A small rodent shuffled across the forest floor, darting from hiding place to hiding place and constantly checking to see if the coast was clear. It sniffed the air before darting out from under a thorn bush and concealing itself between the roots of an old oak tree where it waited again. The nervous creature shivered slightly, waiting to see if any possible dangers would come and pass. It inched out of its most recent hiding place, sniffing the air once again, finding nothing strange the creature sprinted across the floor again, aiming for yet another place to conceal himself. That is until a scaled hand smacked down upon it, breaking its neck in an instance.
Shari lifted up the creature whilst she stood up, brushing the mud she'd used to hide her smell of herself. She opened her fanged mouth and popped the small beast inside, chewing it with a sickening crunch before swallowing it. She stretched and gave out a wide yawn, flicking her armored tail across the floor.
"Barely any meat on him at all," she moaned.
Winter turned her head to look at her dragon-fused companion, giving her an emotionless expression before gazing back upwards. The half angel was lying across a fallen trunk that lay across the path at a fairly comfortable angle, her hands were propping up her head and one of her legs was raised slightly.
"If you're going to eat wild animals at least cook them first," Winter commented, closing her snake-like eyes.
"That would take too long," Shari replied "Besides I can eat them however I like now!"
Winter ignored her and opened her eyes again. It was rare that she could actually get a bit of peace and quiet all to herself and she wasn't going to waste the opportunity arguing with her companion, so far the priestess had consumed three mice, a rabbit and had even managed to grab a bird out of a tree and stripped it to the bone. The animal carcasses littered the floor around Shari and were only added to as she pulled the vowel's bones out of her mouth and discarded them.
"This forest is a little too quiet," Shari commented.
"How so?" Winter asked without looking around.
"Well, usually round about now some sort of vicious forest beast would come rampaging at us," Shari replied.
"You're still hungry, aren't you?" Winter replied in the same blank tone.
Shari gave a slight chuckle.
"I doubt any more animals will be coming our way," Winter went on "You've eaten enough animals to create a stench that'll scare off any others."
"Or they'd smell the food and come running," the priestess interrupted hopefully "And as soon as they do: Bam!" she smacked her fist into her palm and licked her lips.
Winter sighed and ceased talking, perhaps it had been a bad idea to take Shari along with her. Since she'd merged with the alloy dragon her appetite had grown tenfold and her personality had grown slightly more cheeky. She sighed and closed her eyes again, hoping for nothing to happen for a good few hours, of course in this land it was almost inevitable that something would happen.
Deenkraig Greotha sat complacently in a tree branch, being attentive as to where he placed every one of his eight scaly legs. He remained very still, flicking his forked tongue out every so often to taste the thick forest air. Two yellow reptilian eyes peered through the tree branches at the ground down below. Deeni twitched his long tail patiently, then wrapped it around a tree branch for more balance.
This was Deeni’s favorite form: the eight-legged, bear-sized lizard. He felt the most comfortable as this creature because of its strength, speed and balance. Balance was just what he needed at the moment, perched in the treetops, scanning the areas around him for something to satisfy his unfed stomach.
A considerable amount of time had passed before Deeni spotted something moving below him. He craned his neck to get a better look. A rather large and rather fat bird was foraging for worms on the forest floor. Deeni felt his mouth begin to water but he remained still.
Finally, the bird took to the air. This was what Deeni was waiting for. As the bird flew close to him, the greot suddenly reached out to grab his prey. Unfortunately, the bird had spotted the greot a few moments too soon. It awkwardly changed directions and flapped its wings in a frenzy to get away.
“Sorry, little bird,” Deeni hissed as his stomach gave an audible rumble. “Survival and all that.” He leapt onto one branch and another in pursuit of the fat bird that couldn’t fly well because of its weight. Finally, when he was close enough, the greot coiled every one of his eight legs to spring. Then he leapt foward like a green scaly bullet. He snatched the bird out of thin air, killing it on impact, but continued sailing toward the ground below. He braced his legs and absorbed the impact as he landed with a crash on the forest floor. The bird had flown out of his mouth and landed at the feet of…
Deeni slowly raised his eyes from the fat, juicy bird on the ground to the eyes of the equally hungry dragon he had just fallen in front of.
Shari let out another yawn and sat herself against a tree, putting on an expression of fake misery.
"If you're still hungry go and find something to eat," Winter replied without opening her eyes.
"It's not just that I'm hungry," Shari commented "Now I'm bored as well. I mean it's all fine and dandy having a bit of peace and quiet but if you ask me it too quiet. And on top of that it's highly unlikely anything interesting will crop up."
"You were all too keen on the possibilities of a wild animal stumbling upon us all of a sudden," Winter said.
"I was hungry," Shari replied.
"So you said," Winter commented.
The half angel heaved a sigh and opened her eyes again, blinking for a moment until her pupils got used to the light and grew thinner once more. She sat up and looked over at her companion who was poking a stick into the forest floor.
"Why did we even come here in the first place?" Shari asked, noticing that Winter was paying her some attention.
"Because, unlike you, I proffer things to be quiet and uneventful," Winter replied, moving to a sitting position "And that means nothing exiting or less boring will happen."
"Not even the odd mad dragon?" Shari asked.
"The only dragons likely to appear are you and Zafira," Winter commented "And Zafira is far from mad and you're far from a full blooded dragon and going mad will only make you look silly."
This reply seemed to shut the priestess up. Winter was not only very blank when it came to conversations but she always made her opinions quiet clear even if it would insult the person she was conversing with, Shari had know her to call someone a fat bearded drunk without realizing this would insult the man and had later tried to tell Winter the meaning of the word tact. She heaved a yawn again and looked up.
"What in the..."
Winter looked around in time to see something green land on the ground a few feet form Shari and drop whatever it was carrying. Shari's gaze immediately switched from the lizard to the dead bird and her eyes widened.
"Wow, two birds with one stone!" She commented.
"Haven't you eaten enough?" Winter asked.
She sighed and stood up, turning her cold gaze to the lizard thing. It certainly didn't look like any creature she'd seen before, her first thought was some sort of iguana, but they didn't live it this forest, were never that size and certainly didn't have eight legs. Winter stared at the creature for a moment, trying to pin the form to a name she recognized.