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Katjaana and Afastr had been stockpiling food for them and the rest of their herd diligently. Not, like, a little bit; they were really going for it. They probably had enough food to feed themselves through the winter with absolutely no other supplements, even though that would probably be kind of gross. They had really gone for the goal. It was a lovely stash, and worth being proud of. Katjaana especially was very proud of it, because the whole deal was her idea in the first place, and she considered a significant achievement. Afastr kept his mouth a little more shut. Ioni and Advarik grumbled every time they were forced to help.
All this is background, just set dressing. The real story doesn"t start until the stash vanishes.
It is a beautiful autumn morning, and you are a horrible ruukaan. Your name is Skironir, and one of your friends has been bragging , running her mouth all of the time about this amazing stash of food that she has built up for the winter. You happen to find this kind of irritating, because you do not like being bragged to. You have concocted a devious and brilliant plot that you believe will make your life much more entertaining.
Katjaana discovered that the stash was missing first thing in the morning, and immediately got upset. When Katjaana was upset, things that were generally considered to be bad happened to the people around her. And, well, things more like like ‘grievous bodily harm’ and ‘becoming suddenly very extremely dead’ tended to mysteriously befall the foolish people who had actually crossed her.
This was one of the crossed moods, Skironir noted. Katjaana was feeling very cross about it.
Admittedly, so was the rest of her herd. She had essentially press-ganged them into helping her stockpile for the winter, and having their hard, laborious, and dreadfully boring work suddenly pulled out from underneath them was even more insult than being forced to do it in the first place. Ioni especially was absolutely irate, flipping out to anyone who would listen about how he was going to smash in the skull and dance upon the brains and blood of whoever had done this.
Skironir was beginning to think that he had, you know, maybe , just possibly, made a… minor miscalculation. Just a little one.
Katjaana and Afastr approached him shortly after they had discovered his extremely funny and, to his own mind, pretty brilliant prank. Neither of them saw the humor in the situation. But- fortunately for him- they also didn"t know he was the one who did it. Which was good, because they recruited him explicitly for the purposes of helping them track down and murder the perpetrator. Skironir was pretty interested in not getting murdered, so he agreed.
Afastr was absolutely hopping with fury. “I bet they"re eating all of it. Right now. I bet we"re going to find it and there"s going to be nothing left,” he said in a bitter undertone. “I bet Kat drove us like a fucking slave driver for fucking weeks for nothing.”
“It"ll be fine,” Skironir said. “You"ll get it back.”
“We"re going to have to do this entire fucking shit show again,” Ioni snapped. “Don"t deny it. She"s going to make us do this all over again. And then I bet it"s going to get stolen again! Because she never shuts up about it.”
“I do too shut up about it,” Katjaana snapped right back. “Somebody must have been eavesdropping, because the only people I talk about it with are you guys.”
Skironir casually did not mentIon that the reason he knew it was there was because she had told him multiple times. Better for her to think that someone else had just listened in. This was pretty fucking terrible. Worst joke ever. This was not funny.
“I guess we can trade some of my beads for more,” Advarik said. “The last thing I want to have to fucking do is pick more fucking plants and not even get to fucking eat them.”
“We even had a few lingonberries in there,” Afastr said mournfully. “I love lingonberries.”
Skironir had eaten most of the lingonberries. He sure hoped Afastr would not notice. He sure hoped he could figure out a way to get out of actually taking responsibility for being the one who had stolen the stash in the first place. Maybe they could stumble across it! Just lying around somewhere! Nothing to do with him at all!
“Gods,” Katjaana said, leading the pack of them, “I can"t wait to pulverize whoever’s done this to us.”
“I"m not usually a violent type, Ioni agreed, “but…”
…and then he launched into a dramatic, brutal, vicious, novel-length litany of all of the things that he wanted to do to all of the imagined people he figured might have taken their stash. He was inventive! Skironir was honestly kind of surprised that Rubin hadn’t gone and thought up some of these things and done them to people first. Ioni was hardly the world’s greatest fighter, but he sure did have a murderer’s mind on him. Regardless, since it was Skironir that had taken the stash, and he rather did not want to die, inventively or not, Skironir did not appreciate the creative nature of Ioni’s threats as much as he might have otherwise.
“That might be a little much,” Afastr said eventually, Interrupting Ioni"s detailed description of licking out the inside of some enemy rukaan’s crushed rib cage. “We"re here to get revenge, not turn into serial killers.”
