i've never seen you f a l l so hard [open]

[R H E A]

Have you felt it? The sense that, somewhere, somehow, something is lurking. Somewhere in the shadows, a dark figure looms, a fearsome figure, something, some beast, that strikes pure, unadulterated, horrifying terror into your heart. Some snarling, angry, fanged creature, large and monstrous, its bloody claws ready to tear at each fiber of your very being. It is horrifying. It is the feeling of prey. The feeling of a fast-approaching death. The feeling that there is no longer any meaning in life but to run.

Guillotine was not a prey animal. She was not meant to be a prey animal. She was a hungry, fearsome, blood-thirsty predator. She delighted in the feeling of her teeth breaking into soft flesh, of sweet, warm blood leaking into her mouth, of having her aching stomach satiated by the delightful ingestion of raw meat. Yet the thing was, she was not at the top of the pyramid. She was not the greatest, she would never be the greatest; she was not an apex predator. She hunted, but she also was hunted. She was probably not first on the list of a lion or hyena’s favored meals; they usually took down larger game. But thing about that was, the creatures they hunted were much larger than her; she could very easily become a tasty snack for a larger predator.

Most cats of her kind, the small, slinking felines that fed on rodents and small birds, knew to stay out of the way of larger carnivores, and that was it. One could say that Guillotine’s fear was irrational, with her eyes bulging, her large ears flattened, her tail twitching, her legs trembling simply at the vulgar scent of a hyena or at the sound of the elephant grass behind her shivering as if it was concealing a stalking lion.

And it was true, her fear was, indeed, something close to putrid paranoia, but judge her not, she’s got a damned good reason. Her mother was killed. Murdered. Brutally murdered. The last time that Guillotine had ever seen her doting mother was when she lay—her stomach gashed open and leaking a river of blood, her once-loving yellow eyes glazed over by the bleak cloudiness of death—at the large, clawed paws of a starving leopard. It was the circle of life. The leopard had long since been robbed of a meal and, too weak to go after something greater like an antelope, had found easy pickings after happening across a little pussycat. And, at that same moment, Guillotine had been robbed of a mother.

Her greatest fear was that she would one day fall to the same grisly death.

Guillotine crouched by a half-dried pond. The water was dark and muddy, but she lapped at it desperately, her soft pink tongue quickly extending to and then retracting from its murky surface. Her haunches were hunched, her long body scrunched up more than what seemed anatomically possible, as if she was trying to turn herself into a ball, to make herself as small as possible. Her ears were pressed flat against the top of her head, their dark rims turned towards the sky, and her eyes were large, as if she’d seen the most frightening ghost imaginable. Her fur stood up in every which way, and her frazzled, twitching tail had fluffed up so much that it looked like a bushy fox’s tail.

Her heart raced and her body felt hot as she attempted to recover from her latest escapade, fleeing from yet another nonexistent threat.

lolderp 589-word short post @o@ from guillotine, open to absolutely anyone! listening to back to december. yay this is just about her flipping the fuck out. c: feel free to reply (DO IT)

[RICOCHET]

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[atrb=background,http://i998.photobucket.com/albums/af101/Siberia_North/jajamid.png] As he rose from yet another slumber, Jabari surveyed his surroundings in a rather lackadaisical manner. After all, it was the same view he woke up to every morning, and that was the savannah that stretched out beyond the kjope he slept in each night. Now, he was not implying that his cushy life was boring to him, oh no. He loved it, he loved his family and he loved the fact that he had his own piece of territory that he could feel at home in. But sometimes, he felt the urge to venture out beyond his boundaries and explore new corners of the savannah. All he knew that stretched out beyond the scrubland that he called home was desert, and in the very far distance he saw the peak of the tallest mountain in Bakari, and past that was what he could only imagine was the tundra realm. Jabari didn't want to venture that far out, I mean what lion would want to freeze his arse off, trying to keep his grip on a glacier, or feeling awful due to altitude sickness whilst abseiling the side of a mountain. No, that suited some felines, but not him. But however, there was more savannah and dust beyond his home, that he was itching to explore. So without another moment's hesitation, he rose to his paws, quickly glanced over the slumbering bodies of his mother and brothers, before leaving the shady kjope and padding off into the distance, kicking up a little dust as he did so. After about five minutes of being a lone figure on the horizon, he came across a small herd of zebra. One looked at a disadvantage, hobbling towards the back of the group as they grazed, probably an old wound that never healed correctly. Jabari ducked down into the elephant grass, only the tip of his tail poking out above the foliage, bright amber pools locked onto the lumbering herbivore at the back of the group. Hardly any predators felt remorse when hunting, because it was the circle of life, and Jabari wasn't going to cry and mourn the loss of the walking, striped buffet, but at the same time he was glad that this zebra looked rather old, and 'past it'. He was sure that he wasn't the only lion that felt killing younger prey animals, especially foals, was a 'waste', because they could grow and reproduce. Whereas an older zebra, like the one that stood about twenty feet in front of him, grazing obliviously, had lived it's life, and now it was time to serve it's final purpose, and that was to be eaten. Jabari stalked forward, his head held low and his body rigid. About ten feet away from the zebra - thankfully he was downwind from the herd so nobody saw him, and therefore none of the beasts uttered an alarm call - he halted, tensing up and pausing. 3.... 2..... 1! Within seconds, the adult lion had gone from crouching in the scrub to flying through the air, claws outstretched and fangs bared. The zebra to first spot the assailant was not Jabari's target, but the stallion of the herd. He reared up and whinnied in terror, hurtling off in the opposite direction and calling for the others to follow, panic-stricken. Mothers barged their foals away from the threat, nickering loudly, the whites of their eyes exposed as they rolled back in fear. Jabari didn't pay any heed to the nursing mothers with foals in tow, or the stallion at the head of the herd, but the older female who didn't realize that was in danger - thanks to delayed reactions, perhaps - until a sudden weight and sharp pain bore down on her, and she crumpled, winded and pained. A couple of the zebra looked over at their fallen comrade sadly, whinnying over to her, but essentially there was nothing they could do without putting themselves in danger. So they reluctantly turned and fled into the distance, and Jabari decided that keeping the mare alive for longer than he needed to was just unfair, so with a swift bite to the back of the neck, it was all over. He scrabbled off the now lifeless herbivore and licked his lips, as he began to salivate. The lion was hungry, after all, and hadn't had a good meal in a few days. Usually Taabu took it upon herself to hunt for the family's dinner, but feeding three fully grown - well, Foxtrot was nearly there, a few more months and he would be four, and would grow into his full mane - males couldn't be easy, especially when there was just one of you. So Jabari decided to hunt for himself today, so his mother would be hunting for one less that evening, and the large lion began to tuck into his meal. It didn't take him long to eat his fill, and the tan pelted feline left the remainder for the next carnivore that came across it. He licked the majority of flesh and blood that attached itself to his fur, but a few stains remained, but he wasn't all that fussed and continued through the scrubland. Another few minutes passed in silence until the scent of another feline hit his nostrils. He peered over by the small pond nearby and saw a small cat crouched by it. She looked... frazzled by something, her fur fluffed up and her eyes wide. He cocked his head to one side slightly, confused. What got her so frightened? He approached her, the grass parting to reveal his mammoth frame to her. His amber gaze fell onto the small female, and his salmon-pink tongue flickered out from between his licks to lick at the blood that caked onto his muzzle. His expression was genuinely one of concern and intrigue. "Are you alright?"