literature

TBS - The shadow of Alvan

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Literature Text

"Well, let's see how this goes..."

That was what Alvan thought of at the start of the day. The sky had a few clouds in it though their movement patterns would never cross in front of the sun or moon and provide any shade. A light wind blew across the land that the Followers called home, and it was pretty much as good as Alvan was going to get. He was going to make room for practice to help with something he had sort of neglected thus far: stealth. He never made a huge attempt to be stealthy as it was hard to remain hidden from anyone unless the season was fall, and even then dead leaves made that task only harder. The initiate knew he did have to get better at stealth if he were to become a follower, so this was the day he was going to dedicate some self-practice to it.

He had been carefully analyzing the cats at the camp for the past few days and found that the only one who stayed within the camp reliably enough to give him the practice against a live target he needed so much was Anabella. He had hoped to no end that some other cats would be consistent or predictable enough without him having to tell ask them to stay in camp, but that never came to fruition. "Oh boy..." That was his only though when he realized that she would have to be the unwilling target to his antics, and the small sense of dread that followed, though he wasn't sure if it was dread or not.

Before he set out on his task, he made sure that he was well hydrated and fed because he knew once he started, he couldn't afford to break away to eat or drink without running the risk of getting caught. Eating before the sun arose proved to be fun because he had to hunt while the sun wasn't up, and he wasn't used to catching night time prey, which meant he took much longer and used more energy to secure himself some food. The sun hadn't even come close to coming up when he awoke, and by the time he ate, it was just coming up. With his preparations done, he quickly made his way back to the initiate den, more specifically the Bounty Hunter part and waited silently for Anabella to awaken. Once the she-cat had finally gotten up and started on her own daily tasks, Alvan stealthily followed on behind her, being sure to keep into the shadows and out of sight as much as possible because of how bad-suited his pelt color was for this assignment at this time of year. "Just be thankful the ground isn't wet or covered in snow or dead leaves." he thought to himself as he observed Anabella as she went to go and get some food and water.

Those tasks weren't very engaging for Alvan and he almost dozed off during them, but when she moved on elsewhere, Alvan snapped himself awake and was keeping a good enough distance from her that if she turned around on a moment's notice, he could hopefully find a suitable place to hide. The next tasks proved to be a little more fun to watch as it was some of her training. He used this time to take care of two birds with one stone. He always did a little poorer than her when she dragged him into combat and survival training, and with her practicing her techniques against someone else, he had time to study them and formulate ways he could counter them before she might even have a chance to use them against the orange initiate himself. When it all finished, Alvan was a little disappointed to see she was moving on as he actually liked seeing her train and improve, even if he wasn't doing so right now.

It was about this time that Alvan's body wanted more to eat and drink, though he had to tell his body 'no' and press on because in the real-world, if he did that, he could lose track of his target, they could spot him while his guard was done, or a whole array of other misfortunes could befall him. He knew how risky of a move this was, considering he knew too well the effects of not having enough energy to stay focused, but it was a risk he was willing to take to keep doing what he was doing.

The next thing Anabella seemed to be doing was going around as a sort of break and 'talking' to all the other toms around the camp. This was probably the most stressful part of this practice to Alvan as any of those toms could potentially spot him and blow his cover to Anabella. His prayers to Bane were answered when they did no such thing, allowing him to tail Anabella, even if he grew a little ill of her hitting on and complimenting ever tom she came across. "At least have some dignity..." That was his only thought to how she was seeming to talk to others right now.

After that, well, there wouldn't really be a thing after that. Sure Anabella was looking to train and hone her skills a little more, but as a result of Alvan being a little hungry and thirsty, his focus had waned a little allowing a gap just big enough to where when Anabella did a turn on a heel around, Alvan was slow on the uptake to hide himself once more. The orange initiate knew he had screwed up there and he prayed again that she wouldn't think anything of it and leave him alone...

"Hey there handsome, like what you see?~"

"Oh crap..." ... but his prayer went unanswered. That was the last thing Alvan thought before his mission had failed and he got dragged off by the other initiate...
Here is Alvan attempting to practice some stealth against a live, unknowing target...

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Alvan (c) NethaEmerald
Anabella (c) Panai
The-Brightest-Shadow (c) owners
© 2016 - 2024 NethaEmerald
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