“I"m not a serial killer,” Ioni pointed out.
“If you want to be a serial killer, go hang out with Rubin,” Katjaana said. “He"s usually up for that, even if we"re not.”
“He"s not a serial killer,” Skironir had to say. “He just gets into fights and wins them.”
“He kills people in series,” Afastr said.
“No he doesn’t.”
“Yes he does,” Afastr said. “One after another.”
“That’s not in a series , though,” Katjaana agreed. “They’re not, like, sequential or anything. They’re not related .”
“He does kill a lot of people though,” Ioni said.
“Yeah,” Advarik added. “Doesn"t that usually make him a serial killer even if he doesn"t, like, go out of his way to kill people?”
Skironir decided that he was not going to point out that Rubin did actually go out of his way to kill people fairly often. It didn"t really help his point. Luckily for Advarik, Ioni didn"t mind pointing that out at all.
“He does go out of his way to kill people, though. Like, all the time. We"ve seen him do it. He absolutely loves killing people. It"s weird as hell. He will, like, take time out of his day to pick a fight with somebody so he can kill them. Didn’t you have to tell him to stop killing people unprovoked, Skironir? I"m pretty sure I heard you complain about that multiple times.”
“I might"ve, you know, had to ask a couple times,” Skironir said, because he wasn"t about to lie.
“Yeah, he"s a serial killer. We all agree he"s a serial killer. Even he would probably agree he"s a serial killer. He"d probably be proud of it. You"re the only one who doesn"t think he"s a serial killer and that"s just because you want to screw him,” Ioni said.
“I do not,” Skironir said.
“You do,” the entire other four chorused.
“I do not!”
“You absolutely do,” Advarik said. “You do so bad. We"ve all seen you. It"s not like either of you are subtle. How have you not gotten together yet?”
“By just being friends. It"s not our fault that you all have to be fucking weird about us.” Skironir had a whole thing planned out. He just hadn"t put it in motion yet. It’d been like two months, but it had… flaws. It needed tweaks. And stuff.
“At this point, I"ve just decided that you"re stupid and don"t know how to make a move.” Katjaana shook her head. “Both of you. You"re both so fucking bad at this.”
“Can we get back on topic?” Skironir asked, against his own self-interest. The topic was ‘hunting him down to kill him.’ This was a genuinely stupid choice, and he didn"t know why he was doing it even as the words left his mouth.
“Oh, right,” Afastr said. “Do we have any idea who might have taken our stuff? Like, Skironir, do you have any idea who might have taken it?”
Skironir shook his head. “Nah. Absolutely no idea. Any of you guys?”
“Uh, no,” Ioni said, “but I have some ideas for what we should do when we find them.”
“Yeah, Ioni, we know .” Katjaana stopped for a second to look back at them. “Do we know who we think might have even known about it? Seen anyone in the area recently?”
“I haven"t seen anyone but the five of us?” Advarik shrugged one massive shoulder. “Like, neither hide nor hair. Absolutely no one else.”
“You"re right,” Afastr said, slowly. “I don"t think I"ve seen anyone around either. Not even Rubin.”
“No, I"ve seen Rubin around,” Ioni said. “I think you"re just kind of unobservant. Like, would you honestly have noticed if anyone else was around? Either of you?”
“I would have,” Advarik said.
Afastr just shrugged, which was probably the most honest thing he could have said. The truth was that Afastr was kind of the least observant rukaan Skironir had ever met, and it would have been a massive surprise if he had noticed anyone around. Even still, this wasn"t going to end well for him.
“I think I saw someone slinking around,” Skironir said, so as to- hopefully- throw them off of his trail. “I didn"t recognize them, though.”
“Where’d you see them?” Katjaana immediately asked. “What color were they? Did you see what kind of antlers they had? Can you describe them? Do you know anything about them?”
“Uh,” Skironir said, immediately out of his element, “I, uh, I think, uh, I…”
“Okay, one at a time. I get it.” Katjaana tossed her head. “What color fur did they have?”
Skironir wracked his brains for a reasonable answer. “Uh… brown? Kind of brown?” That sounded so light on details. It’d be obviously fake. They"d know immediately. It would be way too obvious if he didn"t add something. “I think they had some sort of spotting on their flank,” he added. “I can"t tell you what it looks like though. I only got a good look at them once.”
