and every day is getting straighter,

Jackalope

EDITED

When he caught sight of the obsidian figure, he found himself wondering-

Is this the Penn Blackthorn Wraen warned me about?

And his first reaction, to that possibility, was to gulp. This guy was...Well, a lot more than he'd imagined Penn to be. For some reason- perhaps because Wraen had called him young but Jackalope imagined Penn to be little more than a scraggly yearling. Like how he'd been, only perhaps a bit shorter, and with the signature Blackthorn dorsal stripe. Like a sculpted stone, though the male he caught sight of as he meandered along the borders looked as though he'd been cut and carved from dark stone, by stone, the way a boulder would be broken into shape as it tumbled down the mountainside. The way all that remained was the toughest part, that survived all of the impacts that hit it.

And if this guy was a Blackthorn, then it meant that of the two of them, Jackalope was definitely putting the family to shame. He would have straightened up his posture had he only begun to do so several years ago- by now, his neck was so stiff, and his shoulders to used to being hunched that he looked like some sort of lizard breaking free from its shedding skin whenever he tried to straighten up. So he didn't. But he did try to wipe some of the envious gleam from his eyes, and told himself that perhaps this guy wasn't to be his standard after all. He'd have to find out.

"You're not the Blackthorn I've heard about, are you- huh?" He called out. At first, he thought that his voice had cracked- but he realized a moment later that he'd called out either at the same time- or if not, then slightly after- a rather cheery, silvery fellow. He was everything Jackalope should have been- aside from the fact that his fur was a bit ruffled in places, and his ears were slightly soft, allowing them to tulip and bend slightly. But there was still something significantly more upbeat about him than there was to the hunched Jackalope, who now began to wonder if Wraen hadn't been pulling his leg all along. Where were all the pretty women she'd told him about? And why hadn't she warned him that every other male in the pack was significantly better looking than him? This was a disappointment.