Wait
"I have to wait, I'll watch for a straggler... It'll be easier that way..." You settle down against the dirt. Slowly, the bulb of orange sunlight sinks down lower in the sky until it wears the horizon as a belt and only a pale cast of its light covers the area where the gazelles are grazing.
Your eyes track the edges, tracing around the group as you wait for the line to waver when one breaks away. Your stomach growls . Impatience morphs into a creature itself that claws at your insides. Hunger and impatience begin to breed inside you, tumbling together with growls inside your gut. Darkness blankets everything.
The line wavers.
A single, scrawny and faintly stumbling gazelle has broken away from the grazing pack. You collect yourself, pushing energy down into your leaden legs so that your feet actually push down into the earth. Then, you rise into a full sprint. Launching yourself, you slam into the straggler with one paw lashing out. The instinct throws out your claws, though seconds after you feel your mind spin with the realization that claws had left your 'hands'.
"I'm Wolverine!" you think in a burst, then, you stare down at the wriggling creature beneath you. It's toppled, bleeding at its side, but hasn't yet closed it's frightened eyes.
"I have to kill it." You lift that paw again, eyeing the glittering crimson on the tips of your claws. Then, with a final growl (of your stomach), you pound the claws through the flesh of your limp victim.
They still. You eat eagerly, sloppily.
With a full stomach, you finally find some comfort in sleep, and when you rise, you fall into the pattern with the gazelles again. Habit begins to form of following, skirting them over miles of plains until one falls back, a baby was born, one falls ill... Then, you strike. The glitter of the blood raining onto your pelt begins to bother you less and less.
"It's just like a butcher shop" you assure yourself, though the blood begins to itch after it dries. It nags at you, until that is, your stomach grows hungry and pesters you more. Soon, quickly, your hunger wins out sooner and sooner. The killing motion, the lunge, the chase- it becomes second nature.
One night, lying down with a plump stomach, you catch the twinkle of the stars with a thought: "I couldn't use a fork if I wanted to anymore..."
******
"What's that?" You shift at a sudden noise, spotting the fleeting blur of another pride, hunters- other females like you- spilling into the gazelle's herd. The creatures cry, scattering across the plains, but the females head straight for their target with a collective hiss of power.
You eye their fallen prey, a tall, healthy gazelle. Sure, it'd been slower, but its fur wasn't falling off in clumps, it wasn't a baby. You feel a pang of jealousy, and as your watch the herd flee into the distance from the disruption, the realization of oncoming hunger comes once again.
"Should I approach them? Try to join?" The smell of blood or meat wafts out from their group where the females feed eagerly, the rest of their pride coming out from behind the curve of the land and joining, feeding in order. Your nose sniffs, working over the smell.
"I could eat like that...." You gulp at the sight of the meat. The brilliant red.
"But, they might attack..."
Written by Picklessauce69 on 24 February 2016