If he were the type of buck to have friends, those friends might have said that Thrill of the Hunt became an entirely different Kimeti when hunting. They would see his focus shift and the often cruel smile fade into a flat line, his abrasive tongue would fall silent and his muscles would tense out of his indolent laze. When he was hunting, he was the hunt. There was no if. His quarry would fall to him eventually. If it took him longer than a day, two, even three, then so be it. He was patient, he would wear them down.
If he had friends, he might not have needed the hunt as keenly as he did but he didn’t and so he set forth again. His heart beat a steady rhythm in his chest and his gaze raked across every leaf, every stone, every slight imprint in the earth. There was no lacking for potential prey in the swamp but sometimes fighting something worth taking down took time. Anyone could silence a songbird and rip open a foxbun. There was no point if there wasn’t some challenge to it.
It had been three hours since he’d begun, still moving steadily, untiring. That was when he heard the whistle. It stopped him in his tracks, captured the breath in his lungs and his smiled, a quick flash of teeth that was gone as soon as it appeared. Whistler had found something. Something good. The songbird would stay with its find, keeping the hunter on track until they met in a bloody finale.
