Larkspur wished she hadn't taken the simple pleasures of life for granted. Simple pleasures like chewing. Like talking. Like hunting. Ever since the Accident, she hadn't been able to do any of those things without a certain degree of difficulty. Her speech was slurred, sometimes to incoherency; she could only eat by herself after mashing her food with her paws; and hunting...
Well, hunting was a tricky one. She could not, as was standard practice, catch the bird in her mouth, and therefore hunting was something of a pointless experiment for Larkspur. She hadn't done it, in fact, since the Accident. Before, it had been one of her favorite pastimes, and now... now, she was bored and nostalgic and hungry and she figured she might as well.
It was one of those absurdly warm winter's days which do nothing but tempt one with premonitions of summer. The watery sun reflected brilliantly off the diseased snow, throwing shafts of crisp light onto the pale of her belly and dappling the mahogany of her flanks. Larkspur's green eyes were content despite the scar that stretched from her cheek to her chin, leaving the left section of her upper lip dangling loose and useless.
She inhaled deeply, reveling in the delicious sting of the winter's air in her throat, and closed her eyes to absorb the sounds around her. She could hear for what seemed like miles: the birdsong, the trees rustling, even the muted strains of a conversation a hundred yards away. She could even make herself believe that she could hear the snow's murmurs, thick and soft and heavy. What interested her the most, however, were the faint scratching noises she could detect from the trunk of a nearby tree. Something light, hopping and tapping: a bird.
She paused for another second and then her lids flew open. Her gaze was trained on the robin. It was clearly trying to take advantage of the unseasonable warmth, but even so its plumage was puffed up with cold. Larkspur narrowed her eyes and settled without hesitation into a hunter's crouch. She began to inch forward, claws unsheathed and belly held close to the ground.
She was pleased to notice that she still knew what to do: she had been afraid that after the long moons of no hunting, she would have forgotten how, but evidently it was too deeply ingrained into her. The movements were natural and effortless.
Perhaps too effortless-- a paw slipped and a twig fractured beneath her. In that instant, the robin's head snapped toward her and its beady eyes met hers. Without thinking, she launched herself at it. The robin propelled itself to a few inches off the ground, its tiny wings beating the air frantically, but Larkspur was faster. Her jaws made to close around it and then she backpedaled desperately, batting at it instead with her paws in a cloud of newly unearthed soil that she had kicked up. It was knocked to the ground, where she trapped it under her paw.
She stood like that for a minute, heart racing and breath coming in rasping pants. She hadn't had a thrill like that in months! And she certainly hadn't expected to catch it. She peered down at it with curiosity. It was so frail and tiny, just a mouthful really, hardly worth the work. She could feel its miniature heart going into overdrive, throbbing against her toes. Its beak was opening and closing soundlessly and its wings thrashed desperately, but Larkspur felt only a curious bemusement.