10/17/2025, 8:33 PM
The boy was a navy smear against the green, violet and gold-kissed hues that dappled the forest from tree-crown to petal. His pulse roared in his ears, a mimicry of the tides that had lulled him to sleep many a night on the isle of his home. The fawn who was leading him on this chase through an otherwise idyllic, peaceful grove was no newborn - too late in the year for it - but still smaller than she would be fully grown. If she wanted to reach adulthood, she should not have run when Sverke's head had emerged from the bushes he'd squirmed under for a nap, fur mussed but eyes clear and keen.
The urge to hunt, to chase, was an impulse he was prone to indulging. The meal would serve them well, although Sverke had put no particular thought into that.
The world narrowed to a single point - his breath hot on the heels of the fawn, the sound of her hooves thumping against the earth, his breath heaving in his lungs - The fawn veered sharply amidst a flower-carpeted clearing, the mass of wildflowers broken only by a statuesque shadow, seen just out of the corner of his eye. Sverke's pawsteps stuttered, a hoof connected with his chest, and then the fawn was gone, the thump-thump of her footsteps fading into the distance.
A two-toned gaze darted around the clearing until it could land on the girl, the peaceful and sleepy atmosphere of the scene broken by the boy's rumpled blue fur and lolling tongue. He took a breath, confidence anything but impeded by the failed hunt and stranger's attention on him, and tilted his chin up with a cockiness only a god imbued with the ichor of youth could possess.
Uh - 'Sup.
