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[They were on land again. Rowan had been slowly going insane out of inactivity and the feeling of being locked up in an unnatural plastic cage separated from both his people and the hisil, and he took the first opportunity to leave his new plastic prison.

It was a desert, but he didn't even care. He could feel the spirit world again, though it felt alien and impossible to access. For now, that it was there was enough for him to feel the collected tension disappear by at least seventy-five percent.

Another ten percent disappeared when he shifted into his wolf form and opened his senses beyond what he had been able to sense before. If he had been able to cry, he would have. Instead, he started to explore this new world.

Hours later, he returns to the shadows of the ship, dragging a half-eaten carcass of a deer-sized lizard. Reptile was far from his favorite, but the hunt more than made up for the peculiar alien flavor of the creature. He lays in the sand for a few minutes to recover, enjoying the shade from the spaceship. Then he stretches and shifts back to human, clad only in a pair of pants and quite a bit of blood.

Relief makes him careless; he doesn't think of the scars and tattoos on his body, or how it would look to sit next to a dead animal, licking blood from his fingers or reaching over for another bite from his prey.]

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Because I brought it. It is dead, it can't harm you. [Rowan glances down, now realizing that he is currently covered in blood, and touches his mouth.

Blood there, too. He looks back to the lizard, which is also very obviously half-eaten.

This could go badly.] There are many other lizards out there.

[Mari sits up and looks about. Rowan is covered in blood. Alright.] What, you murdered it? [She sounds doubtful. He doesn't look capable of it.] You and who's army?

[Mari glances past him and spots the desert outside and immediately thinks about the lizard again. She thinks of their dry, scaly skin, their flickering tongues, their toes and feet, their scuttling movements. Egg laying.

She lies back down.]

I don't like lizards.

Hunted. [Rowan licks his lips, tasting the blood again. It is different from any other blood he has tasted and difficult to place, but not bad.] It did not move very fast.

Do not leave the ship, then. There are intelligent lizards at a market that way. [He turns and points to the direction; he had smelled it and seen it, but avoided it for the day] This one was ... not.

Hunted? [He has no weapons. Mari eyes him suspiciously.] How exactly did you do that?

[Intelligent lizards. Mari leans back, eyebrows knitted together, teeth bared and the corners of her mouth down turned. No thank you. No, no definitely no.] I don't care if it fails tests left right and center. Get it away from the ship.

[Rowan shrugs. If she cannot guess how - and she mentioned werewolves already once to him, so she is aware of the possibility - he was not going to inform her. He has already slipped once in his relief to escape his prison. He has spent hours debating with himself how the Oaths of the Moon apply while he is kidnapped, but better safe than sorry for now.]

It's dead. [Which should be obvious, since Rowan already tore into it quite a bit and he is not a clean eater in this situation.] It isn't going to do anything.

It's disgusting. Dead bodies carry disease. And you killed it. So you get rid of it. [It's difficult to talk with her hackles so raised. She's speaking from between teeth which are ground together so hard they might well fuse together.] And if you just leave a dead body out there, something will come investigating. I don't feel like dealing with whatever predators or hunters a land filled with giant clever lizards has. You don't know the rules here. What if you just poached that creature? Do you think they'll just give us a fine?

[There's a nice list of reasons why he should get rid of the awful thing.] Now fuck off and keep fucking off until you've gotten rid of the body.

[Rowan looks back at it, then back to the girl] It's newly dead and I do not plan on keeping it around long enough for it to carry disease or track other predators to us. [and if it did, Rowan was sure he could handle them] I was not finished with it when you distracted me.

[There was the potential for learning, as well. The physical properties alone could give them a potential wealth of knowledge, and perhaps there was something in it that had spiritual wealth as well.

Much as he detested being told what to do by a slip of a girl the width of his hand, Rowan turned and returned to his lizard. Instead of fucking off, however, he began to tear it apart and organize it into bits that he could use for later, such as the bones, and bits he probably didn't need right now, such as what remained of the internal organs.

A difficult task with human hands, but it only took a thought and a prayer to shift his hands alone, which made tearing into the lizard much more effective]

[Mari lay where she was for a little while longer before getting up and padding to the door of the ship. The smell of blood and death always attracted scavengers. Even if he did get rid of it, the blood would still be there.]

GET RID OF IT, [she yelled at him from the ship's door. Stupid.]

Fuck off! [he called back, still patiently dismembering the lizard. It was not a very complicated animal to dismember, with the claws, and he nearly had the piles of what to keep and what to bury complete.]

[Mari gives him the finger from her position safe in the ship and yells one more time:] GET. RID. OF. IT.

[A nudge to her knee tells her she's not alone; her cat has found her again. He weaves in and out of her legs as she stares sourly at the scene outside.] Hey, soft kitty. [She can't call him by name.] Look at the moron. Look. It's a moron. [The cat hooks his claws in her jeans and bounds up. She gives him support and help as he climbs up to her shoulder.

Shielding her eyes to glare at Rowan again, she shouts:] AND BRING BACK SOME MEAT.

[He ignores her this time and focus on his work. He is nearly done when she calls for meat, which makes him roll his eyes.] I'll have to get another one to get meat. I've already eaten everything off this one, [He calls back to her, and tosses over a foot, complete with a set of claws, to the entrance of the ship] You'll have to make do with that for now.

[He begins to dig a hole in the sand for the offal, which is made easier with his claws. If he could, he'd shift entirely to get it done faster ... but it was risk enough with her sitting so close by.]

[Oh god, she thought to herself, freezing in place. Augh. Oh god. Mari hesitates as her cat jumps down to investigate. She jumps up and down on the spot as her cat sniffs the foot, then decides the heat outside isn't worth going nearer and moves back inside.

Oh god. Time to get rid of it.

With a roar that grows louder as she grows closer, Mari runs to it then kicks it with all the power in her leg behind it. It sails into the air. She lets out another "AUGH", jumping up and down on one foot, shaking the foot that had actually made impact. Disgusting.]

So ungrateful. [Everything was organized. Rowan stepped back further into the shadows of the ship and allowed his claws to return to human hands, and then knelt down by where the remains he was going to keep, with some adjustment, were placed.

He couldn't step through the Gauntlet, although he could feel it pressing on him. However, he could still pull from the wolf half of his soul. It felt like seeing after being blind.

His essence went through him and into the carcass in front of him, wrapping around the bones and into the skin, decaying it at an unnatural speed. It dripped off the bones and into the sand, leaving them dry and as if they had been sitting out in the sun for days.

With a sigh for walking back into blindness voluntarily, Rowan picked up the bones carefully, kicked sand over where the remains of the flesh were, and walked inside.]

I'm done now.

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