I was running on all four through the woods, doing my best to keep up with Arissa, who always seemed to run a little faster than me. I kept telling myself that it was because she had longer legs than me, and not my stubbornness of wearing pants.
I had gotten used to most tribe members not bothering to wear clothes outside their natural fur. I can’t insist that I'm right and they are wrong, but their nudity often puts me in uncomfortable situations, just like now.
Since I was running behind Arissa when she was on all four, she just let me see way too much, the view into her behind and everything she displayed was more than I wanted to see, and as I had to follow her, I couldn't simply look away either.
Of the many, many things I dislike about this new life, one of the most amazing things is how we can keep running for long periods of time without getting exhausted or tired. Even as pups we can sprint for a full hour without getting out of breath. The amount of stamina we possess is truly remarkable and I’m astonished every time I’m out running for extended periods.
After running for over an hour, I could smell the moisture in the air, and I heard the faint sound of running water. As we started to get close to the river, we ceased our sprint and got back up on two legs. It never ceases to amaze me how we could run for such a long time without tiring.
The adults always teased us that we would become so much stronger and faster when we grew more tails. It wasn't that I didn't believe them, but I already felt orders of magnitude stronger and faster than I ever was as a mere human. If I somehow managed to go back to my own world in this body, I would easily become as impressive as a superhero. Even if fox woman would be a horrible superhero name, with a name like that I would be doomed to be something the sweaty nerds would start to sexualize and drool over. Yeah that sounds like a disgusting fate, I think it will be better to avoid that at all costs.
Throwing away that horrifying thought, I brought my attention to Arissa. She was leaning towards a tree, while sniffing the air intensely, in an attempt to pick up any recent scents. I held back my comments about her displaying her privates the entire run, instead I walked up to her and gave her a questioning shrug. She kept sniffing for a few more moments before answering.
“Doesn't seem to be anything close, at least I can't pick up any fresh scents. What do you wanna do ? Should we just camp in a tree ? or do you wanna roam around and hope we can pick up any scents ?”
I thought about it for a few moments before replying. “ Let’s just hide in a tree. Something is bound to come this way sooner or later, and maybe with some patience we get the chance to take down something bigger than rodents, they don't taste that great and isn't filling at all”
Arissa just nodded at me, and started climbing the closest tree. Following her lead I picked another nearby tree and got ready to climb. I extended my claws as much as I could and dug them into the trunk as I climbed upwards. Climbing with these claws was nearly effortless and I found myself a sizable branch to sit on while making sure I could see Arissa clearly in her hiding spot, so we could make paw signals to each other if needed.
While sitting on my branch, I focused on sharpening my senses as much as I could. I perked up my ears, listening intensely after anything that could indicate any animals moving around nearby. After nearly 15 minutes, I heard something small shuffling around in the leaves a short distance away. After looking intensely around at the ground, I finally found the source. Disappointingly, it was only a small rodent, seeing the feeble thing made me nostalgic from my time as a baby. Mother had forced me to practice catching and killing those rat looking things every day. I remembered Struggling with the entire killing aspect at first, but after murdering and eating a few dozen of those things it ceased to bother me.
They might not be big or do much to fill my stomach, but they serve well as a light snack.
With my eyes on my target, I jumped down, immediately going down on all four at full sprint.
The rodent had no chance to react, and it let out a screech as I impaled it on my claws.
Satisfied with how effective I caught it, I quickly threw it in my mouth and enjoyed my little snack while climbing back up in my tree.
Several hours later, I had already caught and eaten twelve rodents. There were a few different species of them in this forest, but their taste isn't that different from each other, so it didn't matter much. As I was getting bored of staying up in the tree for prolonged durations I was about to signal to Arissa that we should give up for the day, I suddenly heard a twig crack in the distance. My ears immediately shot up, fully alert. As I looked into the distance where the sound came from, I spotted several figures in the distance. I squinted my eyes and studied the figures and saw A large doe with two fawns following her.
When I saw the young fawns, still having spots in their fur, I immediately thought that we should let them all go. I might be damn hungry, but letting them go now would increase the amount of deer we could hunt in this area in the long run. I don't think the fawns would survive if we only went for the doe. I looked over to Arissa to give her the signal to abort, but one look at the eager girl crushed my hopes.
