Zhevra Hunting

Gunka and Jeema first spotted the zhevra through the dry bushes they were perched behind.
It was the first instinct of Jeema's to raise her long rifle. It was a smaller model of her father's, scaled to fit her eight-year-old hands. With a cunning squint to her eyes, she licked her lips and peered down the gun's sights.
The orc boy's hand on her shoulder stopped her from pulling the trigger. He gave her a pleading look not to get too hasty, and sent his brown eyes back towards the zhevra. It was still some distance away. Salax had told the two of them that, with a zhevra, you had to get as close as possible before you engaged; otherwise, it would scarper, and escape.
The two young pups were excited. Patience may have overruled them, but that didn't stop their little chests from panting rapidly. This was to be their first zhevra, if all went well. They'd hunted before, and together they'd brought down giraffes, plainstriders, and scorpids. After this, it would be raptors, and then perhaps they'd finally move onto the famed Thunder Lizards.
Jeema used her sweaty palm to push her dangling hair out of her eyes. The heat of the Barrens, combined with all the sprinting about, had doused the pups' bodies in slick layers of sweat. The troll youngling was beginning to look drowsy, much to Gunka's amusement.
'Tired?' he whispered, grinning.
'Shut up,' Jeema replied with harmless venom, doing her best to line up her target with the cross hairs on her rifle. After a frustrating bundle of seconds in which the zhevra did nothing but sniff the richly green Barrens grass, the troll grunted. 'It's not coming this way, you know.'
'It will. Remember what your dad said?'
'Dad says a lot of things.'
Gunka sniggered at this, before putting on his best Salax accent; the kind of comedic performance that trollkind everywhere had hoped obsolete in these multi-racial days. 'Ack, ah be warnin' yas dat da zhevras spend a lo' time in da same place, makin' sure dat they've sniffed an' seen eddytin'.'
'"Eddytin'",' Jeema repeated, with a not at all amused look on her face.
'He says that!'
'Naw he doesn't,' said Jeema. 'He never says dat.'
Gunka shrugged, and rolled over onto his back. He decided he was going to let the zhevra do all the hard work today. 'How come you don't sound like him?'
'cos I'm a girl, ya idiot.'
Gunka thudded his fist into her thigh, hoping to give her a dead leg. The sheer look of disinterest she regarded him with told him he'd fallen far short of his goal. 'I mean why don't you get all the words wrong!'
Jeema shrugged. 'Think it's 'cos I was born in Orgrimmar, yah. He was born in Stranglethorn.'
'Your mother sounds really stupid too,' said Gunka, ever the diplomat.
'T'anks,' said Jeema. She sent a nasty kick his way, as furious as it could be in her sprawled state. It must have hurt him, because he said "Ow". Quite loudly. 'Quiet down, ya idiot. You'll scare him off.' As the troll looked to see if there'd been any reaction from their prey, she gasped. 'Look!'
The orc boy rolled back over onto his chest, his waning interest restored if it meant he wasn't going to be hit again. He saw that the zhevra was strolling towards some new bushes, but in the opposite direction. It was sulk-worthy stuff.
'We following?' he asked.
'You're the Chieftain's son,' Jeema said, but even before the last word left her mouth, she had already got up, hefted her gun onto her shoulder, and started at a low run towards the nearest neighbouring bush. She looked over her shoulder as Gunka caught up, and grinned at him, delighted. 'Chieftain's following a grunt around!'
'Sergeant,' said Gunka.
'What?'
'Sergeant! We agreed you'd be a Sergeant.'
'Ohhh,' said Jeema. She shrugged. 'But that was yesterday!'
'I meant it,' nodded Gunka. 'It's going to be my first act as Chieftain.'
Jeema set her eyes back onto the zhevra. It had already stopped, and had done so at the opportune place for an ambush. There may have been hefty mounds of grass for it to chew on, but there was also a large family of high bushes. 'Who else will be Sergeant?' she asked, looking around for the next piece of foliage to dart towards.
