Chapter Text
Not-Food is being pursued.
Roho doesn’t love Not-Food the way the pet dogs do, and never will, even though he nursed her and healed her and taught her to hunt alone the way so few painted dogs have ever had to. But the packs are wary of being seen with her beacon-white coat, so she takes human company instead, and it’s not so bad, and she would be sad if something ate him.
He loves her. Maybe enough for both of them.
His packmates - the men who lead the herd and the woman who leads them - make sounds like hyenas when they’re happy and female hunting cats when they aren’t. Sometimes they sound like Roho. Most of the time they sound like the birds fluttering above her, just out of reach.
But Not-Food is always quiet. Always gentle. Even when she was a weanling. Even when he tried to push her away. Into adolescence.
The ones who aren’t his pack, the ones as pink as a hippo’s mouth instead of healthy brown (are they like her?), surround him. They snap and snarl and tear at his coverings and it reminds Roho of the packs, how they drove her off with bites every time until she came into heat and then the males surrounded her like any other female. She didn’t mind. Not-Food looks like he does.
He’s not their food, but he is their easy prey.
Roho is angry.
Roho is hungry.