[TW: Animal Violence/Death] Tourmalinekit lay, her cream-colored paws reaching up towards the sky, cold, wet sand stuck between her fur as her mismatched amber eyes scanned the horizon for a bird. She was looking, though she could never admit it to herself, for a friend; she often felt lonely in this place, as if the world was against her, as if no one would care if she disappeared one day. Finally, high above two silhouettes came into view, passing through the misty wisps of a cotton-white cloud. The two shapes circled one another, the smaller of the two trying for a mad dash away from the larger and into an adjacent cloud. Both forms, having neared the ground by a few more tail lengths, were now clear to Mals' trained eyes: a seagull and a peregrine falcon. What beautiful creatures, gray and white dappled feathers clear against an azure sky. Mal watched as the peregrine dove after the unfortunate seagull, and only heartbeats later observed the pair shoot through the cloud, leaving streaks of white behind them. A struggle ensued as they plummeted towards the ground, a trail of feathers falling behind them, and drifting slowly, painstakingly down to the ground where Mal lay. Jumping to her paws, Mal frantically began collecting feathers and, before long, had a mouthful of pristine, albeit a little sandy, feathers. Sparing a glance at the birds' fate, she spotted a slight shape perched atop a nearby crag, picking at the carcass of a seagull whose snow-white feathers were slowly turning red. A successful hunt. Mal laid her collection across the sand, despairing for a fleeting moment at the utter lack of peregrine feathers; nonetheless, the black tipped feathers of the seagull's wings would do. Pushing the rest of the quills aside, she selected a group of three long, nearly entirely black primaries, which she inspected for a long moment, pondering her next move. Then, slowly, cautiously, she stretched out a claw and carved down the quills until their edges were more like a vine than anything. Seething her claws and tucking one of the feathers between her teeth she began working them into a ring over, under, over, under, over and over again until the small kit had created a ring of coal black feathers twisting in a strange pattern that echoed the waves that surrounded her home, content with her creation Mal looped the bracelet around her right paws, before sprawling again in the sand, searching for more birds, her fur still covered with sand she sighed, this quiet was beginning to be too much, as if it would gnaw away at her very soul, but the brush of the feathers against her paw, reminded her for just a moment that she was not completely alone.
