Citizen 623 Shakeen

The pasture fence was spread out on the land before Shakeen, laying this way and that and leading towards the bordering forest. She reached out with her hand and plucked a tuft of coarse hair from one of the splintered posts, and grinned. There was a feral quality to her smile as her eyes scanned the brush, she was close to her quarry and it was like she could taste it on the wind

It is sad when a boar goes insane, but sometimes it happens and when it does, the animal must be put down before it can infect others. This boar had wildly run through the village, a complete departure from normal behaviour of such animals, and had gored through barriers and chased some pups. Fortunately, no one had been hurt yet, but someone had to stop the poor animal before it did something irreversible.

The furred rex rubbed the hair between her pads and let it fall to the ground. She stalked forward, carefully picking her way over trampled bushes and under torn branches. When she had volunteered to hunt the boar and bring it back for the ancients, Evito protested, but she was 30 now and it was her right to attempt her hunt. Kneeven had to let her go, but Shakeen was sure that they were already planning for if she fails. Normally rexals would choose to hunt something with less stakes, but Shakeen wasn’t worried, she wasn’t going to fail.

Suddenly there was a flurry of noise before her that startled Shakeen out of her musings, and she kicked herself for getting distracted. She was ready for this, she didn’t need her own mind getting in her way. The ocim rex took a deep breath, closing her eyes for just a moment, before she released the air and looked forward with a quiet mind and an intense focus. She continued into the depths of the forest, towards her quarry with a surety of a grown rex, as she soon will prove herself to be.

The clearing was dappled in sunlight, and oddly peaceful but eerily silent. Before even stepping into it, Shakeen was on edge, she knew it was never a good sign when the sounds of the forest dim as you travel through its boughs. She broke the treeline and immediately stopped. Before her was a dead deer, clearly caught unaware by her prey. The buck lay abandoned by his herd, his neck at an impossible angle and his eyes staring blankly up at the rex peering at him.

Shakeen paused to carefully reorient the body into a comfortable position, and whispered to it, “I will be back, your life wasn’t taken in vain.”

She stepped back and froze, seeing there was a bloody gash on the deer’s side for the first time. Kneeven had told Shakeen about insanity and how it can pass from animal to animal. If scavengers came back to the clearing before Shakeen returned, would they catch the insanity too? Did she have time to secure the carcass without losing her prize?

Shakeen floundered for only a moment before she started working with efficient conviction. She needed to catch this boar to prove herself but also so that it couldn’t do anymore damage. It would be worthless if she left this deer and it carried the madness on to other creatures in the forest. The rex pulled a canvas sack from her bag and carefully arranged the buck within. She couldn’t take the deer with her, it was too big and would slow her down too much, so she carefully tied a rope around the bag and tossed it over a strong tree limb. With a quick tie and a careful tug, Shakeen stepped back from her work and spent a second ensuring the swinging bag wasn’t going to fall. He’ll be safe until she can return and ensure the poison potentially in his blood is burned away before being consumed.

The trees started to blur as the green bullet rushed past, endeavouring to go as quickly as possible through the brush to make up for her lost time. The path of destruction was still quite clear and she needn’t worry about losing the trail so she abandoned her careful plodding pace.

She almost ran into the boar, except its loud squealing gave her enough warning to make a quick stop before it. The boar had stopped its rampage and was loudly protesting the existence of a cliff in its way. Upon hearing Shakeen’s less than graceful stop, the boar turned its beady eyes on her. She could see the whites of its eyes as they wildly rolled to keep her in the boar’s vision. Saliva dripped from its mouth and spittle flew as it screamed its warcry before charging the rex.

Shakeen was surrounded by trees behind her and a mass of muscle and tusks thundering towards her from the front. She waited half a breath before leaping up and over the hog and twisting while in the air, pulling a knife from its scabbard and sending it flying towards the weak point at the base of the skull.

The landing wasn’t the most graceful, but Shakeen landed on her feet, facing her prey, with a second knife in her hand and poised the throw.

It wasn’t necessary, the boar had fallen and wasn’t moving, its blind run through the wilderness brought to halt. Shakeen sighed, tension leaking out from her frame and then it hit her. She’d done it, she has her offering for the ancients and she will be declared an adult.

Once she carries it home, of course.