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| Saira and Pyrrohs? |
| Yes! |
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[ 3 ] |
| No! |
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[ 1 ] |
| Maybe So! |
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[ 1 ] |
| I don't know! |
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| Whatever. |
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| Total Votes : 5 |
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 Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 11:19 am
[Continued from main thread. I'm going to use that as my excuse as to why it's so short.]  Saira raised an eyebrow. "Stupid, yet with one great sense of self-preservation," she noted. "Must be the best way to live." The vixen just shrugged and looked up at Pyrrohs expectantly. "Alright, to the forests, then," she said. "Feel free to lead the way." Had the lead been left to Saira, she probably just would have gone straight without really knowing which direction the closest rabbit-infested forest was. Pyrrohs being a 'Daeva could easily just fly to one. Some foxes just have all the luck, don't they.
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 11:48 am
 Pyrrohs heaved himself to his feet and stretched out his wings. "That's why you go after the ones lacking in that instinct. The slow, the young, the sick and weak." Pyrrohs started heading off to a spot where he knew a colony lived. He looked over his shoulder at Saira to make sure she was following.
"And once we get to the trees, I'm going to show you how to walk correctly. No more snapping twigs at the last second and scaring the prey." He flicked his black tipped tail and smirked at her.
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 12:00 pm
"Right," Saira said in a way that should have been sarcastic, but it lacked conviction. She was busy staring down at her feet and attempting to tread lightly. It wasn't so hard, it seemed. Foxes were made for this sort of thing. Stealth, and all that.
She felt she got the hang of it long enough to take her eyes off the ground and look back at Pyrrohs. "So, how is it exactly that a giant 'Daeva such as yourself is going to teach me about stealth?" She asked. "Hiding can't possibly be--"
The sound of a small stick cracking under her own foot distracted Saira, and she returned her concentration to her feet, remaining silent as she examined the ground before her.
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 1:05 pm
"Deava's have to hide too, especially in dense forests that don't allow us to dive bomb our prey. And since the densest areas have the most rustling bushes and snapping twigs, we have to learn just like the rest of you." Pyrrohs watched her walk with great concentration and whapped her on the side with his tail. "Not like that, you'll end up walking into a tree...or right into view of the prey you're hunting."
Stopping, he turned his paw slightly to the side so that the pad of his paw and a bit of the fur hit the ground first. Then he rolled his ankle so that his paw was firmly placed. "If you feel the ground with the side of your paw first, you'll be able to sense twigs that could snap or dry leaves with the fur. Then you simply move your paw a little further to smoother ground." Pyrrohs nosed a twig into the path. "Now without looking, find the twig then step over it instead of on it."
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 9:41 pm
Saira would have responded, had it not been for the sudden tail to her side. It didn't hurt, per se [it actually hadn't hurt at all], but it still caught her completely off guard. She looked back up at Pyrrohs, glaring half-heartedly. "Since, I'm sure you had a reason for doing that, and you have taken it upon yourself to teach me valuable life lessons, I'm going to let it slide," Saira said.
She supposed it wasn't too smart of an idea to give Pyrrohs so much attitude when he was only helping her. But then, why bother suppressing her thoughts for gratitude's sake? She'll catch him a nice deer when this was all over, and be herself in the meantime. Sounds fair.
Saira turned her attention back to the task at hand. Turning her eyes away from the ground, she took a step. The fur on her paw touched down on the ground and, finding only ground, she decided it was safe to place it down firmly on the ground and shift her weight back to that paw as she focused on the next one. Repeating the process, Saira took a few more, small steps forward until she heard yet again the snapping of a twig under her paw.
Saira turned and glared at her hind paw, which had stepped on and crushed the stick. "Feeling the ground with the side... More difficult - awkward - on the hind paws..." She was more muttering to herself than talked to Pyrrohs, but when she stopped, she turned back to face him as if waiting for a response.
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2011 10:09 pm
"I did, yes. That was to show you that you need to concentrate on more than just your feet." He smirked in reply to her glare, not perturbed in the least. As always, he found her blunt straightforwardness refreshing. Pyrrohs backed away from the practise area and watched her attempt to follow his advise. The Deava tilted his head and frowned slightly...she was doing something odd with her back paws.
Realizing what she was doing, Pyrrohs snickered softly. She really was hopeless but the Deava found that to be more endearing than irritating. Rolling his eyes at his train of thought, Pyrrohs stood and walked back to Saira after she broke the twig.