'Probably Shra! I think she's old though. Might be dead by then.'
'She's not old!' giggled Jeema, trying to stuff her fist into her mouth to stop the laughter. She closed her eyes, knowing that if she looked at Gunka's delighted expression she'd just explode and alert the striped animal they wanted to put in a pot tonight.
'Think bad thoughts,' whispered Gunka, trying a favoured tactic of his. 'Like when Hammerfall was destroyed! Or think what you'd do if Nelai died!'
Jeema nodded slowly, fist still in mouth. But she was calming down. 'Yag,' she said, her words muffled. 'Ah'm calm aghen.'
'And you sound stupid,' said Gunka.
Jeema removed her hand, and used it to give her companion a wet slap round the face. The orc was almost floored by it; only his sturdy legs kept him standing, and kept him away from the embarrassment of being slapped to the ground. The look of pride that presented itself because of this wiped away any expressions of incredulity.
'Didn't even feel it,' he said.
'Oh yeah?' Jeema asked. She raised her eyebrows as a red mark coloured the orc pup's face.
'Yeah,' said Gunka, patting his cheek. 'Don't feel a thing. See? Not a thing!'
'Proud!' Jeema grinned, and then burst into a crouched run. Gunka followed, his fingers still upon the hot cheek. The thought crossed his mind to drag her into an ankle lock after the zhevra was down, but that was soon replaced by another, more devious idea. He wondered how the leather harness he was wearing could contain such genius. He'd get his own back, right enough!
In the head of Jeema, all thoughts were to do with the zhevra. Shooting it, beheading it, carrying it, cooking it, eating it, and finally mounting its head on the barracks' wall. She wondered if Chieftain Gremkarc would let her, She had to grudgingly admit, the various victims of the clan were a lot more impressive than zhevras. Dragons, demons, and devilsaurs! Most of the clan only shrugged when confronted with a lion. A zhevra wouldn't impress them.
The beast was still tucking into the vibrant grass when its hunters ducked behind their last piece of cover. All things considered, today was a good day to die. There was nary a cloud in the sky, allowing the sun complete, glorious dominance. The last week of constant rainfall had finally ended early in the morning, and the Barrens had benefited tremendously from the long, soothing soak. Animals found fresh, fertile banquets strewn across the vast expanses of earth, and the hunters found prey too tempted by the prospect of feasting to stay secluded, away from the dangers of a hyena-eat-hyena world. Or, more relevantly, everyone-eats-zhevra.
'Jeema?' asked Gunka, speaking a curious, thoughtful tone.
'Wat?' the troll asked, looking over to him. Her voice was as quiet as it could possibly go. Her father had made sure to teach her a good deal of sign language as soon as she'd be able to comprehend it, but it was rather pointless trying this out with Gunka. It was just a blessing from the loa that zhevras didn't have pin-drop hearing.
'What's your favourite colour?'
'Red. Why?'
'What pleases you about red?' he asked. His left hand slowly hovered towards his belt. Cautious, devious fingers wrapped around the handle of something...
s a nice colour. I think I know what ya favourite colour is, too.'
'Oh yeah?' asked Gunka, with a friendly smile. He tensed. Every muscle in his infantile yet muscled body was ready to jump into action. He kept his eyes on her, showing his undivided attention to the conversation.
'Yeah!'
'Are you gonna do me the honour of telling?' Out came the axe, concealed behind his other leg. Its metal head, sharper than sharp, didn't make a sound as it left its leather coat.
'Yah! Brown! 'cos ya made of kodo turd!' And with that, the troll jolted forward quickly, tightened the grip on her gun, took a quarter of a split second to aim, and fired. The bullet leapt from its compartment, and took flight. Chasing it was Gunka's throwing axe, but for all the boy's strength and momentum, his sneaky weapon could not outrun a bullet. The race was a foregone conclusion, but Gunka could take solace from the fact that the zhevra's confused wail at being shot in the eye was rendered comparatively quiet when it let out a bestial scream when his axe buried itself convincingly into its neck.
