Ahh--where were her manners?

"You are... welcome," Obieth concluded. Yes; that sounded right. "Balcony" was left undefined, and so she accepted this; they would get to a "balcony," and right now, Obieth guessed this was some form of bed. Perhaps a big one, and from the way her mistress described it, one that was perched quite high up. Obieth's mental image, then, of "balcony" became Aethril's bed attached to a high exterior wall, and although she failed to link an internal door to this bed in her picture of it, it was surprisingly accurate. Aside, that is, from being a bed, and not actually a balcony at all.

When Aethril moved, she did too--the Hand began to speak as black muscles pushed up in fluid unison. She paused at Aethril's words, teal eyes peering up at her, studying her own smooth movement and her face as she spoke, hollowed ears taking in her explanation. Hungry, she thought, and savored the word, taste it in her mind. "Yes... I am hungry. I wish to eat," she agreed, pushing more elegantly upright. Her flexible spine slunk this way and that as she curled along behind Aethril, and for the door.

"What," she went on, curving into the hallway with a glance up at the cerulean face, "is a Nedies?"

It was a word she would hear later, more than once. And she would return to the cook, undoubtedly, requesting other foods once she had been told of them--but for now, all her stomach wished was meat. Teal eyes flashed down the hallway, searching every corner, and the Valkcat began her swaying stalk. She reached for the shadows, intending to draw them close about her like a cloak--to hide her as she sought anyone else who might, in turn, be hiding. The darkness did not come, and so she was left clinging to the corners as she crept along, her nose and mundane senses doing all the work.

The distant sounds of birds and insects, far outside the palace, tickled her hearing. The scents of food rumbled her stomach further, warm, stale from earlier in the day, but taunting nontheless to a creature as famished as she. And the eyes; ahh, but the whole palace was a treat for sight. Soft blushes of rose and violet bloomed along the white marble, so that Obieth half-forgot her task, luxuriating instead in the columns and arches that she prowled through.

Obieth kept one ear perked toward Aethril as they walked, her paws near-silent as they scuffed the palace floor.

"Hunting," she repeated, in a quiet murmur. The word tickled her instincts, prodded something dark and lurking, a spark of excitement flaring like a star igniting. "I will have to try... hunting," she decided, her voice a half-murmur mostly lost in thought.

She came up alongside Aethril, paws tucked in beneath her straight, prim and proper, and listened to the Valkhand request "raw meat." This perked up her ears, the meaning of these words also stirring something in her mind--and in her stomach, which hissed and rumbled at her. Tongue dipped out to lap at whiskers, and wide eyes stared up in wait.

The reaction could not have been clearer if Obieth were a hundred and ninety pounds lighter, with Aethril going to town with a can opener.

For a Valkhound perpetually lost in her own senses, in bathing and basking in every aspect of the world around her, the presentation of her first meal was bound to be a pivotal moment.

Nedies--his rich voice, the glint of his glasses, the strange stripes and scent of his fur--was eclipsed utterly the moment the red meat was offered. The metallic tang of blood on the air swept through her nostrils and rivetted her mind, as though a nail had been driven through her consciousness and affixed her to the haunch. The sight of gleaming meat, of the light glinting off each curve of ruby muscle, tensed her own body so that she near-froze--as though her instincts insisted this meat still needed to be stalked, to be hunted. That somehow, she might frighten this inanimate slab of flesh away.

Aethril's words were dim in the backdrop of her mind.

A more obedient creature might have answered "yes," and awaited further permission; but Obieth took the question as an invitation. "Yes," she answered, her voice hoarse and distant, and then she was pushing up, on hind legs, reaching for it--trying to nip it off the plate, to sink long dark teeth into that thing that screamed to her stomach, eat me.

She hardly noticed the plate nudged toward her, so utterly fixated were all her senses on the haunch. As she touched it, the glorious iron scent filled her nostrils, and the first taste--ah!-Ecstasy! Obieth was lost in it at once; nothing else mattered past this, this immediate imperative, every cell in her body screaming for her to consume. This was sustenence; this was life. This was what she hadn't known she needed, but now that she was presented it--meat, on her tongue; blood, sliding down her throat, it was perfection.

She was fulfilled.

-And Aethril was telling her to walk.

Obieth obeyed, albeit poorly: a few steps as she struggled to both eat and walk, trying to bite away and swallow chunks when she had no hands to hold the thing. She left a smear of red as she went, having to repeatedly set the haunch down--even if for a brief instant--to tear a chunk fully away, to gulp it down her desperate throat. She didn't savor this--she tried, but the need in her stomach overwhelmed any sense of aesthetics or even queenly propriety. In this instant, she was only predator.

Or, in reality, a clumsy new-hatched cat-beast struggling to walk and eat at the same time, and failing a little at both.

Aethril's pause was greeted with gratitude--a shift of her eyes upward to the Hand, a flick of her tail behind her in acknowledgement. But she didn't speak, at first, just eating, and eating... and eating.

The whole thing was gone in moments, and then Obieth was left sniffing at the floor where she'd eaten, tongue lashing over her whiskers in a hopeful attempt to get at the last drips of flavor. When at last she was satisfied it was all gone (which, in fairness, hadn't taken long) she looked up at Aethril--and hiccuped. Then flinched at her hiccup; then hiccupped again, and glanced behind her with another flinch, as if wondering what was making her do this. Thirst struck, then, close on the heels of hunger--she needed water, too, to stop this (hic!) hiccuping. "Than-YHK--you. I need... drink," she suggested, and her look, up to her mistress, was pleading.

Then, she hiccuped again.

Thus far, she was not proving a paragon of witty or wise conversation.