Wapun Meadow I'm young, scrappy and hungry

He repelled her words, which rolled like water from a duck's back. Lumiya was his sister only by relation, and it bothered him to see that she felt responsibility for him purely for the bloodline they shared. Maybe a little guiltily, it dawned on him that he'd felt no real drive to care for her throughout their lifetime. They'd been raised from birth to appreciate a strong sense of duty to family, to protect one another no matter what, yet he hadn't been worth such efforts. So why bother?

A rule for some but not others, he'd only recently come to learn.

It was sad, of course it was! Little Lumiya, tasting the real world for the first time when Venamis had been drowning in it for months. The raven gritted his teeth, tufted black ears slick against his nape while his littermate called after him. He shouldered the weight of his frustrations and grief to press on and on and on, far from her sight for what he hoped to be the last time.

And Venamis did not look back, for fear that he might falter.