Valley Village
Valley Village is small. One can stand at one end of the town, looking over the tents and huts, and the occasional log cabin, and see the other end easily. The homes of the Kanthrop are spread out, with plenty of room around the tents for skinning, eating, playing and communing.
There are no streets or roads, merely paths trodden in the soil. Smoke rising from some of the cabins indicate a cooking fire, with delicious scents rising from the openings where one might expect doors. None of the Kanthrop homes seem to have them. Instead the openings are covered with beautifully embroidered leather skins and thatched mats.
In the center of town there is a large fire pit, with logs around it for sitting on during community gatherings you expect. On the outskirts of the town you see a large two story building, the only one in the area, and several sturdy log cabins which are decorated by ornate wood carvings and more carefully embroidered skins and cloth pieces. The people here go about their business in a very casual manner, speaking about their day and their families as they do their chores.
Unseen eyes shifted restlessly under closed lids, tracking sounds and motion that only their owner could see and hear. Within the depths of Kytani’s mind’s eye – among the swirls and shoals of dreams – she wandered in animal form, her sleek persona draped in midnight fur, intense yellow-green eyes and the occasional glimpse of fang the only signs of her presence as she slipped from shadow to shadow in the moonlight. Her nose perked up into the breeze, the delicious odor of a deer seeming to cross her tongue and taste buds long before it ever touched her nostrils, the sound of its calmly-beating heard growing louder and louder as she crept silently closer.
Closer…
Closer…
Closer…
And at once she was upon it, claws sinking deep as her teeth moved in on the throat for the killing stroke. There was a struggle, but no snap of bone…no pop of flesh or taste of blood. Only a curious repetitive hum in the deer’s throat along with a strangly familiar noise.
It was laughter.
Kytani relaxed her bite and pulled away from the deer’s un-marred throat, the soft browns and whites of the fur mocking her as the deer lowered its head to look at her. “And what, prey tell, do you think that would accomplish…human?†Kytani felt her anger and frustration rise at the talking deer, but begrudgingly conceded that he did have a point as she relaxed her fingers from his hide and pulled her very human arms closer to her bare breasts for futile protection as the deer righted himself and immediately rose up on his hind legs, the heavier-than-they-looked hooves of his forelegs raining down upon her repeatedly without hesitation.
“Come back when you really have claws, kitty…†the deer mocked as he stepped back from her bloodied and bruised nude form and held his rack high. Kytani could only nod, her breath coming in slow, labored refrain, before the massive array of horned antlers came crashing against her exposed ribs like a sledgehammer beating against a pile of sparrow’s eggs.
She awoke with a scream not of pain, but of anger. She was weak and, as her dream image had pointed out, needed to ‘get her claws’ soon. Kytani slipped from her bed and quickly donned her clothes, stopping – as always – before the mirror to preen herself as best as possible, her wild hairs set askew in what she thought was a more attractive chaos than what they had been in when she had awakened. When all was right in her eyes, the headstrong young kit bounded out of the hut and made her way to the fire pit in the hopes that this Morningtide would be the one that saw a Kanthan who saw her as a ready subject to move along into the lessons of warping.