The Tangle lips are raw with this truth you have known all your life

Talion was sure that leaving the Strand was what dying felt like. Although he'd been shunned by his mother and siblings since before he could remember, being forced to flee his home had been the most difficult experience he'd ever faced; it was all he'd ever known. For weeks he lingered pitifully on the outskirts hoping the new Siren Queen would change her mind, hoping that his father might fight for him. He undoubtebly tested the limits in doing so, by remaining no matter how often the she-wolves ran him from the edges of the territory. Again and again, he return to roving the nearby woodland where he'd previously hunted for the Nereides, howling mournfully in the night and wishing they'd believe that was not and never was a threat.

It was Sao herself, with thinned patience and a peaked temper, who put her outcast son in his place. She violently chased him from her home, and refused to abandon her pursuit until she made it perfectly clear to Talion that he was not welcome. The wound his mother inflicted above his shoulder no longer bothered him physically, but would continue to trouble him in other ways: a mark of the damned, a reminder that he was the boy who was despised purely for being born the wrong sex.

He adapted and survived, however, despite the odds. Talion had still been learning how to track, hunt and defend himself when he'd been ousted, yet somehow managed to live and travel alone. The summer months had been kind to him but now, with autumn chill in the air, he knew he needed the support of a pack to make it through the fast approaching cold season.

Staying close to the coast, the sterling adolescent happened across another coastal pack. He gave them a wide berth, uncertain still if they were another branch of Nereidoes or if he even wanted to live directly by the shore, and continued South to avoid their territory.

The Tangle is eerily quiet, and Talion quickened his pace with the sudden, uncomfortable feeling of being watched. It was there, by a pale and warped old tree, that his frosty gaze falls upon another yearling. The youth halts to consider his options, wondering if it might be in his own best interest to reach out to this other lone male or if he'd be better off slipping away before being noticed. Opting to go with option one, Talion chuffs in attempt to draw the stranger's attention, and remained in place to gauge his reaction.