Prowling was as natural an action as Noche had ever committed, engrained in the fibers so loosely wound round his ample muscle that to walk had become a slink, to smile, a smirk. There was a cat-like grace to the velvet movements of his form that bespoke of many moons spent in places he should not have been, scars across his shoulders that screamed many moons survived. He stopped now with a grimace, rolling them to ease the ache that had settled there at the highest point of the day. The apex of his neat head met the ruff of his neck while he casted a careless, salutatory howl bouncing among the tree trunks. A handsome medley of browns caught the slight breeze from behind, rolling in a mirage of living elements down his limber, youthful form. A shiver was ignored, for if there was no one there to see it, had it even happened at all? And he settled down to wait out the renowned sentries of Munashii Gecko.
Should he need to, the ground was in close enough proximity to make a quick submission at the faintest scent, but his ears flattened in distaste of the stance he was forced to hold. It felt like a bow, and with not a soul in sight, it acknowledged the majesty of such things as trees, the sky, stars, and the moon, la luna de Ala Noche, swimming languidly amongst its inky pool. It irked him, this respect, as he had no wonder or fear of Mother Nature herself. But the night, oh it was one of those nights! Not even him, the weary and cross traveler could dishonor the potent silence of it all, the way the frogs croaked their last at the unheard strains of midnight, that which threw its ebon net in a choking grasp across the land. If one stayed still enough, so as to blend in to the very fabric of mystery itself, chills could be felt racing down the spine, thrums could be heard tearing about the ears, and the fatal poisonous shadowy liquid of the void would wind its way into the heart…
He shook his head violently; old habits die hard.
There was an old saying, though old by his standards was still a fresh and constantly morphing thing, that would forever by a memory for which he classified as The Prior. Thinking about it now, on the edge of The Future, was freeing; he could’ve bugled happily at the thought if now had been a happier time, with a less irritated wolf. But this old saying, as it was, didn’t usually bring joy with it. All Noche’s life it had cast sorrow and regret. Wary of disrupting his peace on the verge of his new life, he closed the words off from his mind. But the image was no etch-a-sketch, and the passionate fury that glowed in those burning green orbs would forever remain imprinted beneath his eyelids, which he flicked open with a surprising calm, bearing his own ambers in impatience of how long this hated night would last.
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