Autumn had flourished across the land in hues of red and orange, and with it so had she. As the weather turned cooler, her father's blood reared its head, a ripple of color that painted her into shades of bloodied rose instead of dawn-hued pinks and golds. Alice watched the transformation with awe and curiosity, as if it held some sort of meaning for her maiden to be cloaked in blood and prowess. Gentle regal form struck into tyrannical queen, blood stained on snow. Hotaru rolled her eyes fondly at the hellbeast and her fawning, pale hooves digging into the earth idly. It was a calm season, but the leaves fell regardless, the weak dying first to supplement the earth for the coming winter. It would come in time, but autumn was still new and young, and she had a home full of winter to always return to. It was different for her, to await those seasons, when the passage could only be told by a keen native eye in the Basin. As locked away in time as it was in nature, and she wondered if the illusion was some sort of personal joke for their patron god. 

Hunt? It was an easier word for Alice to say, rather than 'prey, or 'meat' or 'hunger'. She seemed eternally ravenous, growing growing growing and never stopping. Pacing Hotaru's age, their souls fitting tighter and more perfectly with each season, but Alice's body lagging behind. It frustrated the hellhound, to be so young and feeble while Hotaru grew to become a young adult. A struggle Hotaru could not comprehend, but one that plagued the primordial mind of the beast. It was a sense of inadequacy, of imperfection. Alice yearned for their completion more than even Hotaru, desired to be the perfect pair and team, a deadly united force that nothing and nobody could stop. Hunting was her only way to satisfy the thirst inside her, for if she could not quench herself on the blood of enemies, she could at least satisfy herself physically by feasting on the meat of her prey. 

Hotaru acquiesced easily enough. Alice was strong and capable of defending herself, had gone out hunting alone in the Basin many times. What difference did the landscape make? Perhaps she'd even find a new animal to stalk and kill. With a distinct yelp of happiness, Alice turned and went streaking off into the brittle undergrowth, noisy in her departure only to ease into silence as the distance increased. Hotaru watched her go, a flash of blackened purple on innocent white, before turning away and continuing on her own private trek. 

There was nowhere for her to go, nowhere to be. A certain ease of silence and lack of responsibility. Stretched her limbs and smiled into the weak autumn sun, fading towards the eventuality of darkness. Even with her sore and battered heart, her bruised and cracking ribs, she felt at peace.