[PRP] Vicious Things [No Mercy/Last Night] [FIN]

[Amorpheous]

She had not set out this night to find a meal, she hardly ever did, but even on nights when she did not plan to kill and ended up doing so, there was some notion of eating or experiencing life through death that had settled into her bones, sometimes unbeknownst to her. This kill though, was unexpected and unplanned, as all things in her life, but this time more so. She stood there now, bloody boar dead on its side next to her, bleeding sluggishly from the punctures that her antlers had stabbed into it. Her face was, despite the surprise and the fight was, perhaps to some, horrifically serene. She did not feel sorrow for the kill, could not, but it was never in her intentions to cause unnecessary pain.

It had charged her as she was walking through the trees. The crash in the underbrush alerted her to its presence and she had gotten out of the way before its tusks could glance off her side. Something like rage had found its way under the boar's skin and there was a second charge. For all that Last Night was serene and gentle, she was also capable of efficient violence. A step away from the boar, to the side from its charge and the violent snapping of her neck forward as she too lowered her head to charge, and the boar was impaled on the sharp tines of her antlers. It struggled and her only mercy was the press it low and hard against a tree, suffocating it as quickly as possible to end its suffering. Violence did not have to include cruelty, it could be merciful and gentled by intention.

So she stood there, blood covering her antlers, running down her face and neck, turning her already dark pelt black under the moonlight. No doubt this wasn't the first blood shed that night, nor would it be the last, another life returned to the Swamp as all eventually must.

Ruriska

She is now suitably bloodied for her encounter with No Mercy. I thought it would be appropriate for her to gore something on her antlers since that was what she was thinking of doing to his crane victim to end its suffering swiftly.

 

[Ruriska]

It had ended too quickly, that was his only complaint.

But the battle as a whole had been a delight. The scent of blood made his nostrils flare and his breath catch in his throat. The boar had been his start with. He had harried it for days, watching its anger grow each time he appeared with his sharp hooves and wicked bite. It had nearly been time to finish it, but the beast’s rage had gotten the better of it and the doe had been there.

The death should have been slower, but No Mercy didn't feel too cheated.

He stepped out from where he had been watching and moved over to the boar’s carcass. The glance he gave the doe was one of shared delight over the kill. "Beautiful…" He murmured, but whether he meant her or the dead boar wasn't certain.

Amorpheous

I thought it would be interesting if he was the reason the boar had attacked her at all! Anyway, here he is!

 

[Amorpheous]

She watched the buck, careful, slow, without emotion, positive or negative. She did not move away or back, but she could read his eyes even better than she could read his voice. His delight was palpable, like a ray of sunshine come to cut through the quiet night that had been her own until the arrival of the boar. She nodded her head in acknowledgement of his presence, and perhaps an acknowledgement of his comment for whether it be about her and the boar, both came back to the kill. No beauty without the blood on her head, no beauty without the violent death that had ended the boar's life.

His delight in the kill would not have prevented her acceptance of his presence or even of his being, though it would have stifled any possibility of affection, however fleeting, but it was that combined with his appearance that made her gaze at him with a deep curiosity and sadness, deep enough that it only showed as kind of invitation and mystery on her face. While several lines of thought curled through her mind, it was only an elongated moment, a child holding its breath, before letting it out and she stepped, elegantly, to the side.

Gesturing to the dead boar, a few drops of blood falling from her antlers, she spoke simply, "Would you like to eat?"

Ruriska

Ahhh, yes, that's perfect.

 

[Ruriska]

The bright buck lifted a leg and placed a hoof on the boars head. "Eat it?" He echoed and seemed to be considering the possibility of actually devouring the beast before giving a sharp bark of laughter. "I hate the taste of boar."

No Mercy began leaning forward, pushing all his weight slowly down. The skull of the boar began to give, with flesh squelching and bones starting to crack. His gaze never left the doe; his eyes pinned to her and full of some unreadable emotion.

"You owe me."

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

She nodded her head simply at his laugh and declaration of his disinclination to eating the boar. Should it be left there, still there was no waste for all dead things were claimed once again.

Were she more prone to imagination and speculation, her mind could have spun out the perfect image of the boar's skull giving way beneath the buck's weight. Instead, she only saw it in her peripheral vision, hearing it without much feeling except for a faint sadness, pity even, for the buck, so slight it could not reach her eyes. Appropriate, if she believed in fate that she should feel pity both times in situations born of violence when meeting father then son, for she was quite certain this was who this buck was.

Even so, she met his gaze evenly, unaffected by the further mutilation of the body. What was done was done. There was nothing to feel sorry about or to be disgusted about; a dead body was a dead body, no more and no less than that. Her eyes were gentle and faraway, as unaffected as her voice when she spoke, paring away his voice and words to find his meaning, "Do I? Do I owe you a sport that you never owned? A kill that cannot be claimed? You say I owe you, but the Swamp does not deal in debts and favors, it deals in absolutes, payments and gifts, life and death. To owe you, presumes that things can be taken."

Ruriska

 

[Ruriska]

The buck just stared at her. Her words might as well have been the buzzing of a fly. A tiny annoyance perhaps, but easily brushed away and hardly worth paying attention to. The boars head continued to squelch and crunch beneath the pressure.

"The boar was mine," he continued, as if she had never even said a word. "Its death was mine. You stole it from me."