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Arissa was practically jumping in eagerness while still holding her balance on the branch, She pointed at the doe, then to me and lastly to the left side of her jugular. I wanted to protest, speak up what I thought was the right call in this situation, but any verbal communication would alert our prey, Arissa would be furious and if the tribe heard what I had done I would surely hear it. In a tribe where hunting was nearly a religion, such a thing as speaking and letting our prey get away would be close to blasphemy.
With no good alternatives, I gave Arissa a nod in understanding.
We prepared ourselves, watching our prey intensively, hoping they would come closer before we had to chase. We were in luck, and our prey was slowly coming our way. I gave Arissa a quick glance, waiting for her to make the decision.
Everything was to our advantage, the wind was even blowing towards us, and the fresh scent of deer was intoxicating, and the saliva was building up in my mouth.
They were now about 500 feet from our location, and as I glanced at Arissa she held three fingers up as a countdown.
I watched her countdown and as the last finger went down I leaped down. Using the tree trunk as footing, I shot down and was already sprinting as I hit the ground. With my eyes glued to my target, I ran as fast as I could. The deer used at least two fatal seconds to react to our presence, they turned and started running to safety, But there was no chance they could outrun us at this point.
In less than 10 seconds I had caught up to the doe, and as I came up it's front legs I jumped with all my strength. I sank my teeth into her throat as I threw my body over the doe. My claws dug deep into the hide in a desperate attempt to keep me in place. The doe let out an agonising scream and her warm blood flooded into my mouth. In full panic the doe jumped and tried desperately to throw me off. I dug my claws deeper into its sides and tore a piece of flesh off her throat, I swallowed the delicious piece and bit down on her throat again.
The doe screamed again as my teeth bit into the wound I had already inflicted, She jerked to the sides and jumped madly, in her best attempt to rid herself of the menace clinging to her back.
She thrashed around desperately in full panic, and I felt my claws slip bit by bit until she tore herself loose from my claws, and I was barely hanging on with my teeth in her throat.
I had to get on top again as soon as possible, before she had the chance to trample me to death.
I found my footing, and tore out a part of her throat while jumping backwards. I swallowed the delicious piece and ran towards the doe again for another leap.
This time the doe was staggering from having a piece of her throat ripped out, and I landed cleanly with my legs on top of the animal and my claws around her neck again. I took another bite out of her throat, severing a major artery and was rewarded with a heavy blood spray, hitting me directly into my face and eyes. Temporarily blinded, I leap off, rolling to the side to avoid being hit by the hooves.
When I felt I had gotten a safe distance away, I heard the sound of heavy wheezing coming from the wounded animal, and I started wiping away the blood from my eyes. With clear eyes I saw the doe still standing in the same spot, wheezing, panting and bleeding heavily from the deep wound I had inflicted on her throat. She was clearly on death’s door at this point, and would die by herself if left alone. I know that I was the reason she was in this situation, and should not prolong her suffering.
I started to walk towards the dying animal, but heard a sound behind me. I turned quickly, anticipating danger, but it was only Arissa. I noticed she had a victorious grin on her face, while dragging two smaller carcasses behind her. Seeing the small corpses I felt a lump in my stomach, not realizing that we had just murdered their entire family.
Not wanting to let the dying doe witness her younglings corpses before she died, I rushed towards her with my claws extended. I thrusted my paw into her throat and destroyed her windpipe completely. She let out one last dying wheeze, before falling to the ground by my feet.
Looking down on the now dead animal there was some part of me that wanted to feel bad about the entire thing, but my rumbling stomach halted all attempts for such sentiments, and something in me demanded me to get down and start feeding on my price.
Arissa with her two fawns in tow, interrupted me from instantly indulging in my urges.
“Looks like you didn't need any help” she stated with a huge grin on her face
“Maybe not, but it would be much faster if you had helped. It wasn’t easy to get things down by myself, did we really need to kill all three ? wouldn’t the big one be enough ?” I annoyingly grumbled.
“More is always better” Arissa stated, like it was the most obvious answer to a stupid question.
I let out a sigh and said. “ So what are we gonna do ? take some of this with us home to share with the others ?”
Arissa just looked at me like I was a complete moron and nearly yelled. “ Are you mad ? we are only one tailed pups, we aren’t supposed to have to contribute yet. And I never had such a solid meal before. I’m planning to eat until there is nothing but bones left.”
Without another word she sat down and started eating one of her fawns. Seeing her feed on her price, I felt my stomach roar at me, demanding sustenance. I quickly gave in and started eating my fresh kill, losing myself completely in the bliss act of consumption.