Hello, Like Mind [CharlotteC]

[Lancaster]

The telepathic link between them may as well have been an open telephone call; where Lancaster heard Charlotte’s laughter bouncing around in his skull, she too would be privy to his own mirth. It seemed the two of them, once finding out their animal natures, went about their research in different ways. Lancaster went into the philosophy of it; he researched the dingo only enough to try to figure out why he himself might turn into one. The conclusions he’d come to were not exactly profound. The dingo was a wild dog, but a dog that could easily be tamed. Social creatures, happy creatures. Pack animals. And native to Australia.

Lancaster considered himself a wild kind of person. He never did stick to one home; he wandered the world like a pilgrim. A wandering gypsy. A social creature, he’d mingled in whatever group he’d stumbled across, making friends easy, finding happiness easy. Here, in Harper Rock, he’d found Pi. Or Pi had found him. Under her tutelage, he had been tamed, his wandering ways quashed. He often felt like an animal in a cage, even if there was nothing keeping him stationary. Maybe that was why he felt so free when he donned his fur.

Whatever the case, it amused him as Charlotte continued to barrage him with the facts, even if they circled around the hyena in popular culture, rather than on the hyena itself. He wouldn’t say that his own senses were any different to how he functioned as a vampire; they were still heightened, but they were different. They were honed for different purposes. The only real difference was his sight.

As Charlotte landed behind him, Lancaster spun around. He took a deep breath and howled. The sound was deep, gruff, and yet melodic as it pierced the air. The natural call of the dingo.

”If it were a wild hyena, yeah. It’d probably get to me. But it’s you. So no,” he said, before he huffed and sneezed. He nipped playfully at the other creature, before his ear twitched. Over to the left, somewhere in the depths of the shrubbery, a twig snapped. Leaves rustled.

”You wanted to hunt, though. So tell me - small prey or large?”

[CharlotteC]

As he nipped at her, she laughed and nipped back at him, giving off something close to a small squeak. A sound that was usually reserved for pups to call to their mother - why would they ever call out to their father? However, in this case, she was, for a lack of a better term, calling to her father as he nipped at her. As she heard the twig snap, her head shot up, her rounded ears perked and her eyes widened just a bit more, the scruff of her mane lifting a bit in the haunches. Then her eyes returned to Elliot and gave a mental snort of amusement. Small or large prey? Was he kidding? Even a single hyena could bring down some of the larger creatures on the African Savannah, especially if she was the alpha. The alpha was larger than the rest of her pack - the queen B as it were.

Her muzzle pulled back in a freaky looking hyena smile and then she was laughing once more. ~Oh, I will always say large. They are more fun to play with and torment before taking them down and putting them out of their misery.~ And again there was laughter in her thoughts as she nipped at him again and then looked in the direction of the sound they had heard, lowering herself slightly, getting ready to bound through the brush and bushes towards whatever it was she heard. As she prepared though, she concentrated on the scent of the animal, on the quick beat of its heart, or the way it was moving through the hunting grounds. Each step was a signature, she just needed to remember which one.

She looked over at Elliot and gave a playful snarl of sorts, her hyena way of smiling at him before she took off like a shot. Though her gait was different than most hunters, and she had to find her way around some of the different things, she was still very good at hunting her prey, she knew where it and Elliot were at every moment of the time. She went one way, still moving with speed, but also agility. This way, that way... pushing the animal in the direction she wanted. In this case, she was pushing it into a place she knew would be hard for a big animal to escape easily, especially with two pack hunting animals on its six.

[Lancaster]

Lancaster had no plan to torment anything.

As a man, he loathed violence. He wasn’t too good at being an animal, either. He tried to bypass all the animalistic instincts, though they still existed. Right at the foundation of him, the very dirt upon which he stood, were those basic instincts. Violence. Something that he was good at. Something that he succeeded in, almost without fail. It was a ticking time bomb within him; every time he thought he had control of it, something would happen to prove him wrong.

Regardless of how good he might be at violence, however, Lancaster never used it for his own gains. He never used it for pleasure. Cruelty was not something that he condoned. Tormenting innocent creatures was not something that he would participate in. Hunting them was all well and good – the dingo wouldn’t let him refuse. He dingo wanted the hunt. But the torment? No. The dingo hunted for food. He hunted to protect his young. He hunted when he had to, but he did not hunt for fun. At least, that’s what Lancaster told himself.

