This time, when the two of you are done roughhousing, you find yourself uncomfortably aware of your stomach. Particularly its emptiness attribute. "I'm hungry like the wolf," you announce. "Let's get serious." Erskin makes no secret of the fact that he thinks you're an idiot, as usual, but he does bear down on being quiet and alert, and you search together rather than individually so that if you flush anything you can tag-team it. You'd be fine with rabbit or squirrel at this point.
This deer, you nearly trip over. The wind is right, the brush is thick and very fragrant, and the yearling buck bolts out from cover right in font of you, hooves flying everywhere. You weigh getting kicked in the face with doing something very cool and heroic, and go for a back leg right above the hock. Your jaws close around meat and even though you're kicked off and bowled across the leaf litter in the next second, the beast is wounded, and not likely to go anywhere faster than you two for awhile.
You hesitate and glance back. "You okay?" When he gets up, apparently unharmed, you take off after the deer and trust him to catch up. Even lamed, the animal is fast. You could outpace it, but not by enough to have your choice of attack vectors, and you don't want to risk a kick, you're not sure you could roll with it like Erskin did. So you go with the water plan. Herd it toward the nearest bit of shoreline. Shallow water, full of tippy rocks, much harder on hooves than paws. The lacework of ice at the water's edge is thicker now than when you first woke up, too, and the deer hits it awkwardly, skidding for a fraction of a step before plunging through, and then doing a frantic sideways dance trying to keep its footing on the unseen stones. You take a flying leap, land on its back, and knock it down. You fall off into the water, of course, but you get up faster than the lamed deer does, and Erskin's here now. This is actually going to work.
"Lock on to the throat and hang," you order, galloping up. "Right under the jaw. Choke it out." You snap and pull at the legs, keeping him from getting back up. Bel does his bit until the yearling stops thrashing, then even twitching. "He dead?" You ask. "I don't want to open him up til he's all the way gone."
You shift your stance a bit, bracing against the shoulder so you can push the head underwater. Of course, your snout is underwater at that point as well, but your ears aren't; you hear a short rattle of bubbles popping, and then no more. When you let go, the deer's head stays under, and the blood from your bite dribbles instead of spurting. "Yeah, he's done. Can we get him up on the beach? Oh my god, I'm so hungry." You snort your nose clear of lake and blood, take a stinging breath of cold air scented with pine and wolf -- oh, huh. Some of that wolf smell isn't you or Erskin. "Hey, I think we might have company pretty soon."
"Ugh," you go, ears back in aggravation. "Well, we can't waste time hauling the body around, then. Here, help me chew the back leg loose, and if we've got time we'll go for the other one. We can carry those off when the local family shows up and no one's got to fuss." Before you dig in, though, you take a moment to lick the deer's head between the ears, underwater though it is. "Better luck next time," you wish him, sincerely. Then you bounce over to the hindquarters and start scissoring through the haunch as fast as you can.
"What the fuck, you are such a sweetheart, oh my god." You lose several seconds just d'awwing at him before you move to help. It probably wouldn't have mattered if you'd leapt to work immediately, though. The local bosslady is already padfooting it out of the undergrowth, looking very serious. For her benefit as well as Erskin's, you say reasonably, "Why take a chunk and run, why not just share? There's enough for everyone, it's a big animal."
You waver, hesitating, and look up at the boss with your tail wagging between your legs. "Please?" you go. "It's our deer," she says severely. "And you're not us." "You're not us!" several of her kids go, with the dramatic enthusiasm of youth. "But we're so cute and small," you offer, which is an outrageous lie on Bel's part but you might as well give it a shot. You crawl hopefully forward— her eldest son and daughter puff up forbiddingly to see you coming, and one of this season's pups makes a cocky feint at you. But! You reach her and lick at her throat with tremendous respect and go "Please please please," and though her ears go back she's thinking it over. It helps that you're small and outrageously groveling, but it doesn't help that you look more than a little like a coyote. "I don't like you, that's obnoxious," she decides, and takes a snap at you. You skitter back, tail clamped. She continues: "I really don't like him. Is he mean? Is he murderous?" You look at Bel. Everyone looks at Bel. He stands there looking self conscious but also very calm. Interested but unthreatening. A young girl takes a few curious steps over to sniff and is chased back by an older sister, who is then overcome by curiosity as well. A lot of cautious sniffing and hopping around is undertaken. "Hm," goes the lady, and there's a considering, marital sort of gleam in her eyes. "Not murderous." "Look flirty," you call to Bel, still doing your very very friendly cringe in the middle of the pack. "She thinks you're cute."
