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Fishing took patience. And focus. She held very still, leaning over the water as rain cascaded down upon calico fur. She was a bony thing, even from a distance it was readily apparent beneath waterlogged pelt. A lifetime spent fighting for scraps left little to grow with. But when a fat trout swam beneath her shadow, she darted like a viper. Teeth closed on slippery flesh, claws sprang off slick bark, and there was a great cacophony of splashing before the Cur’s head flung back out of the water in triumph.

She paddled back to her perch, claws scrabbling for purchase only briefly before she hauled herself onto the log again. Which was difficult and ungraceful, with a two-stone fish flopping madly in her jaws.

So in the midst of this, perhaps not surprising she failed to notice the stranger at first. Not until he was already on the shore. She froze, though her fish didn’t, and received a few good wrenches to her teeth in the effort it took to assess this new potential danger. Since her mouth was full she couldn’t ask him who the hell he was, or tell him to fuck off, and she wasn’t prepared to lose her fish just to ask. Even if he did end up being one of those dangerous blue-eyed monsters, she wasn’t ready to relinquish breakfast if she could escape with the meal intact.

And, well… he’d been there long enough to vaporize her, or transform into some unnatural thing if he had been one. So… best not to run, yet.

Instead, she made the unsteady walk back down the fallen tree to shore, keeping a weather eye on the stranger. Maybe this was just a vagabond looking for scraps. A twinge of anger flushed her at the thought of her hard work being stolen. Absolutely not!