Territory

The young female crouched down, making the most of the cover the scanty bushes provided. If she had ever had a name, it was long forgotten. To the other predators of the area she was known simply as the cave female, or occasionally the green female. To the prey animals, she was sudden death. Humans she avoided.

Or she had up until now. Unfortunately, there were now two of them fighting in the clearing, and she didn't think she could get around them without being spotted. She frowned, rubbing a green-furred paw over her face absently. If those WERE humans. They smelled like predators. The blackfurred one stank of dog-animal. She could handle him, she thought confidently. The grey dog-animals were only dangerous if you took on a whole pack of them at once.

The bigger one with yellowish-white fur presented more of a problem. He was definitely a fellow feline, and a male at that. Males were, she knew, invariably trouble. They killed cubs, for instance. She fretted, shifting from paw to paw. The cubs that had been left orphaned when the river bend female had been taken were in her lair now, and she wanted to check on them. But the big male was definitely a problem, since she had a sneaking suspicion that he was the same species as she was, and that was Not Good. Males only ever had one thing on their minds, and she wasn't interested right now. If he'd been around a full-moon ago, maybe. But now she had cubs to protect and a lair to get to.

Her eyes tracked a faint swish of movement a quarter of the way around the clearing from where she hid, and soon she spotted the treefall female crouching warily behing a large rock. The cave female shook herself and stayed put. The other females knew better that to rush in where the cave female wouldn't go. That was why they had accepted her. She wasn't a cougar, and her dappled green fur didn't blend into the background as well as theirs did, but she was the smartest female in the area, and one of the best fighters. More than once she'd driven away a male that got too pushy. Too bad she couldn't do that here, she mused, only her eyes moving as she watched the strange males fighting, but two of them were more than she could manage alone, and the treefall female wouldn't be much help. She was too small and light to be much of a fighter. She wouldn't even make it through the winters if the cave female didn't share her kills.

The black-furred male went down, and the smell of blood intensified. The cave female was worried, now. She'd never seen two males of different species fight like this before, and she suspected that one or both of them were Wrong, in the sick, strange way that made self-respecting hunters go rogue and start killing for fun. She was strong and fast, but she was still only a young female, and a Wrong-minded male in his prime would definitely be too much to deal with.

The treefall female slunk back out of sight, and the cave female guessed that she was going to check on her own cubs. She sighed, the tip of her leaf-green tail twitching restlessly. The males were still fighting. Typical. All males ever did was fight and mate, sometimes with the same animal. She was bored. She wanted to check on the cubs before she went hunting, and until the fighting males went away and unblocked the path to her lair she couldn't go anywhere.

Ah. They were moving through the trees to one side, now. Another minute or two, and she could creep through the bushes on the other side and go to her lair. She watched them carefully until they disappeared, then began approaching her lair. She could smell a lot of blood and musk, and she wondered how they could both still be fighting. Surely one of them should have gone down.

She was halfway across the clearing when a frantic yowl split the air.

The cave female was running before the wail had had time to die away. That had been the treefall female, and the two males had been heading directly for HER lair. There were small cubs in that lair, and if the males saw them they would kill them. She added her own slightly deeper voice to the alarm signal as it came again, her claws digging into the ground as she ran.

The two males were fighting almost on top of the massive log-fall where the smaller female made her den. Several logs had been displaced already, and the cave female could hear the cubs mewing in fear. This would not do. Dangerous males could not be tolerated in the local female's combined territory.

The cave female looked around. The two struggling males might not have noticed it, but they were surrounded. Six other females had arrived in response to the panicked yowls of the treefall female, and were poised to intervene. The cave female waited patiently with the rest of them for an opening.

One was not long in coming. The spinebush female waited until the black-furred one knocked the other one onto the ground, then leapt onto the black-furred male's back, clawing at him with her hind feet before leaping away. The sheer bulk of her knocked him to the ground, and two other females quickly jumped on him. Three more, incuding the cave female, did the same to the bigger male, while the sixth newcomer went looking for the treefall female and her cubs.

And THAT, the cave female thought smugly, was why their territory was so strongly established, not to mention lightly hunted. In the seasons since she had first arrived here, the local group of females had expanded from four to thirteen, with a matching expansion of territory. The cave female had taught them to fight as a group, to protect their cubs and their lairs. That made their area a strong one.

Both the males were staring at her. She snarled, her teeth inches away from the bigger male's throat. The other females snarled as well, their voices mingling in an extremely threatening chorus. The males had to be made to understand that they weren't wanted.

The bigger one seemed to get the idea first. He shook off the menacing females and loped away, only casting one look over his shoulder at the cave female. She closed her mouth, deciding that he didn't seem like such a bad male. After all, he was making himself scarce when told to, and that was always a good trait in males.

The other one was more trouble to get rid of. It kept trying to get close to the cave female, making weird mewling noises at her. She decided that this was probably the one that was Wrong in the head. She had to cuff it hard several times before it went away, and it only did so in the end because the spinebush female nipped at it's heels until it moved. Still, it went, and the cave female breathed a small sigh of relief. Finally.

One of the treefall female's cubs had been crushed by a falling log, but the other two were still all right. The females accepted the loss without much fuss, since it was unusual for more than two of three cubs to survive infancy in any case. They scattered back to their own areas, satisfied that the danger was over.

The cave female was still a little uneasy, though. As she headed back to her own lair, she wondered briefly if they'd seen the last of the two males. After all... they had behaved strangely. She shook her head, dispelling worry. They were gone, and that was the important thing. As long as the invaders were out of her territory.

She just hoped they hadn't scared all the game away with all that thrashing around.

back to Dyce's stories | Cyke and Logan archive | comicfic.net