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The hunt ended as it always does, with Wile foiled and the cerulean roadrunner not roasting over a fire in his cave, (oh how that roadrunner will chirp so mournfully when he finally catches him—oh woe to the poor defenseless bird, swooning and clucking in terror), but rather standing above him as he’s laid out on ground, smiling, guileless and taunting. Reminding him of his reoccurring failure. This is not a new phenomenon. Indeed the victory stance has gotten rather old.
However—there is a recent change that has occurred, a modification to their routine, one Wile can’t quite make heads or tails of. Rather than dart away immediately, to wherever he goes when Wile isn’t actively hunting him, he settles perched a few feet away, legs tucked in, content to laze comfortably nearby while they both wait for Wile to return to his normal state.
He is just so smug. His lack of concern, his security that Wile won’t rise and snatch him up in his arms and carry him away, or if he did try that the bird would be too quick for him to succeed. The patient, dewy eyed expression—it is almost as insanity inducing as his impossible running pace, almost as infuriating as the way he doesn’t conform to certain laws of physics when Wile must.
His countenance rarely cracks or changes, as though he isn’t subject to the same pains and frustrations and toil everyone else on Earth must suffer through. Nooo, never, not this eternally joyful perfect little thing. So above it all. It makes him want to bite his feathers off. It is not enough to be beautiful and nearly unattainable, delectable, he must also rub it in the face of anyone in his vicinity with a flick of the tongue and that smile.
Wile feels a low growl in his chest, born from his ruminating, and lets it crawl up his throat and out his mouth. In response the roadrunner shivers, all his darling feathers fluffing up in tandem and then settling back down like a jolt of electricity flowing through a wire. Though the roadrunner’s smile remains, the satisfaction of being able to affect him, to provoke a reaction, soothes some of the wounded pride.
In fact he even manages to get the bird to twitch and rise slightly, as if anticipating Wile has recovered and is about to pounce, but when he merely lays his head in his arms, not quite ready to start again he follows suit and settles back down. A tilt of the head, the unspoken question, ‘not ready yet?’
A jittery fluttering movement—restlessness which always follows from them staying still for an extended period of time. Riling up his instinct to pounce. He pushes it down. Truthfully Wile is fully recovered and could probably go again, but for some reason he’s content to just absorb. It’s not as though he hasn’t already studied his opponent for years, cataloguing every inch. Surely by now, he should be sick of it. But he isn’t. He never is.
Minutes pass like hours as they stare, gazes locked. Whatever his prey is thinking is always difficult to surmise or guess at, but whatever it is, it compels him to stay, fixated, and just as Wile begins to grow tired of it and the bird looks close to pecking at him to provoke him to start chasing, something passes by in the corner of his vision, and startles him to sitting. Slithering and hissing and heading straight towards him is a snake, a snake with bared fangs.
Rather than take it in his mouth or claws, like a respectable coyote, he freezes. Sometimes he reacts in this entirely unproductive way, as if he isn't a brilliant capable inventor, when he spots a boulder rolling to crush him. Moving and responding just a second too late to save himself.
A yellow talon pierces through the snake's scales before it can reach him, followed by a concerned chirp, as the coyote looks up to see the bird's furrowed face, shifting quickly back into innocent happiness as the snake squirms and spasms. The talon presses further down with another chirp, and the snake calms, twitches, slowing and ceasing entirely.
What.
What was that?
Did his cute little bird just—
What?
The roadrunner shifts to a proud happy stance, chest feathers puffed out like a rooster, and then his body, his long elegant neck dipping gracefully towards the snake and looking up eyes following the coyote as if pointing it out, showing it off. ‘Look what I did!’
Is he being threatened—part of their whole thing, a display from the roadrunner, that he can be a vicious predator too (apparently) but Wile is the one who does the threatening. That's how it's always been—it’s not like him to—that’s not how it works!
His face grows slightly frustrated, his chirp annoyed—seeking some sort of reaction—so Wile throws a dart at the metaphorical ideas board and smiles, awkward and toothy. Happy chirps follow, and some relief fills him for some reason. Because he's not afraid, of course not, that'd be ridiculous. Nothing his prey could pull off would startle him.
And he definitely doesn't flinch and yip when, after searching around for a few seconds, the roadrunner darts toward a decent sized rock, newly fallen from the cliff side, and starts bashing the dead snake against it violently, over and over again, with the same quickness he does everything else, splattering blood all over the rock. Why is he—the snake is long gone, what's the point of this?!
Frankly it's gratuitous, even to the eyes of a coyote.
And all the while his pleased grin doesn't falter.
Mercifully he eventually slows and stops, letting the poor snake rest, at least until he cuts it in half on a sharp piece of metal—the remnant of the contraption that had him fall in the first place.
The roadrunner approaches him, and he smiles tensely, hoping to appease the creature before him, the most familiar piece of his life suddenly made strange and incomprehensible by…whatever all that was.
Half of the snake is laid before him, he gestures to himself ‘for me?’ And the roadrunner nods, still proud, still pleased and then picks up the other part of the snake in his beak, the rest limply hanging out.
Oh. For him. Caught for him—them. For the both of them to share.
Some blood is stained against the roadrunner’s beak and feathers. Trophies of a successful catch.
Reptiles are certainly not one of his favorite foods, not like quail, and Wile is a dignified enough animal—he cooks his meals. But he picks it up in his paws regardless, accepting the offer by biting a chunk off. Imagine that—being fed spoils of a catch by his prey as if they're mates.
(Of course it can't be read into—he has learned the difference in species can create issues for interpreting each other’s behavior—such as now.)
Still he feels warm. Hungry in the way only this beguiling creature can provoke. And a little unsettled.
It grows as the bird flutters and spins and stomps his feet, exhilarated chirping muffled by the snake, slowly climbing up into his beak, swallowed whole, a fascinating mechanism of consumption, maybe there is still information left for him to catalog about the roadrunner.