Admiring my kill, I see.
He had felt eyes on him, heavy, heavy. Yet, Torix had not turned and does not until she speaks. He is surprised she does not come from the sea but, instead, the deeper forest. When she walks in his direction he can barely discern her figure, only her silhouette. The forest dapples her in a thousand shades of shadows, yet to be vanquished by daybreak, and then she steps from the trees onto the beach. She begins to circle him with the languid power of a large cat, or other predator.
In fact, the gesture is evocative of the shark at Torix’s feet. He does not turn his body to keep her at his front; he only followers her with his eyes. He knows what she is, from the hard lines of her body, from the sinuous way she belongs more to the sea than the earth. There is a prickling at the nape of his neck; the feeling inherent to all creatures when they are faced with a predator.
Yet, the fear is manageable and, what is more, it reinvigorates him. For a moment—brief, ungraspable, necessary—Vercingtorix feels like himself. He feels whole.
Because what is a tiger hunter, without tigers? A fisherman without fish? A big game hunter, without game? Nothing, nothing, nothing. He may be both predator and prey but so, too, is she.
Vercingtorix, despite his long thoughts, does not miss a beat in replying. He smiles a wolf’s smile. “I had to ask myself what would have the nerve to kill a shark.” His tone is almost impressed. “But I prefer to stick to a normal equine diet. Thank you for the invitation.” The site does not make him squeamish. As a cadet he had been charged with feeding captured prisoners of war; and that entailed meet, sometimes entire carcasses, tossed into the slave pits where the Khashran fought over scraps. He once saw a live crow land in the midst of them and, before he could blink, be ripped apart alive by the starving water horses. “I take it that you are from here?”
She looks unlike the horses he is accustomed to, but so do many equines in Novus. She is winged, which he finds contradictory to her clearly being a kelpie. How does she swim? Although he wonders it, he does not ask; merely assessed her with those bright eyes.
“speech” || @Lucinda