For a moment, it looked like the zhevra was going to remain standing, despite being very obviously dead. The mess of its face the bullet had made, and the wide trench in the neck the axe had dug would give any fellow zhevras violent, reoccurring nightmares. Its impressive swansong went without note by the two youths of the Horde, who were too busy clamping their claws onto each other's shoulders.
'I'm not stupid!' sniggered Jeema, digging her nails into Gunka's shoulder flesh. They were honed to be as keen and deadly as a panther's, and draw out blood. And already she could feel wet prickles of red upon her fingertips. She only grinned more at this.
'You still sound stupid!' retorted Gunka. He quickly found that against his friend's nails, he was rather outgunned for the task at hand. But even if he'd never been taught sign language, his father had given him a few areas in other aspects of life; such as headbutting.
He wasn't quite as adept at the whole thing at his father, but then his father had reached Far Seer levels of skull cracks. Gremkarc had made headbutts into a ceremony - a once in a lifetime event that just so happened to occur every week. It was a valiant effort of imitation by the son nonetheless. All the motions were in place; they just lacked the finesse and meticulous conviction. Back and then forwards his head went, and it crunched into the troll girl's forehead.
They both felt it; she more than he. Jeema went from scratchy troll to doormat with a headache. She patted her crown with all six fingers, and formed the first sentence on Azeroth made entirely of groans. Gunka watched as the troll multiplied herself seven times - each incarnation of her looking as though she'd just been force-fed a caravan's worth of voodoo juice.
It was only when there was the thud of the zhevra finally falling to its side that the two recovered from Gunka's brain-cell killing assault. Jeema shot up to her feet first, her trollish regeneration besting Gunka's sluggish retrieval of his senses. Her stunned and bested prey was fresh to eat, and she was more than willing to oblige. Bent low, she stuck her teeth and tusks deep into the zhevra's flank. Only when she felt the tight pain of breathlessness did pull away, and by that time, the zhevra had started to look like it had trodden on a misplaced mine.
She looked up to see the still drowsy form of Gunka. 'Ya okay?' she asked, pulling at his leg. She tried not to make mincemeat of his skin with her nails this time.
'Yep!' he said, the brightness in his voice far more so than that in his glassy eyes. He reached over to her right tusk, and snatched a whole slab of meat that was hanging from it.
'Hungry?' Jeema grinned, eyeing the carcass again. It was tempting to do another dive.
'Yeah,' the orc responded, shoving the gooey zhevra entrails into his dry mouth. It tasted good, even if he hadn't been the one to kill it. Of course, he considered, behind every great hunter there was an even better warrior, and the orc boy was fairly certain that it was the same thing here. Jeema couldn't have done it without him being there and assisting her, he bet.
Such esteemed thoughts weren't on the troll's mind. In fact, she was feeling rather fond towards her orcish friend. Bowing her head slightly to the fallen zhevra - something that Grauhr had taught her to do - she was far more callous in her act of taking out the axe. She yanked and yanked, and when that didn't work, she started to gnaw into the flesh around the weapon. That quickly asserted itself as the more successful tactic, and after a short, and not to mention tasty, while, the axe was in her hands, and then placed in the hands of Gunka, who nodded in thanks, in between sucks of the beast's tail.
'Why do you do that, anyway?' asked Jeema. She brought out her two identical daggers that Ciite had made her, and gave a good, precise look at the zhevra.
'It's fun. I keep them all,' said Gunka, spitting out something unpleasant he didn't want to know the origins of. The little warrior chewed open air for a few seconds, trying to get the taste away, and, as if he thought that the answer might just be positive, asked, 'Want to try it?'
'Nah!' Jeema said, using her daggers to slice out a piece of flesh. This went spinning towards Gunka, and landed by his crossed legs. The decision between zhevra tail and zhevra meat was an easy one to make, and so off went the tail (off into a nearby bush) and in went the meat (into his gob).
