[PRP]By Any Stench of the Imagination (Seduction x I Always Come Back)

[cashmeresky]

The sun was well past the center of the sky as Seduction made her way towards the plains. She found herself with more and more stretches of alone time lately; it seemed she needed this alone time to sort through this jumble she had in her head. The jumble being the swamp-dwelling kin called Kimeti. A good while had passed since her last almost encounter with one of them. Seduction almost saw one when she was traversing through the tunnels with her dear Zikwa friend. Then, the Acha father of her first clutch disclosed that he had Kimeti grandparents! All this and yet, she has still never seen one.

One would think finding out more and more about Kimeti would make Seduction feel more at ease about them. This was not the case. Her fears were confirmed by her fling; the Acha buck had told her that there was indeed something preventing Acha from escaping the swamp. Something called the ache. All it took was entering the territory, or having the misfortune of being born there. Even if one were able to leave for a day or two, the swamp would eventually pull them back. And these Kimeti are natives of such an area! How frightening. Born and raised by such a greedy land. Like a mother who never lets their children wander. When Seduction’s first clutch was born, she examined each child as they hatched, just to be sure they weren’t born with some scary mystery features that she imagined these Kimeti may have.

Even with this stress, Seduction had tried to convince herself that Kimeti must not be that bad. Her Zikwa friend had seen them before and thought them to be quite handsome. Her friend certainly did not have poor taste, so maybe they weren’t the monstrosities Seduction imagined they were? She still couldn’t shake this feeling. Too many of her friends and romantic interests had disappeared going south and never returned. Maybe it was a touch of resentment, but in her mind, nothing good could come of the swamp.

Seduction shook her head briskly. Time to put her mind to other things! In her last catchup with her Zikwa friend, she had been encouraged to follow her heart’s curiosities and pursue the bucks she’d been eyeing, even if they weren’t Acha. If her small-framed Zikwa friend could tame a Totoma buck, surely Seduction could succeed a flirtation with a Kiokote? She had a few friendly encounters with Kio’s, but nothing came of them. This could change today! Nothing like some frivolous fun to take one’s mind off of scary things like greedy swamps and mystery kin. The sand under her hooves slowly mixed with the grasses of the plains. The wind wove their way through the bushes and hardy flowers. This was the last place she encountered her Kiokote of interest, she was confident she would see him again.

[Baneful]

Will was alone again. Storyend had left and taken the kids with him, and Will had returned to his old habits, wandering freely across the lands looking for something small and unattended to bring back to his territory. He had things he wanted to investigate, powers he tried to distil. He was changed, but he still had so much left to learn.

The way had been opened to unfathomable knowledge, and he intended to drink deeply of that well.

Today, he was on the hoof in the grasslands, a place that he didn't like at the best of times. There was little shelter, and the wind sweeping across the hills made his open wounds sting unpleasantly. It was easier to travel at night when he could flit from one shadow to the next effortlessly, crossing huge distances with ease. It was more demanding in the daylight, and he wasn't physically the fittest kimeti to exist, either.

He paused to take a break, sitting in a patch of flowers to catch his breath and taking in the vast expanse of mostly nothing around him.

When he saw Seduction from afar, he wasn't sure if he was imagining things in the haze of daylight, and simply stared in her direction, his ears perked.

[cashmeresky]

Seduction usually loved the smell of the plains. The mix of grasses and flowers was crisp and refreshing or fragrant and fresh depending on the season. But something was off today. It wasn't much at first, but enough for her to stop in her tracks. She pointed her snout to sky and ground but couldn't place it immediately. After a few moments of digging through her memory, she could only liken it to carrion. It was not a smell she was very familiar with. In most of the desert, it was too dry for any kind of wet, rotting smell to arise. In the few times she's visited the plains, she found that spoils of the hunt were consumed pretty quickly, if not by kin then by familiars or other creatures. The only time that she smelled this death scent was when she stumbled into an expired mouse that had gotten itself stuck deep into some sheltered roots by an oasis.

When the wind changed, the rotting stench became so strong that Seduction had a visceral reaction. She felt nauseous, and her hooves gave a few involuntary taps into the grass as jitters ran up her bones. Her whole body wanted to run. But before she could, Seduction's eyes darted upwind to see an uncanny creature. The combination of the smell and the weirdness of the kin she was looking at had her frozen. Half of her wanted to run, the other half wanted to decipher what she was looking at. She was too far to see any details, but its shape was enough to confuse her. Ears like a rabbit, not slight enough to be an Acha, certainly not stocky enough to be a Totoma, and not quite a Kiokote.

After a few moments of trying to make heads or tails of the kin, it became clear that the kin was looking at her as well. How unlucky that this was the first kin she encountered on the plains was this strange being. Seduction thought to herself. This smell certainly doused any flirtatious inspiration she had for the day. It also didn't seem like she could escape an interaction with this kin, as they hadn't broken their stare at her since she'd noticed their presence. And who knows how long they'd been staring before she noticed them! While the smell made her uneasy, knowing what it came from made her feel a little better. Also, Seduction knew she was fast. And they were close enough to the desert sand where she had a strong advantage over any non-Acha.

As the other kin was still staring, Seduction decided to offer a greeting, "Hello there!"