Ru watched as one by one each member of his family fell asleep. First A'ta, then Najia, and last Mother. There wasn't a great deal of time between their respective times for slipping into unconsciousness, so it wasn't really all that impressive that he outlasted them in the undeclared battle for the title of Last to Fall Asleep. Besides, he had far more practice at not sleeping than any of them. At least at night.Ru really didn't sleep much at night, though asking him to be up before the sun was almost at its zenith was just cruel. But that was probably a direct result of the fact that Ru didn't immediately fall asleep when his mother and sisters did, and ended up staying awake for long hours after they succumbed. He didn't take any special pride in this. It was just the way things were. He wasn't a night sleeper. He preferred to be out and active at night, when things were different.
For one thing it was cooler at night. The temperature dropped, and Ru really preferred it that way. When it got too hot, he really suffered, although he tried to keep from complaining about it. Not too much from his mother's endlessly repetitious lectures managed to penetrate his skull and take hold in his mind, but he had definitely absorbed the fact that it was considered ill-bred and inappropriate to complain about things like physical discomfort. Or any kind of discomfort. Though why that, of all things, should stick in his mind better than the rest was something of a mystery.
It wasn't precisely that he felt his mother's tutelage was useless. He just picked up on the fact that she spoke of what society and people would expect of them without actually mentioning anything in particular about the society except for its rules and expectations. He had a hard time imagining how it could apply. Surely his mother and sisters didn't constitute society. And even if he didn't question the relevance of her lessons, he still had difficult attending to them with the whole of his mind. Sometimes he misheard things, and what he thought he had heard sometimes bore no resemblance to what his mother said. It was problematic.
But at night, after the womenfolk had gone to sleep, there was no one to listen to, and if he moved silently he could slip out of the den and prowl around on his own. Ru loved the feeling of the night wind blowing against him, making the tuft of mane on his head blow about, and the song it seemed to sing as it whistled and whispered through the grass. He had become adept at moving silently to avoid disturbing any family members.
Outside the den Ru took several moments to just breathe deeply of the crisp night air, holding in each breath for as long as he could before he was forced to expel it. After doing so he set off at a trot, trying his paws at moving both quickly and silently through the grass. He knew he was already better camouflaged with the darkness than he would be during the day. He was practicing these skills because he wanted to hunt.
Mother hunted, and she seemed to do all right at it, but another part of her lessons which seemed to have taken hold in his brain was the idea that it was a male occupation to take care of women. Not that Ru agreed unconditionally with that statement, but he would have been more comfortable contributing to the family in some way. Perhaps catching his own meals was a way he could do that.
That, and guarding the family at night, of course. That was one of his self-appointed duties, and he actually did take it seriously. For instance, as much as he would have liked to immediately go off in pursuit of some prey, he first had to make sure the area around the den was safe, and that he could leave the family alone without fear of any harm befalling them in his absence. Only once he had assured himself of that fact did Ru drop out of his ground-covering trot and begin to slink and stalk.
A soft sound, barely even a sound really, caught his attention and his ears swiveled in its direction, listening intently. Did that sound like rabbit? Yes! It definitely sounded like the way a rabbit moved, he decided. That was all he needed to change his course and begin creeping toward the rabbit hole. Already he was calculating the difficulties with capturing a rabbit just outside of its hole. Like the fact it could just dart down the hole and vanish.
At last he could see the thing, its coat faintly patterned to help it blend in with it surroundings. It was not facing him, but it seemed somehow aware of him, even though he had approached from downwind. It looked around, sitting back on its haunches, and Ru held very still, barely daring to breathe. At last it relaxed back onto its forepaws and continued to nibble the low-growing grass. Ru gauged the distance between them and decided he could make the jump.
He almost did, too. One forepaw swiped the rabbit's back and snagged on something solid there, but the creature twisted with a terrified squeal and bolted. Ru was after it, chasing it away from the hole in the ground in an undignified scramble that bore no resemblance to his idea of hunting. Another lucky strike caught the rabbit along its flank and slowed it considerably. After that Ru was able to run it down, his own sides heaving with the effort of doing so.
The rabbit was still alive when he caught it, and struggling against him with powerful kicks from its good hind leg. The other leg was pinned by one of Ru's forepaws. It was the unusual position which brought the black cup up short. He had never seen a rabbit, or any other kind of prey, snared thus and did not know how to make a killing blow from this position. So he batted at its flailing hind leg to keep from being kicked as he studied the situation.
If he let the other leg go, the rabbit would vanish, he was sure. What he needed to do was prevent that. Trying to snag the kicking leg wouldn't work, thus he tried to catch it in his teeth. He got kicked once on the chin and twice below his left eye trying before he caught its paw. In his excitement he accidentally bit harder than he meant to and felt bones crunch. The surprising sensation and sudden taste of blood filling his mouth made him let go immediately.
On the ground the rabbit writhed in pain, but when Ru released its other leg it made no attempt to get up or flee. It just squealed and twisted in the dirt. Curious, and perhaps spurred by the blood under his tongue, Ru wondered how much more the rabbit could endure before it finally gave up and died. It took longer than he thought it would, but that was partially because about halfway through his experimentation Ru realized that he really, really enjoyed what he was doing and sought to prolong it.
The sky was fully dark and the moon nearly past its zenith by the time the rabbit succumbed and Ru was finished. He sniffed at its remains and thought about eating it. He wasn't hungry, but he wasn't wasteful either and he refused to leave evidence of his activities out there. Corpses attracted predators and scavengers alike, and he didn't want to be responsible for luring those anywhere near the den. So he lowered his muzzle to his erstwhile victim's body and began to eat what remained.