Pyrrohs raised his eyebrows in amusement as he looked down at Saira. "Yes, it is. To use the fur on your hind legs, you have to relax your toes while moving forward. That will brush the fur on the top of your hind toes against objects. Then you stiffen your paw again right before you place it down so that you'll have a steady grip on the earth to leap from iff necessary." Pyrrohs demonstrated, once walking normally, and once walking in a crouched, stalking position. Fetching a few more twigs, he laid them out. "Try again."
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Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2011 1:20 am
Silent, Saira turned her attention to only his back paws, and then to his entire form as he demonstrated walking while in a crouched position. It didn't really seem too hard. "Could have just taught me all of that sooner, and preferably at the same time," she pointed out. Never mind the fact that she, as a fox, should know all of this instinctively. That was a completely separate issue.
Taking a few steps toward the scattered twigs, she turned her eyes up to the sky yet again and focused on her feet and any little thing the fur on her paws brushed lightly against. Her front paw found a twig and she quickly moved to avoid it, placing it instead firmly on the soft grass next to it. Then the next paw, then the next. It grew easier, and Saira soon gained speed as she went. She was sure that after a bit it would grow completely instinctive.
Saira didn't stop walking until she looked in front of her, glancing down from the sky for the first time, and found a tree almost too close to her. "Ah, that was close. I'll need to find myself a method for avoiding things in front of me, as well. Eventually, though." Most of this was, yet again said more to herself than anything, but afterwards she turned back to Pyrrohs and added, "But I did well this time, I think. Didn't even step on a tree root."
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Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 6:09 pm
“I could have, but I thought you would know not to do that with your back paws. I only showed you with my front paws, after all. As for the stalking position, I figured mastering one thing at a time would be easier.” Pyrrohs pointed out once she’d stopped for the second time. She had done much, much better on her second try and Pyrrohs was happy about her progress. Saira was learning far faster than he had thought she would, especially with her earlier description of herself being clumsy.
Ambling over to the female, Pyrrohs sat and tried to strategize about the next step of the process. He wanted to teach Saira to bring her gaze down again, but to stay focused on the prey; not to give in and look at her feet. He could just tell her to do that, sure, but he wanted to set up the training as realistically as possible. That’s why he had had Saira walk around actual sticks; it did little to just say ‘walk this way’. Maybe…Pyrrohs tilted his head to the side and grinned slightly.
“Yes, you did much better. Your posture is good, and you obviously didn’t step on a stick. Not quite as hopeless. You are right though, Saira, you need to watch where you’re going. No special technique there, I just didn’t want you to watch your feet. You can’t watch your feet during a hunt.” Pyrrohs pointed out, tilting his head a little. “How about we put your new found skills to the test? I’ll go off and pretend to be prey, you try and hunt me without alerting me to your presence, how about that?” It sounded like an advanced game of hide and seek, but if it was effective, then it was worth it.
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2011 8:51 am
Saira raised an eyebrow at this particular suggestion. "Hunting you, huh?" She said, considering the idea. "Sir, the possibility of successfully hunting you is approximately 3720 to 1." Still, she considered, what real difference did success make? It was just practice, after all, and Pyrrohs was obviously much smarter than the animals she would end up hunting.
The vixen shrugged and added, "Couldn't hurt though, could it? Shall I face a tree and count to fifty while you disappear into the forest?" Saira did so without waiting for an answer, minus the counting. She waited, trying to listen for his departure.
[Couldn't resist the Star Wars...]
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Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 6:27 am
Pyrrohs chuckled. “Hunting me successfully isn’t quite the idea. The idea is to practice. Even so, there is still a chance and you could very easily surprise me.” He would liken hunting himself to hunting a super alert deer. Plus it was to his advantage that he had previous knowledge of the actual hunt.
“Count as long as you’d like.” He replied. He briefly thought about flying away, but then how would she follow his scent? Spinning on his heel, he disappeared into the underbrush, trying to disturb it as little as possible. He took the most difficult path, making sure it was strewn with loudly crunchy leaves and sticks. Every once in a while he’d rub his shoulder against a tree so that Saira would be able to track him easily.
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 4:00 pm
Saira doubted that she could even come close to surprising him, but didn't bother to say anything as she waited for a sign of his disappearance. It was a few moments before she heard anything: a faint crackle of leaves or twigs being stepped on. It wasn't much, but it was the signal she had been waiting for.
Turning back around, Saira started in the direction that she assumed Pyrrohs went. Through a few interesting foliage and finally onto path that was almost designed specifically to test her ability to navigate without stepping on anything. Indeed, he certainly did this on purpose, but Saira was never one to back down from a challenge. Looking everywhere except her feet, the vixen took one step, and then another, all the while putting to practice the technique Pyrrohs had showed her earlier. She could honestly imagine him waiting until he heard her accidentally step on something, and then flying off or something, just determined to make it that much harder for her because she slipped up.
