TH3•K3Ÿ•K1D'S•PL4Ÿ

~Kitt's {17} Key: Hunting the Game~

...Kitt wrestled his way through thick underbrush, PJ rooting through the roots and vines with canine persistence at his feet. The dog snuffled and grunted happily, his muzzle snouting about with his mop of a tail bobbing behind him. Kitt just followed the bouncing bob of the dogs digging descent, using the spring loaded staff in his hands to press through the dogs wake. This had better be worth the trouble, meeting in this part of the Woods; there were rats out here, big ones with glimmering ruby eyes. Kitt wasn't worried about them getting too close, not with PJ right in front of him, but the feel of them watching was just... Creepy...

PJ vanished through a hole in the brush, vines and rubbery magnolia branches wrapped through the rusty links of an old barbed wire fence. Kitt jammed his staff into the snag ridden opening, wrenching it wide enough to step through behind the now barking mutt...

"Yike!", snagging his hair on one persistent barb, Kitt steps into the clearing beyond minus a nice sized snatch of his Afro. Rubbing his sore scalp and wincing in pain he sets out, picking his way amongst the roots in the gloomy shade of the mother magnolia. The huge trees trunk rose in the midst of the clearing like a curved wall, the network of path sized branches out growing into natural cathedral-like arches and stairs in the shadows of the verdant verve of vegetative architecture. Kitt stepped carefully amongst the roots and beneath the running branches, the massive magnolias' thick leaves rubbing wetly; PJ's gibbering bark yelp of discovery guided the boys synesthetic sense of direction in spikes of green exuberance...

Kitt stepped over and around one more trunk root and found PJ pestering Ryan next to the pool. Ryan Dickson was wearing red 7's, dressed in all black and sporting a backpack bristling with an assortment of wooden weapons. Spikes, sharpened stakes, and arrows jangled and clacked together as the younger kid casually fended off PJ's playful advances...

Kitt squatted next to Ryan, shooing PJ away with an annoyed shrug. Directing his attention to where Ryan was studying, Kitt saw the thick splatters of blood and the torn scraps of clothing. There, amongst the cradle of roots and gore slickened leaves, a tooth the size of a mans palm transfixed PJs canine fancy. The dog grunted and whined, worrying the strange smelling fang at a distance...

"Werewolves..." Kitt muttered, reaching into the blood pool with the tip of his staff. Using the grip attachment built into the end of the jury rigged shower curtain rod, he fished the big tooth out of the ruddy sludge and held it before Ryan's strange, golden eyes. The two boys watched as the slick of blood coating the fang slowly seeped into the grooves and crannies of intricate etching; incomprehensible runes and symbols laced the surface of the tooth into which the bloody stains drained with a near inaudible suctioning...

"That's a Wendigo fang! Kojo Rann was here!" Kitt grinned as he wrapped the tooth in a velvet rag and secured it in his belt pack. He turned to look Ryan in his odd yellow gaze. The kid wasn't from Strange Falls but was always in the woods when Kitt ran into him. Though he was only 13, Kitt being slighter for his 17 years, Ryan was almost as big as the older boy; brawny muscles hunkered beneath that jet black denim and leather homespun. A single nail tipped stake twirled lazily in Ryan's left hand as the boy smiled...

His teeth were sharply pointed...

[[Ryan [13] Dickson Says: ~¡¡[xvX]!!~]]

"I found a crystal!" Kitt exclaimed. He pulled off his backpack, unzipped a pouch and extracted the length of glass clear quartz. Rainbows of crimson scarlet immediately began to play across the rude splotches and coagulate puddles of blood all about; the crystal played with scintillate serpents of scarlet shine in time with the life in the mortal remains surrounding.

"Definitely werewolf's blood!" Kitt and Ryan grinned in tandem discovery. "It was right where the map said it'd be..." The crystal seemed to glint in a bloody kind of concurrence, "...behind the library shelves, in the attic!" Kitt set the crystal carefully aside and pulled out the plastic binder. It was one if those big three ringed notebooks full of plastic sleeves displaying carefully preserve pages, notes, hand drawn maps and offhand scribblings...