“Hm,” Katjaana said, flicking her ears a little. “What kind of build did they have? I think I know who you"re talking about.”
Hm. That could work. “Uh… a little on the smaller side, like, slim, I think? With fluff.”
“With fluff where?”
“On them?” Skironir shook his head. “I told you, I didn’t really get a good look at them-”
“You said you had once ,” Ioni said. “How can you not know where the fluff was?”
“I don’t know, they just looked kind of fluffy. Like, on their shoulders and their chest.”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” Katjaana said. “I think I know exactly who you’re talking about.”
Skironir had successfully framed someone for the prank. Excellent.
“He had taruca antlers, right?” Katjaana continued. “Stripes on his legs?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“It’s that bastard Kahvi,” Katjaana said. “You know, it’s kind of funny. I always thought he was alright, but he’s stolen our fucking stash.”
“What an asshole,” Advarik said.
“Genuinely, like, what is his problem?” said Afastr. “He doesn’t need it.”
“That’s why he’s an asshole,” Advarik agreed.
“I’m going to pop his eyeballs out of his skull and eat them,” said Ioni, fuming.
“Whoa there,” Skironir said. “That’s a little much.”
“He stole our fucking stash,” Ioni snapped. “Hey, can we get Rubin with us? I want to kill this guy dead .”
“Oh, good idea,” Katjaana said. “Rubin’s a scent tracker, too, he can sniff around to make sure that the scent matches.”
Well that wasn’t ideal.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Ioni said. “Let’s make sure we kill the right guy.”
“We know it’s definitely him, though,” Afastr said. “Now that you mention it, I do think I saw him skulking around.”
“I mean, he does live around here,” Advarik agreed. “It would make sense that he took it.”
“We can always double check,” Ioni said. “It would be kind of unfortunate if we got him for it and then found out someone else took the stuff, you know? Because, like, I want to kill-”
“Ioni,” Advarik said, “we know .”
“Okay, but who else was even in the area to steal it?” Skironir asked, trying not to sound on edge. “Like, really, you know?”
“I wouldn’t want to kill anyone without a reason , though.”
“We have a reason,” Afastr said. “The reason is he stole our gods-damned stash.”
“There’s nothing wrong with getting proof,” Katjaana said decisively over their heads. “You’re right. We should find Rubin.”
So they went and got Rubin. Skironir didn’t even get a chance to tell him about the frame-job he was playing.
“So,” Ioni said, as they were walking back, “we’re gonna need your help after we catch the scent, too, you know? We’re going to really kill this asshole super dead.”
“Of course,” Rubin said. “Can’t be letting people take your stuff without making them bleed for it.”
“Oh, I don’t just want to make them bleed,” Ioni said. “I want to make them into a ghost story people tell because they can’t believe anyone could be that brutal. I want everyone for miles to be able to hear his screams. I want to turn him into a pile of pulverized, quivering jelly. I want to pop out his eyeballs and shove them down his throat.”
“Um,” said Rubin.
“I want to stab him with his own antlers. I want to make a cloak out of his pelt. I-”
“Ioni, do you want to kill him, or do you just want to be a serial killer?”
“I’m not a serial killer,” ioni said.
“We’ve been saying he sounds like a serial killer,” Advarik said.
“I’m not a serial killer!”
“He does sound like a serial killer,” Rubin agreed. “Eh? Ioni, I’m impressed.”
“What, because you’re a serial killer?”
Rubin scoffed. “I am the best serial killer.”
Ioni looked over at Skironir. “What’d I tell you.”
“Fuck off and die in a fire,” Skironir muttered.
“Anyways, Ioni, listen, listen. You said you know who it was?”
“We think it’s a liver ruk nearby named Kahvi,” Katjaana said. “He’s got a blessing or something, let it go to his head. I guess he thinks he’s too good to ask permission before taking what isn’t his , or something.”
“And we’re going to kill him.” Rubin paused, pricking up an ear, as Ioni made a little noise of dissent in the back of his throat. “I mean, Ioni’s going to kill him.”
“Yeah,” Advarik said.
“Okay, cool. And you want me for…?”
“Scent tracking,” Afastr chimed in. “Ioni wants you to make sure it’s actually Kahvi.”
“I can do that, I guess ,” Rubin said. “Long as you let me get the first crack at him-”
“No, no, you’ll help me kill him or you won’t get involved,” Ioni said. “I want to feel the bones splinter under my hooves.”
