@effluvium
Theta's life had not changed in several cycles.
It was a constant tide, waking, hunting, returning, sleeping. Days blurred into each other, but for a creature that lived to satisfy its basic, cardinal needs... What did he need a sense of time for? To count how long he had been alone? Hah! He didn't waste his breath, his time, his precious few thoughts, on such things.
He fed his forest, and kept himself on the boundary of life and death. This alone was enough to keep him satisfied and punished in one fell swoop. Today he was stalking a small family of woolly deer, the hunger gnawing at his insides. If he caught one, it would be enough for him to feast with leftovers for his den.
That was a pretty big
if. The stinking once-white now putrid grey, matted wolf's smell gave it away with just the slightest breeze. The woolly deer gave him a passing glance, then darted away toward the ridges where he could chase, but certainly not out maneuver them. He raced after the youngest, snapping jaws trying to catch a leg, but only managed to step into a patch of loose moss and slip, tripping and fumbling into a cushy blanket of lichen among the stones.
"idiotic, useless, damnable caves," the wolf snarled. Another day to go hungry, fine. Maybe he would resort to cannibalizing part of his rotting den, after all.
›
frequency of the barely conscious state just before waking or falling asleep
