The guard looks stunned, and I honestly can't blame him.
After all, no one expects, or wants, to find the mother of silver- the leader of their country- elbow deep in animal guts.
I have my reasons for dissecting the creature, though I am not particularly keen on discussing those reasons with the captain of the royal police force.
The girls who have tackled me cannot be more different from each other.
The one with her hair around my neck seems snarky, her scarred face contrasting with her gleaming eyes and mahogany-hued skin. Or is that fur covering her face? It is hard to tell in the poor light. She has a nice enough body, well muscled like a hunting dog.
The other girl hangs back out of my sight, and I can tell that she is much shyer than the Nethuan girl. Occasionally I see the green of the eyes reflecting the moonlight through the trees, but other than that my vision of her is reduced to glimpses of blotchy skin and stark white hair. When she jumped on me, she felt smoother than her Nethuan speaking companion.
What I can see is that she's much stockier than her companion around the waist. Not that I mind.
The shorter guard hauls the girls off of me and scolds them with scalding words that would make my old Nethuan tutor die of shock.
" Release them." I command.
" But.." the guards start to protest, and I don't let them finish their sentence, or even their thoughts.
" Did I stutter? Let these girls up, and if I ever so much as suspect that you've hurt them again, then I will have both your heads in baskets by sunrise."
The guards scurry away and the girls sniff at the downed animal.
I reach to the first, slightly disappointed when she flinches away from my hands.
I push myself off the ground, and turn back to my kill. This creature is an adult, and in life, it stood over twenty paces at the shoulder, but now it is only a lump of slowly decaying flesh blocking the path for passerby.
I came here on a dare from my brother, and I am not planning on going home until I have this monster's heart in a burlap sack, or- better yet- preserved in a glass jar at the dining table.
The girls start slinking away, occasionally sneaking glimpses back at me.
They obviously don't want to let me go free, and I wonder for a moment what will happen to them if it is discovered that I poached one of these magnificent creatures under their noses.
As the mother of silver, there is nothing that the animal's defenders can do to touch me, but the guards will certainly receive the brunt of the blame for letting me slip by.
I shove the massive heart of the beast- its almost as big as my torso- into a mesh bag. Then I walk toward the gap in the wall- the same one that I entered from.
Dawn is just creeping over the horizon when I reach my home.
Towering over the capital- Coin's Keep is impressive even from a distance, though I've seen it so many times that I'm no longer phased by it. After all, it has the same sloping architecture as every other building in Theio.
Two guards stand outside the main entry, and they don't even blink at the fact that I'm liberally coated in blood.
The servants in Coin's keep never ask questions, no matter what I do.
My brother greets me at the door, scowling when he sees the state of my clothes.
" Greetings mighty huntress." he teases. " have you caught anything that actually fought back, or are you still relying on the fat park beasts to prove your hunting prowess?"
" Eat dust Kjoti." I tease back, smiling at his mocking tone.
My brother and I are two birds in a bush.
He is older and taller, but we look so much alike that many people who know nothing frequently question whether or not we are twins. We have the same curly platinum hair and the same eyes, even the same sense of humor.
However, I am the mother of silver, and he has no royal status without me.
A servant arrives at my side and relieves my arms of the heart's heft.
Kjoti and I walk to the throne room, and I feel uncomfortably visible, though no one dares look at me except for my brother.
Have the servants no sense of decency? Their eyes bore into me like a colony of beetles digging into a carcass, sending chills flurrying up and down my spine.
Out of the corners of my eyes I can see the dark forms of servants flittering between columns.
The servant comes back and places the newly preserved heart at my feet.
We don't thank the servants.
No one of our caliber does.