Timid Heart

[The Creature Account]

The winter was unforgiving this year, and of course it was the first year that a young jackalope was on his own. Being young and inexperienced, he had not stored enough food up for the winter and had been forced to go out into the cold to find anything edible. His fur was wintery white to help him bled in. His horns looked like dead twigs. He had not had time to hone his skills or grow impressive antlers just yet. They each had two points.

He cautiously ventured out of his warm burrow and began to hunt for food. His little nose twitched back and forth as he searched. At every little noise he would stop and hold still, eyes wide with fear. He was coming close to a dead bush on the tundra. He reared up and began to nibble the dry twigs. His long ears were up high trying to hear any danger that would come his way.

He dug a little at the base of the bush and uncovered the hard, frozen roots below. Using his incisors he began to gnaw greedily at the fibrous roots. His stomach had been gnawing at him for days now. He finally bucked up the courage to venture out, so he got lost in his feeding. He moved forward deeper under the bush. Before long he found himself entangled in the bramble by his own antlers. Panic hit him suddenly and he began to flail and jerk himself in an attempt to break free of confinement. Despite his white coat, the ruckus he was causing was bound to draw some attention from any passing hungry eyes.

[Verboten]

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[atrb=background,http://i1104.photobucket.com/albums/h329/Whosie/verbotentablebackground.png] Verboten’s pale blue eyes were narrowed, her face placid and taciturn. Her appetite had kicked up recently, and she’d begun to voraciously devour any prey her teeth could get at. Coupled with the hunger, in many female’s eyes, would be the fear of being pregnant. But Verboten couldn’t even think that—she had no preference to mate, though males did in some cases, attract her, it was nothing like love, though lust did play a role in some cases… Instead, the added tingling in her tail-hindquarter region proved only one thing—her tails were splitting. Yes, maybe it was a little early, she was born a few weeks after this period (Verboten believed it to be the end of February or early March), or so she was told, Verboten didn’t remember much of her lawless, unhappy childhood. Her ears flicked back in dismay as the thought surfaced, and she shoved it away, returning to the task at hand. A small, twig-like structure was moving through the snow, beneath the pair of rather ratty horns were two dark—brown or black—eyes, alertly scanning the terrain of snow, ice, and rock for danger. Her bright red coat was not seen by it, for the moment she spotted it, Verboten slunk behind a rather large, incongruous boulder, its pitted surface slate gray, the color of the sky here. There was a little zing in her back, and a soft, almost tugging sensation. Her eyes grew confused as she looked at her tails, she was turning five. She was like an adult now, not some half-adult cub-thing who didn’t know much. Verboten’s face scrunched up into a frown, her tails weren’t splitting yet. Her gaze raked the open land before her, a dead bush catching her attention. It was shaking, and the twig thing was gone. A jackalope, she deduced, now caught in the branches of the bush. Her mouth watered, and she thought the best course of action. She was behind a boulder, parallel to the bush, and if Verboten leaped to the top of the rock then jumped and ran as fast she could towards the bush and get the jackalope, then she had a very high chance of catch it. The only thing was the possibility of being dissatisfied, then again… If it gets away, then my chance to play the Spirit is over, and I am shown that it’s got good genes to pass on. Of course, a wolf would always like it’s prey to be slow and stupid… Verboten mused, another zing on her spine waking her out of her thoughts. Verboten unsheathed her claws, blue eyes searching for the next paw-hold as she clambered up the face of the rock, something like three or four feet off the ground. At the top, her muscles bunched and she jumped off, arching and letting a little chuckle escape her maw. Her last moment of insanity—with the hybrid lion-wolf creature—had dissolved, and seemed to have left. No word had come from its once ever present lips for some time now, and Verboten wondered if perhaps her vacation was coming to an end. But then she was on the earth and growling, her claws ripping through the branches, teeth snapping towards the jackalope’s head. “C’mere, you snack, you,” She growled, her teeth snapping at inch from its head, trying to grab the antler and either wrench that off, or take the whole thing up and out of the bushes. Suddenly, she felt the need to sing, and the idea about eating the jackalope was in her mind... "C'mere you snack, you, C'mere you snack--" She was interrupted by a feral growl, and a branch smacked her face. "I'm going to eaaatt you! Oh yes, FU FU!" She chuckled evilly, another branch hit her face, but she continued. "You look like a tasty little morsel, It's too bad I lack a dorsaaaaal (fin)!" The random rhyme made her laugh. "C'mere you little snaaaaaacckkkk, you! C'mere and let me eaaaaattt you!" She sang, drawing to a close, the entire song mimicked the high pitch of a squealing jackalope. "speechtest"

[The Creature Account]

The panic soon subsided to be replaced with dread as he felt the presence of something near him. He could smell it first, a wolf alarmingly close to his vicinity. His ears folded down to try to hide himself. He tried to jerk his head back out to no avail.

The young jackalope soon realized his folly. He had drawn attention to himself and now from the other side of a the bush came the gaping maw of a predator. His tiny heart thundered in his chest as his eyes widened like great dark pools of fear. Seeing the jaws clamp so near his velvety nose made him scream the high pitched horrid screams that lagomorphs were so well known for. He jerked his head back so hard he pulled part of the bush with him. He back pedaled a few feet, shaking his head to free himself from the bramble.

Bewildered and disoriented, once he finally got free of the branch he made an attempt to dart off to safety. He went the way that he was facing, which, by this point took him to the left of the boulder and bush that he had last seen the wolf in. He began bounding, zigzagging now and then. Unbeknownst to him, we was heading toward a patch of snowdrift. His snowshoe like paws would not help him much there. But he kept running and hit the weakened snow so suddenly that is slowed him down and had him sinking with every bound. Bad luck for something that relied on speed to escape from predators.