The Past Becomes a Crime // [Cant for Cash, Day 2]

[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

The moment the Baleel's deformed body went limp, Cantara lifted her snout to the sky. She could feel it, right in the center of her sternum: the urge to howl. But to whom would she be calling? Which other tribute would answer? More likely than not they'd be foe.

And her pack was shrinking by the day.

She lowered her elongated nose and backpedaled from the cursed Falls. After finding a suitable rock amid the muck and dry vegetation she set about cleaning her wounds. With her tongue. At first she thought nothing of it. What was cleaner than licking out the iron-tainted bacteria? But some of the wounds were deep, the bacteria mingling with her own changed blood.

All at once she came to her sense, leaned over, and vomited up her own mini bloody waterfall.

After she collapsed, curled into a furry ball atop the boulder, it was nearly nightfall. She blinked. Cursed her stupidity. Rather than calling out for her allies she stuck her nose into the breeze and followed the sickeningly sweet scent of Cash Humboldt.

Bag slung over her shoulder, fur matted with saliva around her wounds, Cantara approached him with one eyebrow arched sky high. "I don't smell anyone else nearby." Her voice, even deeper than it had been that morning, pleased her immensely. It was rich. Powerful. "Not even Carsyn?" She asked boldly.

[Cantara gathers things.]

[Title from "Suspicion" by LP]

[pogue]

C  O  Y  O  T  E

There's a rattling in his hands and a rattling in his heart when he finally makes his way back towards Cantara, the smell of her own blood laced vomit threaded into the air and singing at his nostrils. He can only manage to stop the former of the shaking that wracks him now, curling sharpened claws tight around his opposite wrist until his circulation runs purple, then blue, then numb entirely. It's easier that way. "I don't smell anyone else nearby." He arches an eyebrow, slick and bold and blue eyes iced over, good. that means no other tributes are nearby. he nearly says. "Not even Carsyn?" 

Cantara beats him to the punch,. Sharpened claws, gnarled fangs.

Carsyn's cannon hadn't gone off when he'd slashed at her, nor when he'd watched her body crumble into the falls, nor when he'd made his way back towards Cantara, which meant she was still alive somewhere in the waters-

or the rocks, or the shore, alive. For now.

He hopes.

"We all split up after the fight- I figured she'd be back here with you." He throws the suspicion back into the dead air between them once more, lets it poison their surroundings with disgust and vile and everything in between. Two can play this Game but only one gets blood on their hands, has to scrape clean the crimson and scarlet and expose the bare flesh beating heart underneath. Cantara has him cornered and he has her in the same position, bared fangs and sharpened claws and shaking in their boots.

He wonders which of them will lunge first, who will draw the first blood, who will witness the last drop.

"Seems like we're not much of a pack at all." He finally mutters, feigned sadness tied into the words. It burns his tongue and slices at his heartstrings until there is nothing left but the numbness. He likes it that way. "Maybe she ditched." He proposes like it's realistic, feasible, because it is. 

"Not like being from Five makes us the most desired companions."

He stares into Cantara's soul, then through it. She does the same.

His trigger finger itches in his pocket.

[Stuff in maint.]