Emo'et clung to the damp bark of the tree, his delicately pointed claws submerged into the grey skin of the massive plant, holding his weight.
Where had it gone?
His sleek tongue flicked out and tasted the air, much like that of a snake's, the black, forked appendage snapping out and in exactly three times, searching for what his eyes could not see.
His grip in the tree's gummy bark tightened as the scent he was searching for trickled over his senses, flooding over him like a wave of icy satisfaction.
There you are.
His muscles went rigid beneath his skin, and he gripped on to the tree with his other four legs as his front two reached up and sunk into the bark, a clear liquid oozing slightly from the sudden puncture. Hoisting himself up, he detached his other four legs and re-attatched them, causing himself to climb, all in one smooth, fluid like motion which took about seven seconds to complete, and looked eerily similar to an inch worm slinking slowly forwards. The only real difference was that his movements were quick and exact, much unlike an inch worm's, and they had a desire to kill behind them; also much unlike an inch worm's.
His bright yellow eyes stared up into the flurry of softly swaying leaves, the vines that draped down from the trees obscuring his view. He had no pupil, but instead flecks of red and orange around where one would be in the yellow orbs he used to see from, which could not only take in visual images, but could read heat signals as well. From them he could see the soft heat outline of a form shrouded behind a bunch of wide-fanned leaves, the hidden creature seeming to try and mask its heat signals by hiding behind the cold foliage.
Smart.
But not smart enough.
Emo'et's lips curled up in a grim smile, exposing a black-gummed mouth stock-full of teeth, each one coming to a clean, precise point. These weren't teeth just to puncture, these were teeth to tear.
His tail flicked silently in the air behind him, the furred tip snapping softly as it curled around, the black fur trailing like a swallowtail behind him. Other than his tail-tip, the only fur he had on his body was that that trailed down the gradual curve of the back of his neck, tapering off and eventually dissapearing somewhere between his shoulder blades.
When still and standing on all six of his legs, it hung flatly and straight like a horse's mane, and it draped and swayed with his body the rest of the time, somehow not getting tangled in all the brush he snaked through while hunting.
As far as Savage Skins went, his skin wasn't all that colorful. As he crept forwards up the gum tree towards his prey, he coulnd't help but think as to why he had to be subjected to this.
He was Warrior material.
He knew it.
And he knew everyone else in the tribe did as well.
He had been the first of his siblings to hatch out of the eggs, the quickest and cleanest to complete his first kill, the strongest out of his brothers, proven over and over again whenever they demanded a play match that left the other panting in the dirt, body covered in a glossy sheen of sweat and mud from their tumble, Emo'et's form standing over them, head dipped and maw clasped softly over his brother's throat, the winning move.
But his fur was black, and his skin was as grey and colorless as the gum tree he was climbing, except for a few orange and blue spots that trailed down his sides and tapered smaller down his tail, only to eventually morph into stripes which ended where the tuft of black fur began.
So, sure, he wasn't the deep crimson all his brothers held, the most colorfully gifted one being Al'ect, with his vibrant blue streaks of color that slashed over his brother's sholder blades and joints, giving him a viscous appearance; and he wasn't the cool rose color of his sisters, their milky skin delicately decorated with soft plumes of white and yellow and orange, looking like an elegant flower rather than a deadly creature....
...but he was still stronger than them all! Smaller, sure, but his slight size difference made it so that he could whip around the muscly bulk of his brothers and wind his way up quicker and snatch the food faster and deal the blow sharper and do it all, all so much, so much better, so much more well executed than the rest of them.
But no.
He was here, the Chief deeming his abilities were good enough for being a Hunter for the tribe, but nothing more. So as he sprang upon the creature behind the leaves with a perfect silence, sunk his teeth in and remembered not to inject his venom because this was tribe's food, and just because one's immune to their own venom doesn't mean the rest aren't affected by the acidic poison, he remembered to bit hard and grasp the body with his legs, his hind two the only ones keeping him from falling seventy feet to the forest floor, he remembered to twist as he bit down, to jerk upwards with his head and tug down with his claws to sever the head, to do all of this so perfectly, so that the creature would be dead within the first minute of making contact, to better enable him surviving before the thing had a chance to fight back...
...he remembered to do it flawlessly, effortlessly, to produce a whole kill rather than a leg of one or a tuft of fur or feathers when he came home. But it was meaningless. And as he slid down the tree, grasping the large mass of his kill with his middle legs as he pressed its hot, bleeding body to his white underbelly, he had half a mind to dissapear with it and never come back.
But no.
His tribe needed him, at least for this much.
So he would stay.
((Dooooone! Sorry for the long intro.))