Actually, she wasn't sure if that was something he'd do. Perhaps not fly off, but maybe make it more difficult. Shrugging, Saira went back to focusing on the task at hand. Saira kept close to the trees, as she was able to catch his scent off of some of them. So, now she knew a direction, but she didn't know how fast he was travelling, or if and when he was going to stop.
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Posted: Sun Jun 17, 2012 2:55 pm
Pyrrhos ran out of forest and underbrush and entered a sun filled clearing. Well, this was as good a place as any to set up camp and wait to see if Saira could move through the forest silently. The Deava stretched before flopping down with his back towards the path he had left. It would hardly be fair if he was looking out for her.
The Deava curled his black tipped tail as he waited, his hearing focused behind him. If she stepped on one little twig, he'd hear it. Pyrrhos wondered if she would pull it off; Saira seemed to be a quick learner. She had easily learned the stalking method he had shown her. Pyrrhos' ears twitched back again, listening intently.
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:34 am
Saira made an attempt to focus on everything all at once, and being a complete rookie at this meant this took a lot of effort. There was the scent, indicating Pyrrohs's direction, which she simply could not afford to lose, but scents it seemed were pretty tricky things; they were always there one moment and gone the next.
Additionally, there was still the problem of all this crunchy stuff all over the ground. Twigs that couldn't support her weight and dead leaves that would crunch loudly at even the slightest pressure. Had she been a human, or some other two-legged creature, Saira would have fallen over countless of times while trying to find the right place to put a foot down. Most of the time she had to resort to slowly clearing a space out, hoping that wouldn't cause some sort of noise.
An obstacle she hadn't fully expected, though it wasn't too big of a deal, were the low hanging branches that she had to duck under. Saira flattened her ears as much as possible and kept her tail close to avoid getting those caught. Under normal circumstances, Saira would have simply walked around all of them. Hunting just had to make every task more difficult.
Not that the vixen was complaining or anything. These lessons were important, after all, and she was grateful that someone was taking the time to teach her. 'Give a man a fish, as they say,' she thought, before clearing her mind and focusing again.
Saira noticed a thinning out in the trees up ahead. A clearing, then? It would probably be much easier to navigate in than this. Unless, the thought struck her, Pyrrohs was waiting there. His scent was much stronger than before in these parts. Saira crouched low to the ground, carefully crawling up to the very edge of the clearing.
Sure enough, there he was, sitting on the ground and facing away from her. Saira remained low, sneaking up to him through the stretch of clearing. She wasn't entirely sure what her course of action was now. She was only a few steps behind him now, but stopped and just stood there, still low to the ground. 'Hunters should pounce, right?' she thought. Saira wasn't really the type to pounce other foxes, even if this was a hunting lesson. Caught up in her thoughts, Saira remained pointlessly immobile for a long moment.
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Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2012 4:38 pm
Pyrrhos didn't so much hear Saira come up behind him as he sensed her. Aside from her scent being wafted at him from the low breeze, a scent he wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't known she was heading in his direction, he also felt her watching him. The fur between his wings was prickling with awareness and he flipped his tail. "I know you're there, Saira." He called over his shoulder, standing and turning to look at her.
"Why did you stop? The longer you wait, the more time the prey has to sense you. Even if they can't scent you, they start to feel tense and they'll run away." Pyrrhos said, padding over to her. "You gotta follow through if you're hunting and even practicing." He sat in front of her and tilted his head questioningly.
She was doing well, she barely made any noise at all. A few crackles that no prey would have noticed as out of the ordinary. Hell, he'd known she was coming and hadn't been certain until he'd heard the same sound a few times. Pyrrhos hoped that she knew how to pounce and didn't stop because she didn't know that part. Of course, that was probably easier to teach than stalking.
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Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2012 10:12 am
Saira almost jumped when Pyrrhos suddenly addressed her. Thankfully, he hadn't turned around yet, and probably didn't see her reaction. She should have figured that the 'Daeva knew she was there. "Well," she began her reply once he had turned to sit facing her. "I wasn't entirely positive on how to proceed. I suppose pouncing you is the logical next step, but from what distance? I can't say I'm entirely positive on the sort of range my pouncing abilities have. Which parts of the body should I aim for? The neck, I should assume, but what if I'm not close enough? Is the flank just as effective? Is there a particular way in which to pounce? Claws out, teeth bared, anything else I need to know?" Saira's list of incessant questions ended there, and she looked up at Pyrrhos expectantly.
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