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

In that buck's reality where things were owned and stolen rather than borrowed and returned, where he could so clearly comprehend an ownership of his own life, but not any other creatures ownership of their own being, his words were as true as the ones she had spoken and he brushed aside. To take their two realities and make them one would be to say that something was stolen from him, but she was not a thief, or that nothing was stolen from him at all, but that she had taken. That was to say that they lived in incompatible realities despite her tendency to accept and agree with others perceptions even if they did not precisely become her own.

Another kin and she might have serenely walked away after stating her reality. There was no debt to pay, but this buck, he was a curiosity because he was capable of wrenching such deep personal guilt in a buck who otherwise was so quick to grouse and grumble about others. So she obliged him by considering the boar. Ever uncompromising, but always gentle and musing, she asked him, "Who is to say that it was ever taken from you?"

"There it is beneath your hoof," she paused, but only long enough to be sure that her understanding of him and his character was correct, something not too difficult to do for his words revealed too much and her knowledge of his previous actions giving her an advantage in perception. "There it is because your actions which caused this creature it's irrational charge, giving me a choice between its life or mine, simple instinct, which resulted in its death. Always yours and never stolen."

Ruriska

*hides face* Last Night is such a relativist. A fairly extreme one.

 

[Ruriska]

He seemed to be listening, gaze fixed upon her and ears perked forward. But there was a lack of understanding in his eyes. The violence that was part of him lurked beneath the surface, ready to erupt forth at any second.

"You talk too much."

No Mercy lifted his hoof and flicked it, as if trying to remove the blood. But it would not be cleaned so easily. He made a soft sound of annoyance as he stepped away from the dead boar.

"You took it, because it was mine to kill. Not yours. Can you not understand?"

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

"Perhaps," she conceded easily, voice soft, but without a hint of shame or embarrassment at his jab. She was also wholly unconcerned, or so it seemed, about the potential for violence in the buck that anyone could see existed so clearly. It was not so much that she did not care, but that she did not see any reason to react to the possibility as long as it remained as such. She too was capable of great violence and while she valued all life, even she could acknowledge that most kin, herself included, instinctively valued their own life above others, however little.

She watched him as he spoke, even though it was short and very much to the point. She did not moved from her place next to the boar, though it was now spreading blood in a blossom around it. She could easily agree that she spoke too much, especially in comparison to his short statements, but the nature of their words differed. His were to make his point, hers to make a point and offer others. Even so, she kept her reply short, "Yes, I understand, but I don't agree."

Ruriska

 

[Ruriska]

He tossed his head back in irritation. Another step back took him further away from both the doe and the boar, his gaze darting from one to the other. As if he had bugs running across his skin, he kept twitching and shifting his weight from one hoof to the other.

“You don’t agree.” His nostrils flared and he teetered on the edge of some dark, dark place. “Of course you don’t. No one ever does.”

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

She was the picture of stillness in contrast to his unstoppable movement. Where he twitched and shifted, she was calm and balanced. She matched his irritation with a quiet, unfazed ambivalence, in a way, uncaring, but not unkind. She did not follow, staying at her spot by the boar, hooves sinking into the blood soaked ground.

"Why should we all agree?" She paused then to stem the flow of words before continuing, deliberately keeping her remarks short. "Disagreement does not bar acceptance after all."

Ruriska

 

[Ruriska]

Acceptance. He had longed for it once. He had seen it dies in the eyes of others when they found his true self. Now that was a dream long dead.

“Stop talking,” he hissed.

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

She was very still then, everything about her seemingly coming to a stop. She looked at him, eyes soft, but that did not change her perceptiveness, did not stop her from reading the depth in those two words, peeling away the words and their meaning until she could taste the feelings, the drive in his voice. She said nothing, her eyes gentle but meaningless.

She could look at him and see his violence, and feel no anger or disgust; she could stand there unmoved because she knew that unless she chose it, his actions did not affect her own being.

Ruriska

 

[Ruriska]

No Mercy couldn’t stand her stillness, he couldn’t stand the way she stared, he couldn’t stand anything about her. Except for the blood drying on her antlers. That he could understand.

He backed up, forgetting the boar in his hurry to escape her sudden, although requested, silence.

“Take it, have it. You ruined it anyway.”

As if this was about the boar anymore.

Amorpheous

 

[Amorpheous]

She blinked away then, her eyes going distant. She dipped her head to look down at the boar without pity, her bloodied antlers tipping towards him. Last Night looked up again though, willing to let him direct her attention, but knowing full well that this was hardly what was on his mind. She tilted her head, considering him without seeing him directly, eyes focused past him, until, turning to face the boar, she bent down and took a bite from the bloody body. When she looked up again, her nose and her mouth were coated with blood, dark and slick. She maintained the silence that he asked for, though her eyes did not push him away.

She lapped at the blood on her lips, her expression neither satisfied nor scorning. She ate because all creatures ate, she hunted because the opportunity presented itself, she chose violence when violence chose her first. To her, this was simple fact. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here though, she did not call out to him, did not ask him to stay like she would have asked his father to. She did not push him gently or wind her words like tangled roots with his, she remained because that was her nature, to listen and to respond, to accept even his violence as a part of the Swamp, something that could be beautiful when seen through the right eyes.

Ruriska