 |
Beatrice had wandered into a canyon looking for some arid flower for a poultice when she realized that there was something blocking the path in front of her. Already on edge after the tales of the bunny shifter chasing others last year, she couldn’t help it when her heart started beating wildly at the sight of the soquili with long, floppy ears blocking her path. She couldn’t help but edge a little closer, only to see that the bunny soquili’s hair was covered in a dark reddish-brown hue like blood. Beatrice started to stumble backwards away when the bunny looked right at her.
Desmond had been enjoying the long meandering path that he and his rabbit Bonnie had been on. Being new to this place, he really had no idea where he was going, and he was trying to make the best of it. It wasn’t like there were many soquili to ask directions of. It seemed as just that thought popped into his head, he turned and saw another soquili. She reminded him of a deer, ready to flee at any moment. Her hair was a soft summer green, and she looked pleasant enough to ask directions of, except she looked at him like she’d seen a ghost. He noticed she was carefully backing away and that the pulse in her throat jumped as he looked at her.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to frighten you, but it seems I’m terribly lost.” He took a few steps toward her to bridge the gap.
From a scrubby plant ten yards away a bunny twitched its nose as if in thoughtful debate. The two soquili looked at odds with each other, as though one was frightened of the other, while the second soquili seemed to have no clue. The bunny twitched its nose as it laughed silently. She wondered what had the mare so spooked. If maybe she had heard the stories, wouldn’t it be funny if she was right? Just not about the right thing. The bunny edged closer to try to better hear the conversation between the two soquili so that she could judge what her next move would be.
Beatrice stammered as she backed into the canyon’s wall. “I… I know who you are. You’re that shifter. The one that chased everyone around last year to try to get a meal. I mean, make a meal out of them. You ate them!”
Desmond looked aghast at what she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I only just came here. I don’t even know where here is. Actually I was going to ask that. I was going to ask you, because I have no idea where I am anymore. We were following this trail. And then it rained. And there was no trail. Why am I explaining this to you? You think I eat others.”
It was hard to blend in or keep still when all of this disastrouly bloody talk excited her. They were talking about her. It made her positively giddy. And the last time she’d been this giddy is when she’d chased all those idiots through the woods. Maybe these two would keep arguing with each other long enough that she could get just a little bit closer.
“Wait,” Beatrice paused. “You don’t eat others? You’re not that shifter that terrorized everyone last year? The bunny one? I mean…” She made a kind of ‘You know’ shoulder gesture. “I mean, you are a bunny shifter, right?”
Beatrice felt herself getting embarrassed. Maybe she had made a mistake. Maybe this wasn’t the soquili she had heard about last year. Come to think of it, wasn’t that soquili female? And wasn’t her coat white? But by now she’d heard it so many ways, she wasn’t sure which parts were fact and which were fiction. Maybe she was making a terrible mistake assuming who this soquili was. They didn’t seem to be dangerous. And they certainly did seem to be lost. And they had a small rabbit with them. As far as she knew, shifters couldn’t be in their shifted form and animal form at the same time.
Desmond made an irritated face as he said, “Look, I may be a bunny, but I’m not a bunny shifter. Those are two different things. Do you even know if this whole story has any merit to it at all? Maybe it’s just an urban legend.” He let out a huff of frustration.
Now the stupid idiots were believing that Sans Merci was some story told to terrorize folds at night. That’s exactly what she wanted. If they didn’t believe she existed or accepted that she was real, that made it so much easier to get her next tasty morsel. And one of them was a deceitful, conniving male.
Without wasting any more time, Sans Merci took her opportunity while they were both distracted. Bursting through the mesquite into her bunny form and shifting into her cursed form, she laid siege on them both. All hell broke loose.
|
 |
Reply