He didn’t argue the point with Charlotte, however; he hoped it was just a turn of phrase, and she didn’t actually intend on torturing anything. While she chased after whatever animal whose trail she’d started to track, Lancaster swung around and sped up. There were two of them, and one of whatever it was they were hunting. Dirt sprayed from beneath his paws as he pushed off the earth to fly through space. This was what was so freeing about the Dingo. As a man? Lancaster was as graceful as a giraffe. But as the Dingo? He was free.

Lancaster caught glimpses of the animal through the underbrush; a tail here, a rump there. It was a lone mountain lion. Nothing they couldn’t take down.

A few barks communicated Lancaster’s intent. To swing around, to cut her off. To force her to change direction, so that the hyena could close in. Lancaster was a gentleman. Ladies first.

[CharlotteC]

She heard the barks, she knew the tone, she knew who was communicating and what he was communicated to her. Charlie continued to hunt through the grounds, spotting just what it was that they were hunting. There was a small part of her that really did want to torment this creature. To make its pain last. That was the hyena in her, hyenas never really got along with other large cat predators, especially those of the lion persuasion. However, this wasn't the lion of the African plains, the lions that not only stalked and bullied the hyenas as much as the hyenas stalked and bullied them. This was a different breed of lion. One that preferred solitude to a pride, one that preferred stalking from high above not down below. That meant that even though they were hunting it, it likely knew and was in a way, stalking and leading them into a trap of some kind. A way to turn the tides of the fight. That was how the solitary predator hunted... most the time.

She let out a whooping sound followed by the soft snickering laughter sound that normally came when one was worried about what could go on. A warning towards her sire to be on guard. Though she knew that he was offering her to take the kill, she could do it, especially as she was following closer and closer, enough that she could see the way the corded muscles bunched and released their hidden energy beneath the soft, smooth though slightly sweaty tan hide. The way the legs pulled in and punched out with a strength that was clearly all feline. One that spoke of being able to jump high rocks and trees, with claws that could dig deep into Pine and Oak, into Adler and Birch, Cedar and Yew. Then all of a sudden, the mountain lion came up short, stopping in a crevice of rock to high to jump. It turned, rounded on Charlie.

She stopped momentarily, eyeing the lion as it eyed her. Slowly, they circled each other, each looking for signs of the other's weaknesses. Though she didn't know if the lion spotted hers as much as Charlie spotted the lion's. Charlie let out another sound, a mild warning that was both aimed towards the creature as well as towards the lion. The lion let out a growl that echoed though the area and she let out another sound. And then, as the lion went to pounce on her, she dodged slightly - though not quite enough. Claws dug into her side, but she had her mark, she tried to snap her jaws around the lion's neck, for the jugular, however, the lion was going for the same mark. Charlie was able to dodge as it had, the two large bodies rolling around on the ground in the dirt.

That was, until she got the upper hand - so to speak - and was able to get her mouth around her mark, squeezing down, ignored the way the lion fought, clawed her again and again, spilling some of her blood. It was a risk, fighting animals like this, but one that could be easily dealt with, unlike fighting other vampires. She would heal from this and it was only one, then there was the fact that she had Elliot watching her back. The growling came to a silence, and Charlie fell back onto the ground next to the now silent and dead mountain lion. A soft laughing sound bubbled from her but in her mind she reached out to Elliot ~That's going to leave a mark...~ It was joking but the pain was clear in her tone.

[Lancaster]

In allowing Charlotte the kill, Lancaster was able to admit to himself that he preferred it that way. He and the dingo were not cohesive. Where the wild animal in him wanted to taste the blood and tear into the flesh, even in this body the human part still had control. It still had precedence. Lancaster, the man, did not want to taste blood. He did not want to tear into flesh. But at what cost?

Charlotte had wanted to hunt and Lancaster had agreed. At that moment, he realised he had agreed only to spend time with Charlotte. This woman he had adopted because her views were in line with his own. She was a stray, and Lancaster was in the habit of taking in strays; of helping those in need of help. In this way, he was easy to persuade; he could be talked into most things, if he thought it would aid the person he was with.

The big cat’s death was not a natural one. Not really. The Hyena and the Dingo were not apex predators of the Canadian wilderness. They did not belong there. If he could get into the lion’s head, what would it be thinking? Would it be confused? Afraid of this enemy that it was not aware of? An enemy it had never seen before? Lions were killed in this wilderness every day and one more would do no harm. It was a wild animal, not a tame one. No one would be missing their pet. These were the things that Lancaster told himself.

