ArchivedLogs:Extra Credit

Extra Credit
Dramatis Personae Isra, Sebastian, Shane
In Absentia	2013-06-07 The twins teach a teacher how to hunt.
Location <XS> Lake
Bright, bright, bright; the lake glitters wide and expansive here, stretching off into the distance. Sunlight, moonlight, starlight, it catches them all. Lapping at the rocky shore, its deep waters are frigid in winter and cool even in summer. A stone pier stretches out a ways into the water, wide and smooth, though often icy in winter. The water teems with life nevertheless, home to myriad species of fish that provide for ample fishing or just lazy watching on a slow summer day, for those who want to take a boat from the boathouse out to the center of the lake, or perhaps lounge on the pier and try their luck. It's late -- or, really, it's /early/; it might be Thursday night or Friday morning depending on which way around you look at your time. At any rate the bulk of the school is decidedly /sleeping/. Out here, though, not so much. Sebastian is standing by the lakeside, restless, pacing. He is dressed in not very much. Black cargo shorts. No shoes, no shirt. His brother is dressed identically, which makes telling the twins apart harder to manage, sans bad attitude and cursing to distinguish them. Shane is in a crouch, head turned towards the nearby woods. Sniffing. Then looking towards the water instead. "{Should have a hunting club,}" he tells his brother, "{Why doesn't this school have a hunting club?}" "{Because guns,}" Bastian answers easily. "{I bet they'd have a fishing club if you wanted, though.}" "{Some idiot would take their eye out with a fishhook. OK, honestly, /I/ wouldn't trust most of our classmates with hunting things. Or fishing them. Whatever.}" Shane is rising out of his crouch, kind of lazy-slow. Bastian takes over with the sniffing, a slow thoughtful turn of head away from the water. It starts to settle his restlessness, pacing slowing to just rock up onto his toes, back down onto his heels. Isra departs the school building wrapped in the largest of her shaylas, using it like a cross between a sarong and a great kilt. By the time she is half way down the hill, however, she has shed this covering, beneath which she wears only black bike shorts and a black sports bra that zips up the front. The latter is essentially pointless, since she possess no breasts, and must have been difficult to put on around massive, membranous wings. Wearing as little as she is, the abnormal absence of fat from her body is glaringly obvious. Winged, horned, with long limbs and ropey muscles, she looks like a fairytale monster. She jogs the last stretch at a smooth and easy pace. Given the extreme length of her stride, however, she covers as much ground as the average human would running all out. Coming to a stop at the lakeside near the twins, she sets the folded shayla down on a large rock and turns her face up to the moonless sky. "Saturn," she says, pointing out a 'star' just above the treeline to the south. "The brightest natural object in the sky tonight. I can see fairly well, though..." Her ears rotate back just a little, maybe reflexively trying to locate a splash far off across the lake. "...I suppose other senses are more important for this?" "We see pretty well in the dark," Sebastian says, "but we don't usually need to." His eyes follow the path of her pointing, looking out to Saturn. "You smell. You listen." Shane looks over Isra curiously. "How good are you at those?" Sebastian is apparently none too patient with standing around waiting. He slips past Shane, tapping his brother and then Isra lightly on the elbows and starting towards the woods. "You'll get better at them. Hard at first to even know what you're listening or smelling /for/." "No way," Shane protests this, but falls into line after Bastian. "You're smelling for /delicious/, you can't miss it." "I have not thought very much about smelling and listening," Isra admits, slinking after the twins. It is nearly impossible for her to not look like a prowling animal when her legs are visible. Her tail lashes the air with the same excitement that hushes her voice as they approach the treeline. "By 'delicious', I assume you mean 'deer'? There were a great many on my parents' estate, and I watched them from the observatory in the early mornings." "Deer are delicious," Sebastian agrees, voice dropping lower, too. For a moment he hesitates, just drawing in a slow breath and -- then stopping, turning, looking at Isra. "What do you smell?" Shane stops when Sebastian does, head tilting to one side. "... what do you hear?" Isra follows the twins' lead and comes to a stop, dropping into a half-crouch, wings extended slightly for balance. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply. One ear straightens to face forward to the extent that it can--her ears are not nearly as mobile as a cat or dog's. "Damp soil, rotting wood, and honeysuckle, mostly," she replies softly. "Insects, bats, the wind and water..." She rotates her entire head and is silent for a moment. "Small animals? Rabbits, maybe. There are a lot of things making scents and noises. How do you sort it out?" Sebastian considers this question for a moment in silence, eyes shuttering halfway -- his clear inner eyelids sliding into place to shield the huge black pools. Shane drops into crouch beside Isra, but he lifts a hand, webbed fingers spreading out in front of her eyes. "How do you sort out what you're seeing?" "It's just as different. You're just not used to thinking about it." Sebastian draws in a slow breath. "There's those things you said, yeah. But. Even the animals smell so different. The