“Slow your roll, buddy,” Rubin said dismissively. “You’re going to need my help either way. Your form is terrible.”
“Hey,” Ioni said, but it was lacking heat. “I suppose you would know, you absolute… fucking. Monster of a ruk.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was.”
“Anyways, yes, I would know. If this Kahvi has a blessing, he’s probably more capable than you.”
“How would you know?” Katjaana said. “Just because your blessing is to fight well. Look at Skironir.”
“What about me?” Skironir said.
“Well, your blessing isn’t about fighting.”
“I don’t have a blessing,” Skironir said.
“Yes you do,” said Ioni.
“No, I don’t. Don’t be stupid.”
“Whatever,” Katjaana said. “You know what i’m getting at, Rubin, right?”
“Sure,” Rubin said dubiously. Skironir got the impression he didn’t actually know what she was talking about. “But even still, Ioni will probably need a hand with the whole murder thing. He couldn’t murder a fly.”
“I could murder a fly.”
“You couldn’t murder a fly,” Rubin repeated. “You don’t have the skills.”
“Hey, screw you,” Ioni said, but it was lacking heat.
“Oh, I’m so scared,” Rubin said dismissively. “Hey, Kat, we’re here, right?”
“Just about,” Katjaana said, and gestured with one hoof toward the late stash’s hiding spot. “That’s where the stash was.”
Rubin lowered his head to the ground and sniffed. He sniffed again, a second time. He picked his head back up and looked directly at Skironir. He grinned.
“I got someone’s scent, alright. I’ve never met this Kahvi guy, but I’m pretty confident it’ll be his. Let’s go find him.”
“Lead the way,” Katjaana said.
Rubin paused. “Oh, uh, the scent is a little old. You’ll probably have better luck just trying to track him the way you’d normally do it. When we get closer I’ll confirm it’s our guy.”
Katjaana narrowed her eyes. “You sure?”
“Yeah, the ground is wet and there’s a bunch of other scents here because we’re trampling all over it, so i’m not able to get a clear read for where he went. And I think his blessing is interfering?”
“Alright,” Katjaana said, shaking her head. “Skironir, you said you saw him?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure where he’d have gone.”
Katjaana huffed. “I guess I’ll have to do all of this myself. Afastr, with me; Advrik, Ioni, you two go look for him to the southwest, and Rubin and Skironir, you two can go east and we’ll fan out. Holler when you find him.”
“Uh, are you sure?” Advarik asked.
“Yeah. Get moving.”
On that note, they split up.
-
“You stole their stash, right?” Rubin asked Skironir. “Your scent was all over their little hiding place.”
“Oh yeah, that was me. I just… got so sick of hearing about it.”
“Where’d you put it?”
“Oh, uh, why? Do you think she’ll let it go if we give it back?”
“Ha,” Rubin said. “No. I want to eat it. They were collecting a billion of those little shoots I like. Besides, when we kill Kahvi surely she’ll call it a day.”
Skironir glanced askance, to make sure no one was listening. “Well… come with me.”
-
While the other four looked for the guy Katjaana had decided to kill, Rubin and Skironir doubled back to Skironir’s hiding spot under that one hollow pine tree he’d scoped out the other day, and they gorged themselves on goodies and dried grasses. It was delicious.
About three quarters of the way through the stash, Rubin’s ears flicked up. “You hear that?”
Skironir listened. Unless he meant the sound of the wind, which, being Rubin, he definitely didn’t… “Uh, no?”
“Think Katjaana caught that guy,” Rubin said, picking his head up to squint into the trees. “And he’s giving her a fight, I think.”
“You gonna go help?”
Rubin considered it. “Eh, nah, I’m going to eat the rest of this shit first. Can’t leave any evidence behind, right?”
Skironir grinned. “You understand me so well .”
But they did eventually decide to come help kill their patsy. It was only fun, after all. Skironir carefully studied his reflection in the river to make sure there weren’t any telltale bits of lingonberry and crabapple sticking to the corners of his mouth first, but not for very long- they had places to be and skulls to break.
Indeed, when they got there, Katjaana and a strange liver ruk with stripes on his legs and spots on his back were slowly circling each other. It had to be the Kahvi guy. Skironir didn’t even know how they’d found him.
Anyway, Katjaana was the only one properly fighting. Ioni was in the corner sprawled on the ground looking a bit the worse for wear; Afastr and Advarik both skulked in the shadows. Rubin made eye contact with Katjaana; she flicked her ears. The stranger, Kahvi, looked toward Ioni, who was nowhere near them.