If it wasn’t Charlotte who took the lion down, it would have been him; he’d be the one with the marks, the scratches. The pain. Guilt was a constant boon buddy, and it folded into his thoughts even now.

”Leave a mark? It will heal…” he said, telepathically, as he trotted toward the scene. The lion was dead, killed by the hyena. It had all happened too quickly for Lancaster to help. He kept telling himself he’d allowed her the kill but really, he couldn’t have helped either way. She’d had the lion down and slaughtered before he could even reach her. Had he wanted to participate, he might have made some quip about not waiting for him. But he didn’t. He was happy to be the one to help; happy to steer the prey in Charlotte’s direction, if this was something that she needed.

He trotted over to the dead lion, sniffing at its fur, its blood inspiring no hunger in Lancaster. Nothing.

”What do you do with them after you’ve killed them…?” he asked, curious.

[CharlotteC]

Elliot’s mental question as to what she had said about leaving a mark filtered into her head as she continued to stand on the lion, almost as if she were claiming her kill. And in a way, she was, though that was the nature of the beast, her beast, it wasn’t something that liked to share with any other beast other than those of her pack, but there was the human part of her that said that Elliot was part of her pack - even if he was a dingo - and that she would share the kill with him. She slowly backed off as he came closer, a small part of her wanting to snarl or growl or just bite his head off, but again the human in her was reminding the hyena in her that Elliot was her sire, part of her pack. So instead of growling her anything that seemed of danger to Elliot, she relaxed and just stood there.

She took that time to explain what she had meant earlier. ~I know you are too much of a gentleman to look at my body when I was undressing, but haven’t you noticed the few scars that my clothes do not hide? Yes, the wound will heal, but it will also linger as a scar. I have many, most of them given to me by those bastards in the Ty. I am left with an immortal reminder that those I can trust are limited to you… and possibly Pi.~ She said and then fell silent again. As he moved back, she once again moved in, and there was the Hyena that wanted to feast, to eat her fill and pick the bones clean. Something she was good at, but at the same time, because she was more in control than she normally allowed herself, her human (or rather vampire) side felt no urge to eat the beast.

Charlie glanced to Elliot with his question and actually managed something akin to a shrug. ~Actually, when I am alone, I allow my animal instincts to rule, so I eat it. However, because I am not fully allowing my Hyena nature freedom, I believe I will leave it be. Or perhaps I can find a way to take its hide at least. Or maybe its paw. That stuff is valuable right?~ She asked him as she pawed at the corpse of the lion and then looked at him once again. There had been days when she had gone into one of the shops and heard of vampires selling things like hides and paws and teeth, as if the things had some importance to the keeper. The only time she had heard of such things was back in Maine, because in Maine, nothing went to waste. They were, at least in that bit, like the Native Americans that had once lived in the country.

[Lancaster]

Lancaster had not noticed the scars. Maybe he wasn’t so good at paying attention to physical scars; he was too preoccupied, most of the time, sifting through the mental ones. Emotional scars were just as easy to see; just as easy to pinpoint. They were the ones that lingered; they were the underlying bass to whatever else a person felt on the surface. They might not even know it was there. If Lancaster wasn’t paying attention, he could miss it sometimes, too. A person could be happy on the surface. They could be content. But sometimes, there was an underlying sadness, or anger.

With Charlie, Lancaster so often felt the anger, and there was a burst of it now, when she talked about the scars from her altercation with Tytonidae. If emotions were colours, he’d have seen it – a firework exploding amidst the clouds.

The dingo pawed at the ground, though he made no move to approach the Lion. Back when he was first turned, he had killed a few of the beasts. Not as a dingo, but as a human; there were things that Pi had needed. Or else, there were things that he knew could be sold. He hadn’t enjoyed it, even then – but it was in hunting season, and he’d kept the regulations, and to the hunting grounds.

”Yeah. Ritualists use it, sometimes,” he said. He wasn’t a ritualist, nor had he ever dabbled. But he’d had long discussions with the shop-keepers before. Lancaster, he really did like to talk, sometimes, and this was the kind of information he could gather. Not only from them, but from Pi. She had not been remiss as a sire.

