Capricorn poked his nose around the orchard, sniffing and sniffing and sniffing, trying to detect anything malicious. Fruit, grass, fruit, fruit, fruit! It was a jackalope's wonderland!
He wriggled his small purple form between two trees and took an experimental bite out of the fallen fruit. It seemed good enough. Turning his blue eyes over his shoulder, he called out.
"Hanahara! It's fine! You can come out now!"
Quietly, uncertainly, a wolf, barely a year old, crawled out of the bushes. Her soft gray fur rustled in a slight breeze, and she nosed around, looking for more fruit.
The unusual pair had come to this territory without a thought. Capricorn didn't care much for the differences in territory. In his mind, there was no such thing as "territory," only a difference in landscape. Such as there were plains, and then there was a clustering of fruit trees. The scenery was different.
Hanahara, his lupine companion and adoptive "daughter," had adopted that same mentality, and followed on his word with hardly a thought. Together, they wandered the world, caring for one another.
Capricorn studied his daughter with a father's concerned eyes. She was growing quickly, and eventually it was going to become a challenge to care for her. He couldn't keep feeding her forever. Eventually she was going to need meat. Cappy happened to fall under her in the food chain.
But, lucky for him, she had a bit of a problem with killing.
"Papa?" Hanahara's voice came softly. She wasn't a purebred wolf, her particular blood mixing made her capable of understanding and speaking the languages of non-wolves. It made it next to impossible for her to kill, on the few occasions she'd try. Something about the animals pleading, something about her father being a jackalope...
"Yes, Hana?" Cappy said. He felt his heart tug uncomfortably. Her shiny gray eyes were full of love and adoration. His dim existence brightened just at the sight of her.
"Papa... there's another wolf here,"
The feeling of love and relaxation shattered, and Cappy's ears stood abruptly on end. His nose quivered, his eyes were wide.
"Stay here, Hana," he said softly, and bounced off, edging in close to look at the other wolf from the cover of a tree. The scent was confusing him. Rabbit? Wolf? He couldn't tell. He edged a bit further forward, trying to stay inconspicuous. Now that he was up close, he saw that it
was a wolf. Perhaps he was smelling the remains of its dinner.
Dinner...How long could Hana go without meat? Maybe this wolf could feed her for a bit? He called her over.
"Hana, do you think you could get that wolf to feed you?" he asked. She studied the wolf for a moment, a curious glint in her eyes.
"Yes," she said quietly. Cappy nodded, and nudged her forward. Quietly, the young wolf crept up.
"E-excuse me, ma'am..?" she asked softly. The lupine language still came naturally to her, although her voice contained a hint of a squeak from using the jackalope tongue for the past few days. She hoped the other wolf would chalk it up to her being so young, "Ma'am... you wouldn't happen to have anything to eat, would you? I haven't eaten in
days..."
She gave her sweetest, most pitiful expression, the (slightly exaggerated) story of her sad, awful life on the tip of her tongue, ready to spring out if needed.
((OOC: Sorry for the crappy post. I'm having a bad posting day ^_^;
)