"I don't know how to look flirty," you say, not really very concerned. You try to project 'respectful but not afraid' instead. "I really would like to share this deer with your family, ma'am. My friend and I can pull it out of the water for you guys and everything." Erskin's cringing is super distracting; you can't help looking askance at him. "Bro, you look silly as hell and I think you're weirding everyone out..."
"IT'S MY 'I AM NICE DON'T EAT ME' CROUCH," you let him know, while demonstrating. "They're wolves, Bel, they don't have fucking future conditionals, hypotheticals, I-don't-know-whatsits! And if they want to keep things simple— which they do, because they're wolves— there's six of them. Emote a little, would you?" During your snapping, you are slowly backing out of the ring. Everyone does a lot of jumping around and uncertain test-growling and stress-displacement boxing. You could stand to displace some stress. You reach Bel and straighten up, leaning your head against him to try and get over the shivers. "Just— okay, let's pull the deer out of the water, towards them. They'll be confused while we're working and then excited when the deer is all of a sudden magically close-by and convenient. If we both dig in just on one end—neck, that way we won't get shoved off towards the hooves— I think it'll work. Growl only when growled at. I can't believe you don't know how to look flirty, you're so hot. What a waste of material." You're chattering nervously. You stop yourself with an effort and start in on dragging the body.
You've finally picked up that he's honestly scared. "Erskin, it'll be okay," you insist, and lick his face before grabbing a deer leg and bracing to pull. Thanks to ice and slick algae on rocks, it's surprisingly easy to haul the carcass well up onto the shore. The wolves give you a pretty wide margin, clearly uncertain whether this is a good thing or not. Then, as you and Erskin move to open up the neck where your killing bite weakened the skin, one of the little ones comes at you with some sort of experimental aggression. You can't bring yourself to growl back, the little dude is just so cute, so instead you playfully tip him over with a paw. "Boop!"
When the juvenile tips over with a yelp, you reflexively flatten to the ground and look at her mom— but she's more interested in sneaking up on the deer's exposed belly than defending the dignity of her children. "Are you going to move?" she asks, standing tall over the haunches. "....nnnno?" you go, and gnaw at the neck a bit, side-eying her warily. She huffs, glares, bristles, huffs again, and gives up, while you wag your tailtip with desperate cuteness. Then she goes for the stomach, and the uneasy standoff is broken. The kids pile in, you maneuver Bel between yourself and the feeding frenzy, and it's time for breakfast. (Bel will probably get his nose bit a few times, as a stranger who the kids would be trying to completely edge out instead of just compete with for choice bits. This is why Erskin wanted a buffer. The mom isn't directly protective of them right now though since they're all big enough to take care of themselves, so she wouldn't be too upset with Bel making some noise and snaps to defend his end.)
The deer's neck and shoulder are meaty enough that you don't even instinctively begrudge the rest of them a meal, let alone consciously. The younger wolves still try to edge you out occasionally, but you can recognize it as social hierarchy stuff rather than actually wanting your food. A stern "Back off, kid!" from you seems to do the trick without escalating. As for the meat itself, you're pretty sure you've never eaten anything this delicious in your life. Knowing that 'raw deer neck eaten off a bed of muddy, ice-crusted fur rank with fear-sweat' is absolutely not delicious in any objective way doesn't change that. Only once you and erskin have, between you, eaten everything forward of the forelegs except the brain -- "Prion diseases, bro, don't touch that!" -- do you back off and leave the rest of the carcass to the family. You roll in the grass and dry leaves to get the worst off, then flop on your side to invite Erskin to come over and do a grooming. The same leggy, half-grown kid you tipped over beats him to it. With a shrug, you reciprocate the cleaning; you're not getting bad instinct vibes off it, you think it's just friendliness.
