Bitterroot Valley ✢ Natural blood-stained blond

leave. sky eater murmurs.

his voice, maturing still against the wind and bitten by adolescence, is hard. unceremonious. he does not bleed the story of his bloodline's downfall, the war that had scourged his homelands.

the boy swallows stiffly, looking to sega, as he looks away. over the roaming herds of his lands, the stretching horizon in the distance. his gaze follows, lingering coldly.

father take me. mother abandon. he pauses. then father leave too.

as though possessed by something else, sky eater rises to his paws, approaching stiffly. his nostrils flaring, breathing in the thick scent of the older male for the first time yet. in those dull yellow eyes of his, there glimmers youth.

i stay? he asks.