The huntress shifts across night in a silent power that echoes across the plains, seeking blood and owning her land with a surety that escapes all else and is hers alone. She smells a warmth and hears a pounding, the flutter of a heartbeat so close to stillness, something no other could know the way she knows it, in the essence of her viscera. She edges ever closer to the quarry and it starts from the place of hiding into the open, light of body and fleet of foot, sailing through the air, running on adrenaline and fear. It will not be saved by this or any other measure. She sees it and her eyes glint in moonlight, reflecting the end of the chase in the dark brown of her iris, that shade so close to the colour of old blood.