It had been several weeks now since his eye transplant. Weeks of experiencing a brand new world, and the initial elation had subsided. When he had first lost his eye it had been challenging. Hunting had needed to account for a blind spot, and his balance had been thrown off, but he had managed.
The bigger problem was how self-conscious he had been about its absence. He had completely self-isolated at first, unable to stomach the thought of others looking at his empty socket. That they would see it and think him pitiful, a victim to Noctua’s schemes. He didn’t want to be a victim. He was the one that made other gods victims. He didn’t want them to look at him and remember how he was with both eyes and find him somehow lacking, less than. The downward spiral of dysphoria and self-doubt kept him alone with his thoughts for far too long. He had only hesitantly visited Sikac, and it was her complete disregard for the change that had set him at ease.
But having a new eye was no less challenging, it now felt as if his normal eye was the blinded one. At first the new eye had been a little irritated, like feeling a piece of sand stuck under his eyelid, but now the inflammation and dryness had more or less receded and the itch had become just a subtle awareness of the difference in the back of his mind.
He had been observing a cluster of dainty actinodium flowers for a little over an hour, watching as they delicately bloomed into fully fledged flowers, the ruffle of their petals unfurling then rewinding back into their bud over and over, faint trajectories of their motion trailing like gossamer. In his other eye, the petals remained stable, the whole plant still. When he had lost his eye, he had found himself inordinately grateful for his remaining eye. But now it seemed lacking. It made him feel… complicated.
He almost wished he had not received this new eye, that highlighted the limitations he had been unknowingly restricted by. A little coil of resentment towards Sikac for forcing the eye on him curdled in the bottom of his belly. It upset him to think that he had thought Sikac was accepting him, missing eye and all, while she had just been quietly making him a prosthetic. It felt like she had been lying all this time. And underneath that anger, was shame.
And though it was mesmerizing, seeing the world in this whole new way, with a whole new lense. It felt almost disrespectful, being so enthralled, as if he was somehow ungrateful to the eye that had been with him throughout. He sighed. The blossoms folded shut again. It was a bit pedantic of him to be so particular about what was him and what was not him. Not when he wasn’t even sure whom Noctua had sewed up inside him. He could almost sense them sometimes, the ghosts of cats ensconced within him. Could almost feel them writhing in his veins when he called up his godly ichor, churning to escape the prison that was his flesh. He shivered, unnerved.
In preparation he had hunted several frogs, before releasing them again. He had never had any interest in non-god flesh. First of all, it was not as sweet. God ichor was, well, heavenly.
He had started hunting other gods because of Noctua, if he was being honest. It was cathartic. And it made him feel powerful. That despite his origins, those great, powerful, immortal beings were still vulnerable to him and he had the ability to decide their fate. To take from them what had been taken from him. His choice. His life. Losing his eye had been too reminiscent of the vulnerability of his birth at Noctua’s hands. And now he had power again. Beyond what he had before. And that rabbit was going to be the perfect catch to investigate the extent of his new abilities.
Too excited by the prospect of using his new eye to come up with a more theatrical plan for the hunt, he set out to locate Yanus and Yuno once again.
They appeared to be having some sort of argument. He was able to determine that Yanus was the mother and Yuno the daughter, but their aggressive interruptions of the other made it impossible to determine which head was which.
Their argument dissolved into a tussle. From what Novem could make out, it appeared to be a dispute over lucerne. The flowering plant was a preference of Yuno, and she ate with such gusto that their joint stomach was completely filled without room for more nutritious foliage. It seemed difficult to balance the nutrition for a being that was simultaneously and perpetually experiencing two different stages of adulthood.
‘I reabsorbed your siblings and I can reabsorb you too! Ungrateful!’ This was apparently Yanus.
A little harsh. Parental relationships from Novem’s experience were difficult enough without having your parent constantly watching over your shoulder, literally in Yuno’s case. He empathized with the experience. But not enough to abandon his hunt. He was an obligate carnivore, after all. He had somewhat hazy memories from his pre-ghost life. Memories of hunger driving a constant course to kill. And sometimes not driving him to kill but doing it anyway, opportunistically. Anything that was smaller than himself would do, he had enjoyed variety but had never dared to chance an adult rabbit then. The fear of injury from their sharp teeth and rib bruising kicks had kept him at bay.
But now he would indulge. He also had a massive astral form to fall back on. His soul merge from the however many cats had been involved in his god birth had manifested in a quite respectably large astral cat form that he could project and manipulate his surroundings with, given enough concentration, though it was fairly draining to maintain for any significant time. It gave him an edge when his prey revealed godly abilities of their own.