squirrels don't smell anything like the raccoons or the rabbits and none of them smell like deer." "And if you really pay attention," Shane continues, still quiet, "it's more than that. Like one of the rabbits was bleeding. And over there some kids," look he's not saying which! "came to smoke. And Dennis was napping just under that tree." Isra nods slowly, inhales again. "It /does/ smell like tobacco, a little, and you can get the direction from the wind movement." She turns and studies the direction Shane indicated. Her pupils have dilated almost completely as she studies the leaf-littered ground, leaving only a thin green band of iris. "No mystery, it's just physics, chemistry...and learning to tell signal from noise." Scanning the woods visually now, Isra indicates a small gap in the undergrowth with a tilt of her head. "I'm not sure if students or deer made that trail, but deer probably use it either way--to get out onto the grass. It is the path of least resistance." She picks her way to the trailhead and sniffs again, deeply. "None nearby. They are crepuscular, and so would probably be resting right now. But they would have fawns with them now, so..." The faint curl of smile that she flashes the boys, baring teeth, does not quite fit her scientific approach. "...They may not have gone all /that/ far, no?" "Signal from noise." Sebastian echoes this with a quiet amusement. "I feel like learning that is kind of the most important part of any learning." Shane drifts after Isra, eyes closing for a moment as he nears the gap she indicates. He just breathes in, slow, and the smile that spreads across his face, bright and toothy, is slow as well. "Not close," Sebastian agrees, "but there's still a trail there." "Signal from noise," Shane's voice drops lower as he slips through the gap, dropping down to all fours. "Can you smell that?" "It smells," Sebastian says this like giving an important /hint/, "like delicious." He beckons the others to follow. Dropping to all fours, too, a lope more suited to animal than human, but it is swift and quiet and keeps his face near to the ground. Shane gives Isra one quick look, then follows after his brother. Isra ducks into the undergrowth and does her best to keep up with the twins in a low crouch, which proves not nearly low enough. After the fifth low-hanging limb smacks her on the horns or wings, however, she relents and drops down onto all fours. Suddenly, the bizarre and troublesome deformity of her legs and feet do not seem quite so random and nonsensical. She tucks her wings in close to her back to avoid snagging on the brush as she does her best to learn from her--admittedly more compact--students. "I can /now/," Isra replies, belatedly, and in a voice that is somewhere between a whisper and a growl. The twins are quiet, in their movement through the woods. Bastian leads the way, quick enough that it does not take him long to vanish ahead into the dark. Shane is less hasty -- dropping back, slightly, to keep closer pace with Isra. He does not expend energy nor noise on talking, anymore. What communication he has to offer comes in silence. A nudge of shoulder here to steer Isra slightly away from a tangle of potentially noisy leaves and sticks strewn on the ground. A tip of head there to point out pointed-hoofed tracks. A lift of hand for quiet, momentary pauses to listen. Or to not be heard. Sebastian is here and then not, here and then not. He strays ahead. Returns to steer them closer to the strengthening scent. Gradually starts to slow, not straying quite so far. Though it is at first painfully obvious that Isra is out of her element, she proves a quick enough study. In between observing Bastian and heeding Shane's guidance, she spares occasional glances at gaps in the canopy. As they progress, she looks less and less at the sky, and more at the shadowy trees themselves. When it becomes evident that they are nearing their quarry, however, she diverts her whole attention back to stealth. Nearing their quarry is just as obvious from watching the twins as it is from observing the world around them. It's an added energy that manifests not so much in greater speed as greater /care/, more deliberation to their movements. A heightened attentiveness to the noises they make. A heightened attentiveness to the noises they /hear/. It's near a section of darker grove, heavy with the scent of pine, that Bastian starts to steer them wide, farther downwind. He indicates the grove ahead; the musky deer-scent from there is strongest. The one hand he lifts to the others is a pretty universally typical indicator. Stop. Wait. And then he is off again, slipping into the trees. Shane lingers behind, black eyes half-closed as he listens in the dark. Isra settles back onto her heels at Bastian's signal, wrapping wings around herself in vaguely batlike fashion. She goes completely still, and but for an occasional switch of tail and blink of night-black eyes, she could have been the statue of a gargoyle inexplicably abandoned in the woods. Her ears strain forward, however, and she glances often at Shane. Shane is quiet. Very quiet, and very still. The forest-noises around them are quiet, too. Somewhere in the very distance an owl hoots. Somewhere nearer by a raccoon's soft steps rustle through the undergrowth. From Sebastian there is not much at all to be heard. In the stillness it makes it all that much more strikingly clear when sounds /erupt/ out of the grove in front of them; a frantic sudden scramble of hooves against soft pine needles, a rasping-harsh distressed bark. The sudden tang of blood in the air is clear, too. A dark shape bursts out of the