[FIN] Fast Food (Soul x Frenzy)

[StarScarred]

As usual, it was one of his many dreams that prompted his feet in the direction they now take him. The scent of salt and fresh air, his short fur ruffled by a sweet breeze, and an endlessly blue wash of water as far as he could see. The dreams call to him, urge him onward, and it's only his instinct, or perhaps it's something more, that keeps him on the right path. Only, his dreams never warned him about the doe flying at high speeds through the Cypress and mangrove trees right toward him.

No, Soul is helplessly unaware of this little fact as he watches the great forests of those large, knotted trees turn more to the wispy, dreamlike curls of the mangrove and the whispering high oat-grass of the ocean.  

[lostandtold]

A lizard came scuttling around a tree, fleeing, in abject terror. It darted around Soul Drift's feet, and its tail had just cleared his shadow when a gray blur came flying out of the shadows, landing right on top of him. Hooves hit splayed around him, a long neck darted forward, and Frenzy's jaws snapped shut on the tip of the unfortunate lizard's tail. A yank back, a toss into the air, and she swallowed it in one gulp.

Only then did she leisurely climb off the unfortunate buck.  

[StarScarred]

Something quick and small darts around his feet, and Soul trots back slightly, more out of being surprised by the quick creature than any real concern or fear. It's only when he hears the quick rush and crash of tall grass and a snapping branch that his head darts up, eyes widening in the split second it takes for the gray... thing to smash into him.

The force of the impact bowls him over, unsuspecting of it as he is, and he just barely makes out the fact that it's not, in fact some kind of lynx or something trying to eat him, but a doe that, instead, eats the small lizard that had startled him a few moments before.

His heart feels like a trapped songbird in his chest, and above him, Spectre makes angry, confused chirping sounds over their heads.

"I...." he blinks as the doe stands up, calm as anything, and he too follows the movement, unconsciously. "Um... that was unexpected." And really, he's still too surprised to be angry over it, not that he really gets angry easily, anyway, but still.  

[lostandtold]

Frenzy steps over to investigate a clear pool for fish, now as calm and slow-moving as any cautious doe. "For me as well. You should be wary of getting between a fleeing lizard and its predator," she remarks, stirring up the water with a hoof, sending minnows scattering everywhere. A blue and black striped snake comes slither out from between the roots, herding the fish back towards her, and she takes a mouthful of them, leaving enough for Jaws to gorge on as well.  

[StarScarred]

Soul watches the doe with something akin to amusement in his steady gaze, the surprise and shock now fading almost as quickly as it had come. He'd never been run over by another kimeti before, let alone a doe intent on her hunger, but it was better than being run over by a lynx.

One brow arches at her comment, and Soul actually laughs. He can't help it. The words are spoken so seriously and so calmly, almost as an afterthought while she hunts her fish, that it just seems so... absurd.

"In the way?" He asks, his laughter quieting to a soft, low chuckle. "I was merely making my way to the endless river ahead when you ran me over!" The amusement is still in his voice, and there's no anger, let alone irritation, but it's such an odd meeting experience, he's not quite sure what to do with it. "You should be more mindful of where you run. What if I'd been an equally hungry and larger predator?"  

[lostandtold]

"Yes, you were. Perhaps it would be better for both of us to be more aware." The snake curls up her foreleg and around her neck, soaking in her warmth. "The endless river?" she swings her head around to examine him with keen gray eyes, quite suddenly interested. "If you were, then I would have killed you and eaten the lizard anyhow." The statement would've been ludicrous, if not for how serious she was.  

[StarScarred]

Soul merely smiles at her confidence. "Perhaps so. You seem a strong doe. I certainly wouldn't wish to be the one at the end of your wrath." Again he chuckles softly, stepping a bit closer as he tilts his head.

"You know of it? I've seen it my dreams of late... so I go to find it now. Endless blue against a plain of white sand and tall grasses that whisper in the breeze."  