The heads appeared to have reached some sort of resolution, or perhaps had just become tired of the scuffle. They were strange, viewed through the lens of his new eye. Or rather, everything was strange and they pushed this new status quo even further. Unlike everything else, which had a sort of soft after effect blur of motion following and preceding, Yanus and Yuno were self-contained.
However, their anatomy appeared to be tesseracting inward and outward simultaneously, hypersurfaces cantellating and truncating, apparently without causing damage or destruction to the rabbit’s mortal form. He could clearly see the steady thump of their heart beat, pulsing softly, the occasional refraction of surfaces allowing an inward glimpse of the undulation of arteries driving blood down capillaries and into glossy sinew and muscle. It seemed that rather than just following a single temporal trajectory, as they eye perceived most objects, the rabbit was a superposition of all possible states at a given moment. Independent, disconnected from its surroundings. And quite nearly incomprehensible.
Novem wondered idly what it must be like as a flea living in Yanus’ and Yuno’s fur. If they were so unlucky as to have fleas. He himself had never had the displeasure. He was fastidiously groomed. He licked at his chest to reassure himself of his tidiness. Would the flea tesselate through the rabbit’s body? Was it only his eye that was able to perceive this anomaly? Would other three dimensional beings interact with it only superficially?
Suddenly the rabbit shifted. Not physically, exactly, but its every surface seemed to align perpendicular with the fabric of space itself. As if suddenly gravity had warped and a strange new force was being imposed, non-euclidean, irregular, and the rabbit was squeezed inward, its inwards warping outward, for a moment he could see exposed meat and bone and… pop! As the displaced air surged to fill the vacuum. It appeared a short distance away with another almost simultaneous pop, in the middle of a cluster of fluffy white clover.
This seemed the best time to strike, Novem decided, right as the rabbit was warping. Its inversion seemed to require a degree of focus and concentration that distracted it from its environment, and its soft tender core was exposed, perfectly defenseless. He had yet to see any major movement of Yanus using three dimensional space. He looked forward to the fine marbling of unused muscle.
It seemed quite content with the clover patch for now. Novem crept closer, easing his way along in the shadows. He was a bit concerned about being caught in the warp. He was unsure about how his body would fare, if he would go along for the ride, or be torn apart. But even if he was torn apart, he felt fairly confident he could sew himself back together. He’d done it before. And the near simultaneous spatial distortions seemed to indicate that it wasn't spending significant time in some interim space. Yanus had been staying in this general vicinity for the entirety of the time he had been observing them. He wasn’t sure if there was a limitation on the distance they could warp across, but given the distances he had seen so far, he felt confident that he would be able to keep up if it came to a chase.
He had decided that his usual stalking approach would be best. He had experimented with other methods before. He had briefly led a group of feral cats in the early stages of his godhood, and in another instance he had teamed up with a particularly vicious spirit called Åndiløs that had taken issue with a wind god who had cursed him with bad breath. And when one was a spirit they were mostly breath.
With the cats they had cooperated to take down larger prey with tracking, stalking, and driving techniques. They would pick a trail before stealthily approaching under thicket cover before bursting towards their prey, driving them into the clutches of their accomplices that had circled behind. He had left them behind when he had decided to pick up god hunting.
With the spirit, because they had a single particular target, the preparation had involved a different approach. They had tracked it down and then set up a blind from which to observe the god as it ignorantly gusted by. It had been miserable, sitting up with a spirit with terrible breath. It had truly reeked. The blatant use of Åndiløs’ breath had driven the spirit into such a frenzy that he had broken cover brashly and confronted the wind god inopportunly which had exacerbated Novem. He had reverted to singular methods since.
Many of his previous kills had started with tracking before moving on to still hunting, easing through the forest after a target in camouflaged pursuit. Of course the song god Lauliet had required almost no technique, given that she was literally rooted to her location. Yanus required more finesse.
He decided on calling. He would lure Yanus into pouncing range mimicking rabbit calls. He had to be careful. Scent was only a component. He didn't want Yanus to circle downwind in approach to his call, he needed to take advantage of the terrain to prevent that from happening while still leaving the path open for his ambush. He could employ the use of thermals at different heights to keep his scent undetected. The trick was sounding like something worth investigating. There were several rabbit vocalizations he could use, but he wanted one loud enough for detection and non-threatening enough to keep from putting Yanus onguard. The humming of an amorous buck seemed like his best option.
Getting into position, he hummed, committing to the sound completely. Yanus and Yuno’s ears perked in his direction, he quickly climbed up the trunk onto a low branch of a lemon eucalyptus tree, using its strong scent to mask his own. Yanus popped underneath. He pounced.
