ORIGIN

"What is... scared?"

This little deer was still wet with newness, yet there was no fear instinct? Nothing to urge her to her feet and send her capering into the bones at the first sign of danger? Alpha had, for sure, witnessed the emergence of Lessers and watched them make contact with bleary new eyes, sharpening, fleeing. It wasn't going to hunt this tiny thing down, but maybe - "scared is how this makes you feel!" With that, it lurched forwards, teeth snapping just a hair above the cervid's head; a harsh growl bubbled up with the motion, stretched into a shrieky cub's roar.

There.

"Die mad," the orthoclase barked as Gamma whinged and loped back over, a lopsided grin splitting its face (well, really, its jaws opening slightly and eyes squinting from the bottom.)

It let the drake keep spouting off things about gems and bones, its words taking the wheel while Alpha busied itself with picking crud out of a thumb-claw and using that same claw to itch off some molt. The discarded shell scampered off into Canis like a piece of dandruff. "I hunt Gamma. Don't eat - yet." It stared down at the selenite for a moment, a dangerously coy grin on its face again.

"Sentinels have food?"

Alpha paused in its itching again, eyes narrowing. Limited by facial stiffness, that was as perplexed as it could look. All of this talk about hunters and this thing clearly being what's hunted, and... it was worried about them having food? The orthoclase set its jaw, its own brainpower redirecting to consider, make little deer hunter? Hide in sight...

"You hunt," it grunted, "you get food." With a toss of its head, Alpha added disdainfully, "don't hunt grass." Grass didn't move.