Blackfeather Woods Curiosity killed the cat

Figured they’d have to meet eventually, haha.

After his return home, the boy had been rather exhausted. He was drained of energy, both physically and emotionally, and had wanted for nothing more than to settle down and sleep for as long as he could get away with. As he grew, it seemed he was becoming less and less interested in his dreamland, but given his current predicament, he sought it out more than ever before. A place he could escape to, a world that was all his own. However alluring the motherly voice of sleep was, he kept himself from falling victim to her spell immediately. To sleep out in the open was not something he was overly fond of, and so his inner voice urged him to return to the shelter he shared with his father. He knew that he needed to move out, to find his own little hideaway, but that would have to wait. Apparently, reaching any shelter would have to wait, too, for he soon found himself settling into a space beneath a tree. Snow had yet to touch the ground where he laid—either that or it’d already melted—which gave him a dry place to rest his weary eyes. The second his eyes shut, though, they snapped right back open.

The noise reached his ears before the scent invaded his nose, prompting the Inuit to stand. His body was reluctant to move at first, but with a bit a force, he was soon standing upright. Queer eyes narrowed as he stared off in the direction that housed the unknown nuisance and, with a huff, he started at a slow trot towards it. When he broke through a dying bush and noticed what had disrupted his sleep, his glare only hardened. It was a girl, the same girl he’d seen at Meldresi’s funeral. One of Burke’s children, he knew, but he’d already forgotten her name. “What are you doing?” the elder child questioned, voice as cold as the air that surrounded them. Despite her being the leader’s daughter, he had no plans of coddling her or treating her as if she were special. As far as he was concerned, respect was earned and, though she was also the late queen’s whelp, he didn’t feel as if she’d done anything to earn it from him. How could she have, anyways, considering she was still so young? Age, however, was just another thing he felt didn’t mattered.