Rais had never seen a creature quite like this before. It was a small, squat animal, much the same size and shape as a beaver. Beavers were something Rais was familiar with, but this animal was unlike any beaver Rais had seen. The scent wasn’t right for one, and besides that, the long, stiff, golden hairs protruding out of its dark brown body belonged to no beaver. He had no name for the animal; he had no idea what he was following was in fact a porcupine. If he had known, he would have stayed very far away from it. The porcupine ambled along at an unhurried, unworried gait, aware of, yet unconcerned about the young wolf following after it.
Rais glared at the little animal, trying to figure out just what it was, and more importantly, if he could eat it. Something about those hairs tickled an instinct within the boy, the same little internal alarm that would warn him that he was about to do something dangerous. He often made a habit of ignoring said alarm, as caution was seldom entertaining. Anyways, he was hungry, and the critter looked just right for lunch. He trotted a wide circle around the porcupine as it scuffled through the forest, Rais a moon to the rodent planet. There was nothing particularly threatening about the critter, he decided. His stomach growled, demanding to be fed, but Rais didn’t need any more encouragement.
As Rais moved closer to the porcupine it stopped in its tracks. Again the warning alarm in his head told him something was strange about this, but damn it! He was hungry! If the thing was just going to stand there, practically on a silver platter for him, he would take his chances. He tried to move around to its head so he could grab onto its neck, but received the most unpleasant surprise. The porcupine spun so that its rear end, and thus the sharp ends of its quills, faced the wolf. With a flick of its tail it slapped the wolf on the nose, lodging a dozen sharp quills into Rais’ probing snout. Just a warning shot.
Rais yowled loudly and sprung backwards before his mind had caught up with what had happened. Screw this thing! He knew something had been suspicious about the rodent, but he hadn’t expected <i>that</i>. With tricks like that up its sleeve, who knew what else the critter could do? Head and tail ducked he ran away yelping from the thorny fiend until he felt it was safe again. Having come to a stop, he pawed at his muzzle to try and stop the stinging; only serving to disrupt the needles and cause a fresh flash of pain across his face. The boy whimpered and whined, staring cross eyed at his nose and the long white spikes protruding from it.