Rubin, never one to let a potential weakness go unpunished, charged in, pointing his tines toward Kahvi’s exposed side. If he connected, that’d be a brutal goring. Skironir felt himself wince in predicted sympathy.
Only bad luck saved the stranger. Rubin put his foot in a hole hidden by the leaves, tripped and went wide. His antlers still scored a long graze into the side of Kahvi’s spotted hide, and Rubin scrambled back to avoid his sharp antlers as he turned. The scent of blood got Rubin going, though, and Skironir watched him change, turning into something more predatory than a mere rukaan. He’d never get used to that. It always set his teeth on edge.
Now Katjaana was the one ignored, and she had been hanging around Rubin and her strange little handler long enough to take these openings when she saw them, too. She lunged forward, lashing out with both of her front hooves. The stranger danced away, surprise in his eyes. “What even is your problem?”
“I already told you,” Kajaana snarled, flashing her fangs in the setting sun, “you crossed me, and I’m repaying you in spades. If you didn’t want this to happen, you could’ve just minded your own business .”
“And I keep telling you I don’t know what you’re talking about-” Katjaana ran at him, antlers lowered, and he danced quickly to the side, “but I was talking to your… friend?”
“Kat’s a friend of mine,” Rubin agreed, tail wagging. “But I’m really just here to put you in the ground.”
Kahvi took a step back, the hair on his hackles raising. “Look, man, I don’t know what the issue is, but, uh, can we just- can we talk this out? Your friend clearly thinks I did something I didn’t do, but you’ve got no issue with me, right? I’ve never met you, and you’re-”
Rubin lunged for his throat. Kahvi, caught off balance, stepped back about as fast as he could and narrowly missed Rubin’s tines a second time. “Okay! Okay! No talking it out! What the fuck is your issue?”
“I haven’t got an issue,” Rubin said, pressing his advantage hard. “I just think it’s fun ,” he jumped forward, and Kahvi stepped back again. Skironir could see that this was going to end soon- if he backed up any further he’d be backed up into a copse of thick trees. “I like a good fight,” Rubin continued, a grin under his mask. “I like to spill a little blood. Sucks to be you-”
The stranger stepped back one last time, and found himself boxed in by trees. Panic showed in his eyes, and he took one quick strike at Rubin, clearly more out of desperation than anything else. Rubin, who’d been cheating at fights since Skironir had met him, was clearly waiting for it. Kahvi put his head down, and Rubin danced aside, kicking out with one silver hoof to strike him hard on the side of the skull.
Skironir would never quite get used to the sound of bone crunching under metal. He was rather gratified to see he was more used to it than the others, though. Even Katjaana took a sudden, shocked step back, and Ioni looked like he might be sick. Advarik’s tail went up like he was about to start running.
The stranger wasn’t dead , either. And Skironir was pretty sure he was the only one prepared for Rubin to keep kicking; but Rubin didn’t.
“Hey, Kat,” he said.
“Uh-- yes?” Katjaana said back.
“This is your grudge, right?” Rubin said. “You want to polish him off? Or- hey, Ioni, you were talking about eating his brains out of his cracked skull, right? You want to take a taste?”
Kahvi, lying in the dirt on the ground, groaned and squirmed, trying in vain to pull himself away. Rubin looked down at him the same way Skironir was pretty sure the gods looked at mortals they’d decided it’d be really funny to fuck over. “Where are you going, buddy? You think we’re done here? You really think we’re gonna let you go now? You’re gonna die either way.” He put a hoof down on the stranger’s shoulders. “What’s this asshole’s name again, anyway?”
“Kahvi, I think,” Skironir said.
“Yeah,” Kat agreed.
“Any of you gonna follow through on your shit and come kill this Kahvi dude or am I gonna have to do it for you? Come on, Ioni, all that big talk?”
Ioni laboriously dragged himself to his feet. He was favoring one leg like he’d hurt it. “Uh… nah, man, I think I’m good.”
“What was it you said? You were gonna eat his eyeballs like strawberries?”
“Uh…”
“I can dig em out for you, if it makes you squeamish to try,” Rubin said, tail wagging. Ioni’s ears went flat against the side of his head.
“Uh, no thanks, um, that’s fine,” Ioni said, “I kind of, uh, I think I’ll pass for now.”
