Redhawk Caldera Monster

Hoping for some family! @Peregrine @Fox @Gannet

The boy was growing to be a worrisome young lad. His physical devolpment was nothing out of the ordinary. Whip, while the famine had made him long and gangly much like his name-sake, was beginning to tack on bulk. With every passing day, he grew to resemble the brother he had never met. However, this was unbeknownst to him. To a blind eye, perhaps Whip would appear to be a normal adolescent -- but with a trained gaze, one could see something was off. One could see it in his joyless silver eyes.

He waited for the whispers, the hushed something's wrong with him from the lips of his family, but such concerns never came. They worried not for him, but the other: Lucy, who had been taken by some stranger. Her fate would be the same as Peter's, thought Whip. Dead. This time, however, the pain was much less keen... In fact, he felt none at all. He felt nothing. Numb.

And so, he carried on as usual, keeping himself along the fringes of rendezvous site and speaking to no one but himself. Even then it was only in whispers. He did not particularly enjoy the solitude, but it was where he felt most comfortable. Today however, he was not alone. In his walk, Whip spied a beetle weaving though the grass. He stopped and watched for a long while, following slowly to keep the bug within his sight. It was his friend. His only friend.

As he watched, a strange urge -- a thought -- crossed his mind. His paw hovered over the bug as it ambled about, and slowly, reluctantly, Whip brought it down over the beetle and crushed it underneath his weight. He pulled his paw away and looked down to see the bug's leg twitch a final time before falling deathly still.