章節 17: Beach Games
The moons had now hung in the sky for quite a while, and normally, Shuule would have been considering crawling into the cave for bed. But she had slept half the day away, and the scorching sun setting had cooled the air so much that not only did it seem like a pity to go back to sleep now, it seemed strange she hadn't chosen to be nocturnal through the summer months. She also hadn't eaten anything other than a half bowl of berries today, since she decided to have a meltdown halfway through her meal. As if he was a mind reader, Set decided their next activity.
"You should be hungry," he stated.
Shuule wanted to deny this, but her stomach gave a small growl, giving her away. "You don't have to feed me, I can go find something -"
"I know I don't have to feed you. But you can't go out hunting on your own in the dark - don't - I know you'll think I'm wrong, but I'm not, you're stripeless and you're not an apex predator."
Shuule huffed, knowing he was skirting around "It's not because you're a girl," which she was thankful for, but she knew he was right. If he wasn't, her entire village would have hunted at night in the hot season, to take advantage of the cool hours, but they didn't, even though they could see fine in the dark. It was never explained to her, but yes, it was probably even easier to walk into the jaws of a feral reptile or scorpion, or be hunted down by a pack of wolves.
Still, she was feeling alive and not bogged down by the heat for the first time in weeks, and also felt like perhaps making Set's heart jump, so without warning, she spun herself into her fox form, leaping out of the blanket and out of his arms. If Set was startled, he didn't show it, but Shuule turned around, wagged her tail low, and threw herself down the rock siding. That was enough for Set, who lost his composure, and with a loud hiss shot down the bank also.
"SHUULE."
He was relieved to see he had underestimated her swiftness on all fours, and that death defying leap wasn't what it looked like, the red fox quickly making her way down the cave side. Because of this, he stopped himself from shifting into his full snake and slamming himself onto the ground in front of her, and instead opted to stay in his half form, somewhat slower, faking a chase. Once he met Shuule down by the stream, he fully expected her to shift back into a human, maybe jump into the water, but instead, she stayed a beast, broadly grinning at him as she wagged her tail high, rearing up on her back legs for a moment, and then bouncing side to side in front of him.
"I don't know what you want," he said flatly, though there was a glint behind his neon eyes that gave away that he at least knew she was trying to be playful - something adult male beastmen did not do, for the most part.
Shuule didn't relent, bounding up to him and rubbing her furred body against his slick scales, purring. She was having a bit of fun, and figured any mate of hers would need to get used to her sometimes wanting to feel as free as she was that month in the tree. Set, slightly off put, sighed and gave the fox a small pat on her head, which she leaned into and turned into an ear scratch. Was he getting a pet or a spouse?
Shaking his head, he slithered closer to the water, the clear sky reflecting starlight so brightly that both of them could easily see straight through it. Shuule followed, and simultaneously they both noticed the glowing silver fishes swimming past them.
Shuule hadn't noticed them during the day, and Set, again, managing to already decipher the vixen's head tilt in question, answered.
"They're nocturnal, it's too hot during the day. They burrow in the mud. If we had run out of water this dry season, if it hadn't rained so hard randomly, they can survive by staying in the mud and hibernating."
Shuule had her near ear twitched towards Set to listen, but the rest of her body was tense on the rocky bank, intensely staring at the fish, eyes dilated, tail tip twitching in anticipation.
Arms crossed, Set also stared into the water, watching their movements, before leaning over the water and slowly drawing his arms out. Without warning, lightning fast he darted his right hand into the water like a serpent strike, his fist holding a foot long silver fish. He smiled as Shuule bounced around again, chirping.
As he quickly killed the fish and tossed it over onto a rock far enough away that its death throws wouldn't flop it back into the water, Shuule crouched low, staring back into the stream, and with a flick of her own paw, batted a fish, slightly smaller than Set's, onto the bank. She couldn't spear it with her foot, but a scooping action could at least beach it, and she then pounced it like it was a mouse, gutting it, and then leaving it where it lay to catch another.
Set laughed and shook his head again, this time at himself. He surely had gotten himself into quite a unique situation, but he was grateful that he had. Nothing in the Legacy, besides the last year or two of what he knew of his parents, had any moments of levity, and even though he had spent a whole night rummaging through the file cabinet in his head, trying to find another shifting female in the timeline, even just a neighbor or a tall tale, nothing was there about a mate fishing and gutting her own prey.
They continued this way for a while, catching, then needing to allow the fish to forget there was a predator on the bank, then catching again, until they had twelve between them. They would not be split up evenly; luckily it seemed that both the size of her beast and the fact that she was a female meant Shuule needed significantly less food than most beastmen, let alone the snake, a species known for swallowing large prey whole. Shuule ate three, and Set finished off the rest of them when he saw that the fox had licked clean her paws and then laid outstretched on her back to look up at the stars.
Shuule was happy to be in her beast form in this moment, because she needed the silence. She wasn't sad. In fact, the opposite was true - she was content. She was happy, and not struggling. But she wished she could tell her mother, and Daddy Aaron, that she was safe. She wished she could tell if they were okay. At worst, they had been killed, and at best, they were all well, but worrying that their daughter wasn't.
Both beasts took advantage of the night, eating, resting, and drinking the cool spring water, until Shuule fell back asleep to get away from her troubled thoughts, Set picking up the fox in a bundle of fur and bringing her back into the cave as the earliest light started to peek back over the skyline.
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