You steal a meaty rib-bone out of the scrum and trot over to gnaw it clean over by Bel. His admirer eyes you warily, then continues her enthusiastic, completely inept flirtation. "That's adorable," you comment. "Someone's hitting puberty hard, eh?" "We're in love," the little girl asserts, not very factually.
"Seriously? I thought I was giving off a big brother vibe. Erskin, wash my face, I'm not a cradle robber." You edge over to share his bone. "I am so socially inept, I just have to hope it wraps back around to charming somehow."
You laugh. "Oh my word, Bel, no, you're probably the first handsome gent she's ever seen that's not one of her big brothers. Of course she's interested. Don't fret, you're not signing a marriage contract if you let a little girl try out some moves." "I'm grownup," the little girl in questions puts in. She attempts a frisk. "I'm hot like my mom." Considering she isn't even old enough to have seen any of her mom's hypothetical hotness, this comes across as completely adorable. "I'd have expected the eldest girl to try something, though," you say thoughtfully. "Her agemate brother is going to be clearing out at the end of the winter, when a stepfather moves in, and she might too if she meets someone. I suppose it's still too early for most everyone to really care yet, though."
"I hope no one sincerely tries anything. I don't know how wolf courtship works. Just -- stop me before I accidentally propose marriage or something, okay? I wanted to make peace, not whoopee." You sigh gustily around your gnawing project.
"Could have fooled me, Lord Blowjobs," you tease, and lick him messily across the nose. When he rolls his eyes and paws at you, you laugh and pull the bone over far enough to gnaw on the other end. "It's only autumn, Bel, no regular wolf is going to give two sniffs about marriage proposals for another— oh, three months? I expect you could parade around in front of everyone right now with your pocket friend flopping about and they'd just be confused, mid- to late winter is as soon as anyone would even have any idea you were proposing anything. If wolves went at it any earlier, the puppies wouldn't be born in the spring, and it'd be a tremendous waste of everyone's time. They'd just die, they'd come out of the den right smack into a blizzard or something." You look at him sideways, grinning. "Now, coyotes, you might have a little more luck with their ladies, they start earlier, and you evidently like us ginger types!" You flip your tail. Coyly.
"You're only a coyote psychologically," you point out, but you're very much relieved. "So I can be friendly with these guys and not give anyone the wrong impression or, or raise expectations that will only be cruelly dashed? Good to know." An evil thought occurs to you, and because you still haven't gotten the hang of being circumspect in wolf form, you blurt it right out: "If she's looking for a stepdad for her kids, there's one werewolf we know is single..."
You crack up. "Oh my god no," you wheeze. You roll over and kick your feet. "Can you imagine? She'd have his balls for breakfast, if she deigned touch him at all. Poor Lord Failwolf's about as fine a father figure as a— a stump. A stump with delusions." The lady in question is buried up to her shoulders in the deer's rib cavity, industriously eating herself spherical. It's always nice to see someone who knows the value of a free meal. "I don't think she'll have to go looking, anyway," you muse. "She looks to be in good shape for the winter and has plenty of kids to help her hold the territory, so I expect any amount of handsome lads cut loose from their own natal units will be passing through. Then comes romance, more kids, etcetera." You lick your nose thoughtfully. "Incidentally, if you genuinely don't want to have all sixteen of your hypothetically magnificent puppies this April, you might want to start practicing your graceful demurrals in regards to werewolf romances, about as soon as...well, er, now. The matchmaking only gets more intense after it starts to frost."
