ORIGIN

Pride listened to Aster closely, but whatever she was trying to say at the end there baffled him. Their... stay, not eat? He puzzled over it for several long moments before simply shaking his head, lightly, as if to clear it; then he peered at her.

"It is hunger," he explained. "I do not know if I unmake them. I--eat part, when the burning in my belly tells me to. I do not eat them all. They stay green?" he added, questioningly. It had not occurred to him that eating part of a plant might kill it; generally he took a few swathes of grass, or a mouthful or two of juicy leaves, and left the rest, by--perhaps--instinct alone.

But what if eating them did unmake them?

He considered this for a very long while in silence, before he once more spoke. "If it unmakes them, and they are alive--I do not know if they feel. But I must eat." It was fact; a self-centered sort of fact, but fact nonetheless. If he had to eat to survive, to kill, then he would do so, though he certainly hoped that was not the case.

There was something so terribly... uncouth in the idea of destroying life to maintain his own. Something unbalanced, and imperfect--something very at odds with his own self-image.

He would listen to what she had to say, and then he would curl up and rest--and let her go off to do her hunting.

Slowly, Aster gave a slight shrug, not bothering to clarify anything she tried to say before. "Rats stay red," she offered, mostly unbothered by the idea of killing and eating things.

It was in her nature to do so, after all-- she saw nothing wrong in obeying mere instinct to eat and hunt. Pride had said himself, after all, that they had to eat when they were hungry, and Aster wasn't going to eat plants.

"Eat," she said, pushing herself away from the plant. "Rest. I.. will hunt, for myself. To eat." She clarfied, for the first time, why someone might hunt.

With that, the borzoi turned and loped away further into Polaris, nose twitching as she started to track down rats.