PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 WIP | BONUS: Intoxicated
You are out on a hike when you see her for the first time. It’s a warm day in the fall, the world and your senses muffled by the fallen leaves. Your eyes, blinded by the light of the midday sun as it filters through the dying canopy.
The smaller critters of the woods are out in force. You've counted at least twelve squirrels and four rabbits and what you thought was a fox…. or perhaps a skunk? You aren’t sure. You keep getting distracted by the pleasant scent of the woods and the decaying leaves that will provide fertile soil for regrowth once winter comes and goes.
It’s noon when you come to the peak of the mountain. Your paws ache and you’re excited to pull off your pack, finally drink something and eat the simple lunch you picked up on the way to the trail head. It takes a bit of thinking and a good bit of scrambling up sheer rock faces, but you find a nice outcropping on which you sit and enjoy the view of the mountains and your lunch. From here, you can look down on the valley below where the world has been painted orange and red for the harvest season. The trees end in brown and dormant shrubs that give way to sharp grasses that flow into the rocky side of the cliffs below you, before those cliffs return again to grass then shrubbery and then to sparse trees until you are back in this seat atop the mountain's rocky peak.
It is there that you see her. On the steep and rocky slope of the cliffs below you spot a movement. For a moment, you almost think you've found a very odd colored bear. Her form is not sleek, but her paws manage the rocks nimbly as she prowls along on two feet, barely making any noise or shifting a single stone.
A large feline prowls towards you. A panther, a mountain lion, a puma. Something. Her movements transfix you and for a while you just watch her as every so often she pulls herself up another ledge, massive front paws pulling her up as her tail shifts only to balance. Or perhaps it is not her paw that is massive, but her. The brown fur and mottled spots along her limbs cause her to blend into the rocks and her size feels almost like a mirage. Regardless, the sight of sharp claws and those glinting yellow green eyes remind you of what she is and where you are.
She is an apex predator and this is her territory.
It dawns on you that she has gotten much closer. Even now, she is starting to make her way through the low brush where the mountain starts to flatten out just before the last climb to the summit. You are unsure how close she will get, but you fear that you may have missed your window to make an easy exit.
If it ever existed at all.
You watch in a very different sort of fascination - that of the mouse and the house pet - as she draws closer. As she breaks through the shrub line, you realize she can not be more than forty feet away. From here, you can see that her ears are slightly pointed like a lynx perhaps, and that she has been moving purposefully ever closer to where you sit.
Suddenly, the expansive view makes you feel deeply exposed and you shrink back a bit into the shadows of the ancient stones.
“Hey there, stranger,” She purrs as she leans her massive front paws on the rock below you, “It's dangerous to be out here alone this time of year, lots of big predators getting ready for the winter,”
You swallow hard and try to keep your voice from breaking as you tell her you're waiting on a friend, they were just behind you. She hums and drags deadly claws down the rocks with a noise that makes your stomach turn. Her eyes trace your limbs and linger on your chest and legs like a touch and you can't help but blush and turn away.
“Are you sure? I haven't scented anything larger than a fox up here other than you for a while,” Her smile reveals glinting teeth that seem almost too large for her mouth and you unconsciously move a little deeper into the shadows, “If you like though, I can keep you company up here while you wait?"
When you stutter that you were about to head down, her grin only grows wider, "Oh? In that case I can lead you down the mountain?” Her purr is almost sweet now, and she looks up at you with those huge eyes, “We can see if that…. friend…. just got lost somewhere along the way.” When you don't immediately move, she adds, “I'd hate for someone to get caught up here after dark.”
For a moment, you almost fall for it. Maybe it's the atmosphere. Maybe it's your own hubris coming up here alone rearing its head. But for a moment, you forget about her teeth and the way she stalked towards you up the mountain side.
But her claws slip and that sharp and dangerous sound brings your better sense - or perhaps the sense of long dormant prey instincts - screaming back in. Threat. Hide. Danger. You decline, saying you came up for peace and quiet - and then quickly add to see your friend - and would like to please finish your lunch alone please.
Instantly your caution is rewarded as darkness clouds her eyes and she bares her teeth up at you. Quickly, she gains composure and again is polite and civil, but you know what you saw. The part of your brain that still remembers the time before houses and phones and electricity remembers. She is a predator, and you are denying her a good and easy meal.
“Mhm, well just remember to be careful on the way back down,” She turns away and you realize she must have either not known you were watching or not cared before, as she disappears almost instantly into the brush. It’s like she was never there but for words carried to you on the wind. Tone light and teasing.
“There are many things that would love to get a bite of a tasty little morsel like you.”