Dragoncrest Cliffs ai na drein au bukajus-de

The rhyme was cute. [boops your snoot]

I am going off of Silkie’s threadlog history in this post, so I hope this makes sense!

Nomi’s answering cry spurs Silkie forward, and he approaches her with equal measures of eagerness and apprehension. Without preamble, “Nomi,” he murmurs tightly, following it up with a cautious correction: “Heda.” In this moment, he isn’t sure whose face he sees, and the words clot and curdle in his throat. “Am I like her?” he demands finally, voice cracking weakly. “Am I natrona?” He, too, had turned his back on his family and snuck off without permission, and though his intentions had been mostly good — to search on his own, so at the very least say he could say he’d tried to find Rorqual and bring her home — in the end his search had been fruitless, and his relationship with @Tux had suffered because of it.

By now, Silkie assumes his foray into the wilds is old news and common knowledge, but he doesn’t know if anybody has expressly told Antumbra about it — so he stands up straight and confesses. “I went out alone to try to find Bat,” he recites, his voice tight and thick with emotions that he’s still learning how to manage and weather. He looks down at the fresh wound across his paw with a furrowed brow. “I — ” He doesn’t really want to admit it, but he presses on, a rumble of disappointment making his tone guttural: “I lost a fight and got sick, and when Mallaidh brought me home, I growled at Kiwi.”

His throat works spasmodically. “I saw you come home, but I was ashamed,” he says, and now he can’t look at her at all. His bourbon-brown eyes are pinned to the wound on his paw and glaze with childish tears he tries furious to blink away. “I didn’t want you to see me. I don’t want to be like her,” wrenches itself from between his tightly clenched jaws, and he hates that his next thought (the one he doesn’t say out loud, because that might make it real) is,

I miss her.