the story of my life

Jinx's words were not the warm welcome of a sister for her brother that Akhlut had expected, and his show of youthful confidence and genial authority faltered as his ears flattened and he could not, for a moment, meet her eyes that smoldered with indeterminate emotions behind their sunset irises. It had not occurred to him that Nanuq's presence in Echo Cove had meant her absence from Shearwater Bay and therefore an utter lack of contact with Jinx and her other children. He hadn't supposed that his pale sibling's memories of their mother would bear few similarities to his own, or that she might not be so pleased that they were kin.

"I apologize," he said frankly, his tone betraying some of his thoughts; it was always a disturbing thing to discover one's parents are neither immortal nor incapable of wrongdoing. "It didn't occur to me that the history between yourself and our moth--well, Nanuq, would be... a sensitive subject." His tail swayed as he said, with a hint of his former enthusiasm, "I'm pleased that you won't extend your aversion to me as well. As you say, I'm not my mother, and I am pleased to have another of my sisters at Horizon Ridge. Naga is my full-blooded sister. She'll be a year old soon. It pleases me to see the Kesuk name thriving at another seaside." Pride suffused his features once again as he spoke of Lysianassa and referred to Echo Cove, Shearwater Bay, and now Horizon Ridge. Perhaps the Nereides women were known for revering the sea, but the Kesuks were certainly tied to its crashing waves equally strongly.

"Tell me, sister, do you follow the old faith of Atka and Sos?" Curiosity tilted the male's dark head and he felt certain of her answer; Shearwater had arguably been stronger in its devotion to the bear gods than the Echo Cove than Akhlut grew up in, for Aktaie and some of her Nereides followers had brought the confluence of the ocean and the moon into the mix, and some of the younger Cove wolves had little use for religious faith at all and clung to stoicism, atheism, and pragmatism.