trees, hooves pounding the ground not stereotypically-graceful but a little desperate, a little uneven. The doe is a large one, bleeding heavily from deep-gashed clawmarks that had aimed for throat and found flank instead. Sebastian is close behind, on all fours once more in his swift charge after the deer. There's a manic-fierce exhilaration to his bared-teeth-grin. He isn't /quite/ driving straight /towards/ the doe; curving off a little to her side to /herd/ her instead. Directly towards Shane and Isra. The panicking quarry blunders into the patch of undergrowth that conceals Isra who, like a coiled spring released, pounces. Though she pivots away at once, the doe's bloodied flank slows her just enough. Isra collides with the animal. The instinct that prompts her to lash out with claws is largely thwarted by her careful blunting of finger- and toenails. Only a single talon on the point of her left wing finds any purchase, and it rips a jagged trail across the deer's back. Their collision is elastic. Isra recovers clumsily, tripped up by the vegetation that had been her cover. She growls, then launches herself again--but not directly at the doe. Instead, she scrambles up onto the trunk of a heavily listing silver maple and runs along it until she can find a clear shot /down/ at her prey. The deer, disoriented, upright tail flashing white in the darkness, bounds toward Shane's position. Shane has been waiting for this. His muscles coiled tense the moment the noises start in the grove, he waits with a sharp anticipation. /His/ long claws have not been blunted, razor-sharp as they extend. But he waits, eyes focused on the bounding shape; his lips pull back into what is either a snarl or a grin, it's hard to tell the difference with its gleaming-sharp ferocity. Whichever it is, it widens when Isra collides, swipes, recovers. He only strikes after this, unfurling in a springloaded snap of motion. A little too wide in his targeting; his teeth are /aiming/ for jugular but land somewhere too much too high, fastening on to the side of the doe's throat as his claws sink in in a hard deep grip against the shifting muscles of her haunch. It's not, really, a quick or pleasant process. The deer is still trying to bound away -- slower, with her newly acquired sharp toothy BARNACLE. Sebastian does not help her death along with any expediency; instead, he lopes around at her side, a quick sharp nip to her flank driving her over closer to Isra's tree. Her harsh wheeze-bark cry mingles with Shane's own growl as he struggles to hang on -- eventually dropping to the ground (teeth taking a chunk of flesh from the doe's neck WITH him) and rolling quickly to one side as one pounding hoof grazes the side of his thigh. The moment Shane has rolled clear, Isra drops down like Batman. Her aim is off, but she manages to steer her descent with an ungainly mid-air twist and land on the terrified deer's back. With a muffled CRACK, the doomed animal goes down, and Isra leaps off of her to land in a crouch, tail lashing the air furiously to maintain balance. Remarkably, the doe still tries to get back up, though with only her front legs working this is not an easy proposition. Isra shuffles to the side, black pupils flashing faint green in a stray patch of starlight. When she darts in again, she is wielding fangs and not useless filed-down claws. Yet it is quite obvious--long-hidden feral instincts aside--the astronomer has never bitten anything /alive/ before. Though blood flows freely from the gash she tears in the flailing deer's neck, she has severed neither carotid nor jugular. Shane is quick to get back into a crouch, poised -- but not springing. Instead he mirrors his twin, slinking around to the doe's other side to just fence her off, watching Isra now more than their quarry as the teacher drops down to the deer's back. There's a throaty hungry growl from him -- soon echoed by Bastian -- as more blood scents the air. Bastian slips closer when the doe falls. One hand rests against a haunch, claws sinking in to shove the deer back down as she struggles to right herself. His teeth are bared, clenched, and for a moment his attention shifts in saccadic-quick bursts between Isra and the deer. He grimaces at the missed bite. "Lower," he instructs, "and a little right. And," his brows are somewhat creased as his attention drops downward, "-- quicker, and harder; she's hurting." Isra gives a quick jerk of a nod by way of acknowledgement and strikes again. This time the deer, restrained, has no room to even attempt avoiding her. Long, sharp canines sink into the already blood-soaked neck. When Isra tears away this time--as quickly as she can manage--blood /gushes/ in giddy pulses from a severed artery. The doe's struggling weakens rapidly. Settling back onto her heels, wings mantling for balance, Isra looks as though she is not completely certain how to proceed. She wipes her chin with the back of her arm and it comes away liberally coated in hot, fresh blood. Sebastian shivers at the gush of blood. He throws a quick glance to Shane, hands reaching for the deer's neck. Shane shifts up to hold it, too, on the other side. One sharp /jerk/ by both of the boys in opposite directions and there is another snap; the deer's weakening twitching stops. Shane murmurs something at this final dying twitch; it's quiet and in Vietnamese but something in the soft tone is reminiscent of a prayer. Sebastian's shorter reply carries the same tone. In Shane's quick smile afterwards, though, looking up at Isra, there is only a fierce hungry /joy/, blood still glistening red on his sharp teeth and streaked across his blue skin. "Let's eat."