and weep over the loss of her "friend". Jengo had planned this. He left because Yukiko had graduated! He didn't come out because she didn't need him anymore and trusted her to be on her own without any troubles!
"Jengo!" She yelled in joy. He wasn't a liar after all! He was an honest snow yeti!
Yukiko liked honest people the most. They made her giggle and laugh.
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