“You suuuure?” Rubin’s one eye grinned under the skull. “Come on, Ioni, prove me wrong. I believe in you.”
Ioni took a step back. “Uhhhh no I’m really good, but thanks anyway, um… “
Rubin took a step toward him, radiating amused malice. “ Really , Ioni, come on , just- “
“Rubin, stop hassling him,” Katjaana said. “It’s not his fault he’s a giant squeamish baby who faints at the sight of blood.”
“Oh, is that what happened to him?”
“I don’t faint at the sight of blood,” Ioni muttered, sounding rather defensive for a guy who allegedly didn’t faint at the sight of blood.
“Cool, then come tear this loser open flank to forehead,” Rubin said, tail wagging harder. Ioni grimaced.
“Rubin,” Katjaana said again.
“Anyways,” Rubin said. “Kat, you wanna come kill him, or should I just put my hoof through his skull and call it a day?”
Katjaana considered it. “Yeah, go ahead and polish him off for us. I’ll talk to Gl-”
Rubin reared up and came down hard over Kahvi’s head. Skironir looked away, because frankly he didn’t want to see that. Hearing it was bad enough. A few awful meaty thuds, and then a sickening squelch, like when you step into a mud puddle that’s deeper than you expect. Nasty bad gross sounds. When he looked back there was an indistinct mess of gore and blood on the ground and Rubin was casually licking bits of brain off his forelegs like it was nothing. Ioni was laying on the ground again.
“Alright,” Katjaana said. “We satisfied?”
“We should find the stash now,” Afastr said. “Or any of his other things, too.”
“Right,” Advarik agreed. “He’s dead. Now we should rob him, right?”
“Well, no,” Katjaana said. “I’m gonna call Glod to skin him for us or something, so we can string him up as a warning for everyone else.
“That’s kind of brutal,” Ioni said.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want anyone else crossing us like this ever again,” Afastr said. “Do you? Do you really want to work for weeks and weeks and have some stranger come through and steal all that hard work and leave you with nothing? Because I’m good with this never happening again.”
“Exactly,” said Katjaana.
“I don’t know,” Rubin said, “I’m not a big fan of doing weird shit with dead bodies.”
“Rubin, you kill people,” Katjaana said. “You’re eating his brains off your knees.”
"Okay, but that’s just a little extra protein. That’s not, like, hauling around a corpse to scare your enemies with. That’s how you get ghosts haunting you.”
“I feel like eating people’s brains is how you get ghosts.”
“I don’t have ghosts.”
“We did have that one ghost that one time,” Skironir said. “Remember, we tried to feed that kid to it?”
“Okay, but that was so we could sic a bigger ghost on it and kill it really dead,” Rubin said, as Katjaana opened her mouth again. “I didn’t just like kick a calf at a ghost and call it a day. And he was a dick anyway, he thought he was a real big stag and he kept picking fights for no good reason. Someone had to put the fear of death into him before he got his ass kicked.”
“Wait,” Katjaana said. “Alsvidr? The kid we taught to hide a body who did it so badly we actually got arrested?”
Rubin blinked. “Oh, yeah, that’s the one.”
“...I’d feed him to a ghost, too,” Katjaana said after a second. “That’ll be my back up plan. You all go on ahead. I’ll hang back and handle this.”</>
The other three filed out of the clearing, and Skironir waited for Rubin, but Rubin leisurely sat there licking the gore off his legs for a few more minutes. A grin played at the corners of his mouth. Skironir was just starting to get a bad feeling, when-
"You know,” Rubin said. “This dead loser didn’t actually do it, after all. You should be mad at Skironir. He framed the dumbass and everything.”
Katjaana stared at Rubin. Skironir stared at Rubin, too.
“You ate half of it too, you asshole!” Skironir snapped, once he regained the ability to speak. “What do you mean mad at me?”
Katjaana turned to stare at Skironir. “So you stole our fucking winter stores? You?”
Skironir looked at Rubin and then shook his head. “What? No.”
“He totally did. He got sick of you talking about it,” Rubin said. “And let me tell you, those berries were delicious.”
Katjaana’s fangs flashed. “You’re fucking kidding me. I’m going to fucking kill you both, I’m going to nail the two of you to a wall and skin you two. I can’t believe-”
She was still speaking when Skironir hightailed it out of there. He wasn’t getting skinned alive today, thank you very much.