Moonspear by a route obscure and lonely

Minor powerplay; let me know if I should change it! Tagging for reference. ♥

Craning his neck degree by slow degree, Cypress regarded the lissome girl at his side with a mixture of wonder and fear; his skin prickled with a strange sort of electricity wherever her downy fur brushed against his stiffer, silver-tipped pelage. The pound of his heart was loud and distracting and he didn’t catch the first words that tiptoed from her lips on the wings of a fragile sigh. He couldn’t imagine ever pretending to be Rannoch — or anyone from his family, for that matter. “It’s okay, Alya,” he assured her. “I don’t know what that’s like — being someone else.” The ache in his throat was tight and painful as she nestled nearer, and he sucked in another slow breath. She was so cold — he could practically feel the sting of her skin more sharply and painfully than the frigid winter air — or was she blazingly warm? He couldn’t tell.

Just in case it was the former, the eidolon shifted his weight to his opposite side, elbow bending and shoulder cresting as he made to drape his foreleg over her shoulders. “Would this be too uncomfortable?” he asked her, stuck in limbo and not nearly settled enough to take liberties. He allowed his limb to hover in the air just short of touching her, and the pose was as awkward and uncomfortable as it might have looked to any bystander. “I guess you probably look like your sisters?” he ventured, his whiskers quivering as he bent to sniff curiously at the fur at her nape. “I don’t look like anyone from my family — at least, not the ones I’ve met. My paw was — ” don’t think about him! “ — really tall, with great big muscles, kind of like…well, a bear, I guess. Rannoch looks a lot like him, except Rannoch is mostly gray and our paw’s mostly brown. They’ve got the same eyes, though — kind of a greenish blue. My mama was — beautiful. She’s probably where Rannoch gets his gray from. She, uh — my eyes, they look like hers.” Realizing too late that he’d spoken briefly of each parent in the present tense, Cypress bent his head and tucked his muzzle alongside the slope of Alya’s ear.

His quiet baritenor was muffled against the thicker fur at the angle of her jaw as he asked, “What’s it like to be someone else?” He found himself wondering if it would be better to be someone like @Kjalarr, his self-assured older brother — or @Rian — a hunting prodigy who, at a very young age, had caught three rabbits in one go. A benevolent hunting prodigy who’d willingly shared his kill with his ugly duckling of a baby cousin. The sting of moisture at the corners of Cypress’ eyes filled him with shame.