Food put the muffler on the conversation. Ten minutes passed - ten minutes in which the only conversation was made up of different variants of "Good?" and different variants of "Yes". To the east, in Durotar, four parents wondered if their pups had been successful, and a Tauren Shaman waited, to see if they would remember to bring all the meat back.
'Right, let's chop off the head and be going,' Jeema eventually murmured. Then came the colossal burp. And after that, the spitting out of what had still been in her mouth.
Gunka grunted. 'We have to take back what we haven't eaten too, remember? If we don't, Shra'll kill us!'
'Oh yeah,' said Jeema. She tried very hard not to visualise her father's face if he ever learnt about that lapse of memory. Or the fact that she was now smudging the bloody bits of meat she'd just spat out into the soil. It wasn't exactly the most subtle of illusions.
Slowly, because there was no hurry, they packed their bags full of dead zhevra. Gunka decided to hold the head underarm, while Jeema made damn sure to put her gun on full display, to deter any would-be zhevra avengers.
'So, raptors next,' said Gunka, as they began to walk towards the nearest road leading back to Durotar. The shot, he had only just realized, had scattered the rest of the animal kingdom, for miles around. There was just them two now, and the defeated zhevra. The Barrens was good at being silent, even when it was time for dinner.
'Ya not sated yet?' giggled Jeema. 'We only killed this one five minutes ago, Gunka!'
'An orc is never sated, Jeema, son of Salax and Nelai,' said Gunka. That was a quote, Jeema thought. That was definitely a quote.
'Yah well. We got 'em good this time.'
Gunka grunted. 'Hey, Jeema?' he asked.
There was no reply from Jeema. This was because Jeema that if she said "What?" Gunka would very loudly, and very proudly, shout, "stinks of ogre turd!"
The orc pup, therefore, decided to just go ahead anyway. 'I said I would make you a Sergeant, yes?'
Oh. He's put on his Chieftain voice, thought Jeema. The one he uses when he's talking about what he'll do when he's in charge of the clan. 'Yah?' she asked, tentatively.
'Well, Jeema, I think it would be best for all of us, if you were promoted to the Stone Guard.'
'That's very nice of yah, Gunka,' said Jeema. She knew she ought to have rolled her eyes at it, but... well, Gunka's voice wasn't all just a laugh. For a youth looking for leadership like Jeema was, there was still something in it. Something commanding. And Gunka, despite being a year younger, and a year less mature for it, still had an eye, a mouth, and a brain for leadership.
It was lucky he still lacked the ears.
'Ya a git, Gunka.'
'Huh?' asked Gunka. 'What?'
'I said "Yah, I accept, Gunka."'
'Oh good,' said Gunka. He looked genuinely relieved. 'You know what I thought?'
'Wat?'
'I thought you had called me a git, Jeema!'
'I'd never do a thing like that, Gunka,' the troll said, shaking her head.
The pair marched on, chatting about many things, mostly to do with the future. The future, to them, was something that was a long way off, and many a time they had trouble fathoming it being something that would actually happen. But then the past was just as vague, and just as hard to actually imagine happening. The setting up of the clan had all sounded so... boring? They had been told that there was no grand festival to herald its creation. Things had slowly stopped happening. Things that their parents had done before had gradually drifted away, and so they found themselves lulled into something new. There was nothing amazing about that, they considered.
But their parents knew, in the early years, that times had been amazing. No, the clan hadn't burst into life by slaughtering a dragon, but which clans did? Those early years of the clan hadn't gripped their lives because of massive day-to-day events, but the hour-to-hour slog of keeping things going, and making sure that the wheels didn't come off, or the engine didn't run out of fuel. There were surely stories that took place in the early years that Gunka and Jeema could marvel at - the time the loas of Stranglethorn went to war was one that they both wanted to hear time and time again - but the tale of the clan itself was a tale of sustained honour. Honour jogging a marathon was far less entertaining than honour sprinting a race.
One could not begrudge the two little grunts of the Horde for this, however. They had enough trouble with the present. There was the elderly to feed, for a start.