Citizen 506 Keres

Night has fallen upon the city of Atlas, wrapping the world in a blanket of shadow. Somewhere within the city limits, a young rexal is on a cusp of adulthood–and trouble.

Like the world around her, Keres too is bundled in dark garments. She flicks the hood over her head, obscuring some of the reddish glow from her apertures. She needs the light of her halo to see by, but doesn’t fancy drawing too much attention to herself. The teal-colored rexal slowly makes her way down the steps of her family’s expansive villa. With her father’s wealth and status, she must be careful to avoid the servants who may be working shifts even in the dead of night. Slipping past a sleeping doorman, she bounds away towards the city’s edge through emptied city streets to where civilization is thin and the river Cor is flanked by thick forest. The perfect place to prove herself not only to her father, but to the Elders. She figures that taking down even the largest prey should be possible with her large stature.

Alone beneath the thin canopy, she gets to work. Hunting is a favored pastime of many of her neighbors; she remembers the gatherings she’d been forced to attend in cramped, petite outfits. The cloak she wears now is much more her style. It is loose and flows around her armored plates, obscuring her silhouette. She thinks she wouldn’t be so self-conscious if her attendants weren’t always trying to convince her to file down her sharp tail spines. Here in the forest there is no one to tend to her appearance or behavior; she is free to do as she pleases. Her father would never let her leave the villa if he knew what she had planned. She avoided the whole conversation simply by sneaking out.

Keres begins searching for signs of wild boar or stag. Her nostrils flare as she takes in the scents that linger on the earth and wind. She has never been hunting; the risk that she would get injured or, somehow worse in her tutors’ minds, a taste for freedom and victory was far too great. “Leave killing to brutes, dear”  they would say. "The Dome has plenty to go around.” Regardless, she is not so far removed from said “brutes” genetically that she doesn’t have any idea of how to get started. Stay quiet, be observant, and look for evidence of a herd. It seemed simple at first but she could guess there would be more to it. Especially at that critical moment when she found her prey. She was not so dull as to think that it would go down easily.

The cloaked rexal follows the bank of the river for hours. She figures that all creatures need water, especially under the stealth of night when doing so is less risky. Always but tonight, that is. The light level in the forest is especially low under a new moon. She can barely make out a few paces in front of her, even with the glow of her halo. She considers giving up, until finally Keres’ pale blue eyes narrow as the crackle of underbrush sounds somewhere near. She ducks down, snout and ears twitching as she tries to pinpoint the nature of the noise. The smell had eluded her until now because she was downwind of her prey. The scent only reached her now that she was practically on top of the creature. Peering through the bushes, a large boar kicks at the soft dirt with their hooves. It snorts and grunts in what sounds almost like a chuckle, shoving the leaf litter aside with its wide, snout snout. She takes a step forward and can feel herself salivating at the thought of what they might taste like. She’s never had anything to eat that wasn’t already dead, especially nothing with warm blood still flowing through its veins. Surely the Elders wouldn’t miss a leg or two? No, she thinks, a clean, whole kill is the standard. 

Creeping forward with the subtlest of steps, she takes care not to plant all of her weight on her leading limb to avoid startling the creature with even the smallest snap of a leaf or twig. She swipes her tongue across her teeth in anticipation. Just as the boar lifts its head from the ground, she dashes forward. The gap between the two is easily crossed and Keres barrels into the beast. It lets out an ear-wrenching squeal, but she already has it in her grasp. Her claws grip the boar and she wrestles it to the ground. Though the creature puts up a decent fight, it is all over rather quickly. Soon she is standing over the still body, giving thanks to the Ancients for a swift and uneventful kill. The Elders will be eating well tonight.

~ lovelytortoises