I saw smoke in the distance, but eh.

I mean, sure, maybe I should’ve felt a little more alarm than I did; maybe my stomach should have churned more with anxiety than just rumble with these slight tremors of unease. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve been sitting on my fat ass all day instead of going to see where the hell the rest of the herd had gone. Maybe. I dunno.

It was…hard, harder than I thought it would be. I had told Tembovu we were here to serve him and he had accepted me with arms open wider than I had anticipated--but still, that was Tembovu and this was a full herd and even though I told the Elephant I was his, that ain’t mean I belonged to them. At last not yet. I didn’t really know them like I should, and it was hard to think of them as an “us”, or the Edge as “home”. It was nothing like the Foothills had been, not at all, but it ain’t like I was expecting that kind of warm glow, I guess. I just hadn’t expected it to be this tough though.

I watched the thin stream of gray smoke rise from the treetops, lifting my head from my grazing to watch it trail a path across the sky, out west where the Edge was. I guess that squirm in my belly was guilt for being so far away, for calling myself a warrior of the Edge without doing jackshit but that same stuff I’d always done. It was enough to make me say “Cheek,” calling him from the soft, sun-warmed spot in the grasses he had been lying in not too far away from me. He yawned, stretching and hearing the unease in my thoughts. Hey, shake a leg, we need to head on back to--

FIGHT ME, the world screamed suddenly.

My body jolted in place, my nerves jumping on end. “OKAY?!” I answered impulsively. I wasn’t as young as I used to be but I guess I wasn’t impervious to a blind challenge of whoop-ass in the wind. Not yet at least.

The screamer wasn’t too far off; her pale coat shimmered in the sunlight, making her stand out easily. I glanced over the horn curving from her brow and her dark, heavy wings, contrasting against her white body-- then thought fuck it and dropped the pretense of a strategy, turning my ass to face her and breaking into a charge for her face.

Chico wasn’t fully awake yet. He blinked with blurry eyes from where he lay in the grass, half-hidden, watching as I dove head-first into a fight with a stranger and not really all that hot about joining in himself. Nah, he was ready to just enjoy the show for the moment.

---

WC: 467/800

AC: 1/3

Chico will NOT be joining this fight!"talk"