Open Territory taking my time | sharpening

[BONE]

Alone she can breath. Alone she doesn't have to keep her guard up. It wears on her how tense she feels her back is and she finds herself arching her spine. Hearing the popping of bones, perhaps why her mother named her so. Before the sun bid everyone wake she has wandered further from camp but not toward the dark path that smells disturbing to her nose. No, instead she is taking her time to get to know the place she is to call home now. Every movement is precise as she steps. One paw moving and the other stepping in its place. Her claws flex with each movement and her eyes wander from the muck and grim. There is prey but at the moment she is not in the mood to hunt them down. At the moment she is just seeking peace and she makes her way, ears swiveling before she sees a small rotten tree stump. It is fraying pieces and looks as if it is nothing but mulch in the ground but she merely steps closer to it. Giving it a good sniff before she raises her paw and flexes her claws from their sheathe. They crack and snap against the dead wood. Pulling pieces off and she adds her other paw to the fray. Almost as if she is trying to shred the poor already broken and dead tree.

But the feeling of her claws breaking it is relaxing enough. Soothing and she keeps dragging them against the wood. A piece cracking off and she knocks it aside before pausing. She feels like she hears someone coming but at the same time she hardly finds she cares too much. Going back to stripping the wood that is before her.

 

[Smoky.]

Crumpled and compact in his own efforts to blend among the shrubbery, Smoky could swear the land is actively trying to repel him. Roots catch on his digits. Brambles tug at his coat. Just about every hunting excursion he's set out on has been fraught with this sort of struggle; ending up more as a rehearsal in contorting his body into awkward positions. Sure, exposure to these conditions will grant him greater familiarity. He's figuring out the wetlands, only at a pace that'd make moss grow impatient.

Having resigned himself to another failed bout of hunting, his attention had begun to drift to the wilderness itself. The sounds. The smells. Allowing all to fill his senses and step into his recollection. An earthy fragrance lingers in the air, intermingled with notes of wet wood and sodden vegetation. He presses on in no specific direction, paws treading cautiously and ears pricked, hoping to discern the beginnings of a familiar path.

Dull scritching somewhere nearby puts his ears at a forward cant. Logic whispers its warning into his ear; could be any variety of danger he's never seen before. Instinct tells him to follow the noise, though, driven to investigate. At a slow saunter, Smoky prowls a little ways closer, on the lookout for-

Ah, it's just Bone. Shoulders droop in a release of tension, a sigh passing his jaws, and then his approach resumes. He rounds the stump she's currently at work on, blinking in idle curiosity. Her motions are aggressive, bordering on frantic. "I think you've won by now, Bone." The comment is dry, punctuated with an eyebrow's raise. For a moment, he appraises her choice in dummy, and reminisces on his favoured tree from back at the colony—wondering, blithely, if his imprint is still there. "Anything gnawing at you? Or'd this tree insult yer mum?"