Tall and defiant, the stoic cypresses maintained their homely needles in a ballroom of brazen elm and oak. Green gone gold – here in places a patch or bloodstone scarlet or even a decadent sort of copper-brown. Wealthy and frivolous – flaunted and occasionally plucked away from their overburdened fingers in a fluster by the shrill gale. Autumn coats, lavish gowns and expansive crowns. They shamed the sleek branched cedars, dismissed the common pines. Drab olive, dispassionate jade. How unremarkable. Boring. In the pale October breeze, the sweet gums and the sycamores snickered and rustled their limbs – gesticulating at the laughable display.


But their chortling chuckles in the evening autumn wind were hushed when a shudder-tremble rocked along their roots. A thunder-thoom called out from the other end of the valley before another tremor wriggled along their craning backbones and gnarled boughs. Another and another sounded off in rhythmic succession – sequential and directed. The tone thickened. The volume increased. Fearsome force slapped against the very mud soaked shoots of their roots and stretched up to their sky-reaching branches. Some of the nearer trees quaked now. Terrified of that unknown. Their entirety wavered and wobbled – whence fell a stretching shadow over the evening-illuminated dale.


Tremendous, the thylacine titaness poured between the rocky outcrops of the mountainside. Evelyn’s pink nose flared a moment. Nostrils drinking in the late autumn air, sampling with inquisitive inhales. A glacial gaze stretched over the ankle high saplings and the thigh aspiring elders. Her striped snout, drawn down by the weight of a focused frown suddenly bent along a more elevated contour as she grinned in delight. The cool blue of the freshwater lake she had been pursuing reflected like a prism in the dying daylight. With a thirsty slurp of her chops, she started forward again.


Bare paw pads callously thunk-thoomed along the valley soil. Every footfall sending a shockwave radiating outward to herald her approach. At such proximities, their forceful tones were felt as much as heard. The quake shake of a heavy step started a nearby sycamore so much that it dropped its entire golden array in a single mournful lament. Evelyn’s passage left a void – a vacuum in its wake that harshly yanked away the trinkets and baubles that still clung to those bare branches. A spiky hail tumbled down across the entire forest. Treading explosively – the imprint of a paw formed a new glade and disrobed a huddling cloister of forsythia. Deciduous tears rained down at the pillaging of an ivory cherry blossom by a near miss that still sent a fluster of snowy-petals blasting away. Muscadines rattled on their vines as the alarmed elms had the goldenrod ripped from their limbs. The red oaks wept as their gray-crimson was stolen away. Precocious pecans shook their hands achingly and the weary walnuts lamented their newfound nudity. All the while pines shook with laughter at the sight.


Ignorant to the upset her mere traverse had caused, Evelyn knelt down upon the sandy soil of a lakeside shore. A few feet – or a few stories – the warmth of the sun-baked grains radiated through her palms just the same. It was a simple natural pleasure that she promptly discarded as she lowered her muzzle and plunged a slender snout beneath a body of water finally expansive enough to quench the dry ache of her throat. She closed her eyes and sip-supped. Deep and greedily she drained – fairly certain she felt a minnow or two impact and fragment against one of her canines between bountiful swallows. She spared no thought to their plight. Stay out of the water if you can’t swim.


Once she had had her full, she pulled her face up from the water – wiping the clingy moisture from the side of her striped snout. A burst of air rippled from her lips as she exhaled a sigh of relief and felt a much needed fullness. Opening her eyes she scanned across the water. A nervous habit. A primal instinct to watch your back in a moment of reprieve – even if nothing could conceivably threaten the sprawl of muscle and might she presently composed.


As chance would have it though – she espied the unnatural tones of a little white and sky-blue motorboat bobbing in the water across the lake. Its owner – a lone fisherman with rod lost on the planks chewing tobacco yellowed chops craning wide in awe – gawked at the scene she must have presented. For a moment she was felt a sear of self-consciousness ooze across her face in a pinkish flare. She felt keenly, the frays and jagged shredding in the threads of her (admittedly admirable) shorts and shirt. A keen awareness that her stripes were on full display. But the heat evaporated off her cheeks as she realized the one who was really exposed here, was a little vulnerable vessel bobbing on the surface of her drink.


She chuckled a low cascade of thunder that sent lapping waves reverberating out before lowering her head for another sip. Being a titaness was thirsty work. And for once, the fisherman definitely wouldn’t need to embellish the next time he told the tale of the one that got away.

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A tale inspired by this splendid piece done by  RainbowFoxy
Involving  Fauxlacine 's character, Evelyn Lacine in more non-cannon macro shenanigans traversing some lakeside property.