Speeding down the street at a dead run, Mataki laughed and glanced over her shoulder at her pursuers. It was like a game! Just like the games she and her brother used to play when they were pups, only that had been over a stick or a bone and not a carved hollow stick with some holes in the top. You picked up the stick and tried to take it from each other and chased each other around, and it was loads of wild fun! Which was kind of what was going on now, except she was in human form and the person after her didn't seem that happy.
Oh well! She was swifter, always had been the quickest in her pack, and some people were sore losers.
She'd taken the flute because it had been right out there in the open, right on a table, and it made the most interesting sounds when you blew in it, as the person tending the table had shown her. And he'd given it to her! Handed it right over, so she'd taken it. And now apparently she'd initiated a game. Huh. Humans were so odd! But Mataki went with it, grinning and darting in and out of alleys. It was her stick now, dammit!
Turning a corner sharply, she had been unable to see that it wasn't clear and wound up barreling right into another woman. She had time enough only to let out a surprised yelp before they both went crashing over each other and to the hard ground.
And she clutched her stick the entire way down.