[P] life's more fun with a badge and a gun;

[Sarkan]

Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.   As men have done perhaps since time began, Sarkan went down to the river to wash himself clean.  It was a lonely part of the Rapax, rushing over rocks and tumbling in furious white foam into a slower, wider band with ice creeping over it further downriver. He had taken care the last weeks to do his hunting far from the city, in a remote part of the forest hours from a main road. So far he had been lucky: no patrols, and no more snow. Still, he lit no fires at his makeshift camp, and did his best to stay beneath the canopy, casting an eye skyward any time an especially wide-winged shadow passed overhead.    A few more days, a few more filled snares, and he would take what he’d collected southwest to Solterra - and hopefully find some warmth as well as coin. Sarkan was curious after what he’d heard of the warrior culture and their new sovereign. And it would probably be best to winter well outside the Dawn Court.  For now he stood on a narrow spit of bank, studded with rocks, and eyed the rushing water. Blood streaked the pale fur of his shoulders, forelegs and neck. By now he was unbothered smell of it, but grateful for the lack of flies - still, he might trade their nuisance for water a few degrees warmer. With a sigh, he approached the river’s edge.  First he removed his hunting knife, a long, broad weapon whose material reflected the slate winter sky with a peculiar sheen. Blood flecked its surface, dark as rust. Sarkan lowered it almost reverently, tilting the edge so that it gleamed up at him from beneath the clear water. It was unblemished when he lifted it, but he showed no sign of hurry as he pulled a leather cloth from his pack dried and polished the blade. After he slid it back into its sheath, he set both it and the pack down carefully onto a flat rock along the shore.  No part of him particularly wanted to subject himself to a frigid river, but neither did he want to draw a scavenger. Nor was wearing a coating of week-old blood a way to endear himself to any strangers he met, at least those who acquaintance he would be interested in making. Sarkan blew out another breath, his ears twisting back, and stepped into the water.  This could be said of him: once he was decided, he did not hesitate. He walked out, placing his hooves with care on the stones that made of the riverbed here, until the water ran up over his knees and he could feel the current pulling at him. His breathing was coming shallow and high; he forced one deep breath, then another, and then thought wryly that he should have checked whether there were hot springs in Delumine.  Then he plunged his head below the water, held it down as long as he could bear it, and flung up gasping, every cell shocked awake.  @Messalina