”Why do you hunt? I mean… if you know you could get injured, if you know you’ll have lasting scars. If I’d known I would’ve tried to prevent it,” he said. And he probably would have. He couldn’t believe that a person would want the scars, or that they wouldn’t care about them. For Charlotte’s sake, he’d have taken the hit. If it prevented another scar, he’d have done it for her.

[CharlotteC]

Charlie nodded her head to Elliot as he spoke about the ritualists, she knew of at least one, possibly two ritualists that she could pass on the things to. So she leaned down at that moment and bit through one of the lion’s paws then let it fall from her mouth before she looked back up at him, his question about hunting made her stop for a moment. Then she huffed a little, giving the impression of a sigh.

~I hunt because I enjoy the feel, the freedom I get in being in this form. You must at least understand that much, right? The scars, well, at least these scars, they were of my own decision. I chose to fight a lion, I can accept that it will always be a part of me now. The other scars, those weren’t my decision, I was ganged up on by vampires far older and stronger than me and killed.~ She was almost hissing in her mind as she thought about it but then looked to the body of the lion and sighed softly, ~Sometimes hunting also gets me out of my mind, being in the mind of a beast, with such limited things to worry about. It’s relaxing. It gives me that freedom I used to have when I was able to get high.~

[Lancaster]

Lancaster could understand, but maybe he understood too well. He had all his life. He knew that he had latent addictive tendencies. When he was younger he used to smoke. Thankfully he’d kicked the habit before he was far too much enthralled by the sticks of nicotine. But like any other creative type, he knew that he could and would surrender to the high of drugs. Sometimes he wished that opium hadn’t gone out of style; he could have been the Oscar Wilde of the music world. But then, Oscar Wilde had it pretty tough, in the end, and many thought he could have been insane.

In order to travel as much as he had, Lancaster had had to keep his wits about him. Although he had smoked some weed here and there, he’d never indulged too much. Although he got drunk every now and again, it had never been a weekly ritual. He drank enough to loosen his inhibitions but never enough to do anything stupid, or make stupid decisions. His addiction of choice was travel. Something which he needed money for, so he worked hard. He served at bars, he made coffee, he busked. There was rarely a moment of any day that he wasn’t working, in some way, shape or form. And if he wasn’t working, he was enjoying himself in the company of good people. Good company – that could be addictive, too.

The point, however, was that he didn’t stay too long as a dingo because he feared one day he wouldn’t be able to turn back. If he spent too long within the freedom and relaxation that the dingo offered, he’d start to give up on everything else.

”I understand. It wasn’t an attack – it was curiosity,” he said. The dingo’s tongue was lolling from its toothy jaw, ears perked and head canted to the side. The dingo showed no disgust in the way the paw was severed; the dingo was not disgusted at all.

”Do you want to go again?” he asked. If she did, surely they could stash the paw somewhere safe.

[CharlotteC]

It was when Elliot spoke that Charlie realized just how harsh her words had been in her mind and she felt bad instantly for giving the impression that she was attacking Elliot when in truth she was just so upset at the fact that she had been so young, so without training or guidance and not even protected from people that she had been attacked up 20 vampires all twice and more powerful than she had been. She looked at the dingo that was her sire and and gave a soft whoop that was meant as something far friendlier than what a Hyena normally was. Something that they only showed to family. And he was family. Her family.

~I'm sorry, I didn't mean that to sound that I was upset with you, it just angers me so much. That that sort of behavior is allowed. I mean, they keep preaching about protecting the masq and all of that BS, but then they fight in public, they attack their own kind, especially those that have no idea how to protect themselves.~ It wasn't fair, but than, her parents always liked the phrase 'Life isn't fair.' Apparently, even the 'after life' wasn't fair either and it rather annoyed her. She stepped closer to him and bumped her head against his shoulder playfully for a moment before she looked back to the lion and nodded again. ~Going again sounds good, perhaps we will run into one of those bears.~ She said with a soft laugh, though the laugh was in her head and not the one that would normally come from the Hyena.

Picking up the paw in her mouth, she trotted over to a tree and began to dig, it wasn't a bit hole, or even a deep one, just one deep enough to slightly mask the scent of the paw, then she dropped it in and began to bury it again. When she was done, she gave the hyena form of a happy smile and then yawned a little. ~That should be safe there, for now... lets hunt!~ She asked as she trotted back over to him and pawed at him in a way that would have been like her poking him in the ribs playfully.