[lostandtold]

"Then you are wise." Not arrogance, not quite; she's very sure of herself, of her strength, speed, and cunning.

"The ocean." She doesn't need to think to know what he's talking about. "When I was still a filly, I met a doe with dark blue hair and a marking of a teal wing on her side. She told me about the ocean. Blue water as far as the eye can see, deeper than a mangrove tree, and clear down to the bottom. I am going there now."  

[StarScarred]

"So I've been told," Soul smiles, but it's gentle and calm. It's so very different from the doe's own seemingly wild nature, but there's a certain immovable strength to him, in that smile, behind the white-blue of his eyes.

"I'm Soul Drift, by the way. The Motherfather whispers to me in my dreams of far away places, and I follow in the morning when I wake. It's why I go now, to this Ocean. I've never seen the doe you met, but then I've never been to this side of the Swamp, either."  

[lostandtold]

"I am named Frenzy." She had never been gentle. Calm, maybe, but not gentle. "That doe is the leader of the kimeti who live next to the ocean. Only the best can live there; she takes them on a long trip through the swamp, and those that stay are allowed to live with them." It was a challenge, and Frenzy relished the prospect of it. There was no greater challenge than the swamp itself.  

[StarScarred]

"A fitting name indeed," he chuckles a bit and nods at the explanation. "I see... well, my dreams said nothing of kimeti at the Ocean but then I rarely know what it is exactly my dreams are supposed to be telling me. It's only the need to follow them that keeps me going to them."

Pausing, the buck looks past the doe to the direction he'd been traveling before being bowled over. "Perhaps we can travel together. We're going the same way anyway, right?"  

[lostandtold]

She tilts her head gravely, choosing to take it as a statement of fact, neither compliment or insult. "South? Indeed we are." When she is not hunting, she moves slowly, almost ponderously, always towards the south -- but then a skink darts out of a tree hollow and she bursts into motion, a short run and a leap, to snag it from the trunk and swallow it, before she continues picking her way south. "You will not stay, then? If another dream comes?"  

[StarScarred]

Soul walks beside her, startled as she suddenly jumps and races forward to catch the skink. He'd have to get used to that if they're going to travel together. "Ah... No. I won't stay. I never know if one dream will be the last and I'll finally find whatever it is I'm looking for. Sometimes I'll have a dream the very night I finally arrive at the previous dream's location. Sometimes I won't have another for days at a time." He shrugs, his expression a touch distant and thoughtful.

"I don't know what it is Motherfather wants of me, but I do not question. I'll know one day. Perhaps it would be simpler for the swamp to speak in half-words as it had in my naming dream. But perhaps it is not so simple, either. I cannot claim to understand the workings behind such mysteries, after all."  

[lostandtold]

With Frenzy, it seems to be the usual state of affairs. She's indiscriminate about her food, showing only a preference for meat and fish, but whenever they come near a clump of particularly luscious leaves, or a bush overflowing with sweet berries, she drifts away from the path to eat. The amount of food she can eat is staggering, and she never seems to stop, though she keeps an ear ticked back towards Soul, listening. "The Motherfather works in strange ways. At least you do not grow weary of your wanderings."  

[StarScarred]

Soul finds himself amused at the constant hunger of the other kimeti. The doe's hunger seems to have no end and he wonders how she's able to fit so much food into her slight frame. "I don't... it's all I've ever known, even before waking from my sac. I remember dreaming of traveling, of wandering across endless stretches of land in the swamp. They are hazy memories, at best, but I recall them. I will know, one day." He shrugs, unworried by the thought of so much travel.

"Besides, I've seen more in my young years than many older kimeti may have seen in a lifetime. It feels good to have seen so much of the Swamp, to be close to so many of it's distant corners, if only in memory. I've learned much."

He moves to catch back up to the surely doe and glances down at her from the corner of one eye. "And what of you? What draws you to the Ocean?"