Blackfeather Woods where order is wild

i've changed this post at least five different times while writing it. i'm still not sure i'm happy with it. :/ sorry if it's rambling rubbish, lol.

maegi melonii, she offers him. he recognizes her last name. it was familiar within these woods ...and he thinks she is the last of them to remain here. of course, he doesn't realize that the little shadow he's befriended and her sister bear the melonii name as well. in the end, it matters little to him in honesty. legacy is what each individual builds of it. he is anbjørn and fearghal and yet there is plenty of potential to build something of his own there. his own family name. something that does not belong to either of his parents but is, instead, wholly his own. then again, his views on families and legacies is a bit askew ...never really having either growing up.

"wintersbane." he offers her in return, simply. coolly. he's still trying to come down from his vexation at the interrogation. it hadn't really been an interrogation but that's what it'd felt like to the tundrian and if there's one thing he dislikes it's the need to feel like he has anything to answer for.

"i'm sorry." wintersbane offers simply, sympathetically though less to her infliction and more to the fact that he assumes she hadn't found her brothers or family. his own family was scattered to the wind and though he bore no physical inflictions such as herself, he shoulders a certain amount of guilt now that his suppressed memories have come to light once more. it's unexplainable, this guilt ...and yet wintersbane cannot help but wonder ( when he does think of it ) if he was not the catalyst for the misfortune that befell his family for lotte's death was the gravest misfortune of them all.

wintersbane does not realize he'd been staring at a stray will-o-wisp for a bit until his ears perk and twitch at her inquiry and he's drawn back to the present, glacial gaze flickering back to refocus upon her. this time around? a hell of a lot more than he had as a stray cub. "i like it a lot," he replies truthfully. "i like the wolves here." he has yet to officially meet all of them: but he was close to achieving that goal. a few more might've been drawn into their fold since he first arrived — maegi included — but he thinks that, with time, he will meet them all. it was easy to paint them all as evil from the outside with nothing but reputation to go off of. they deserved the reputation and perhaps that was exactly what they wanted but ...the he did not look upon any of the wolves currently residing in blackfeather woods and think 'they're pure evil'.

they were a pack, known for blurring moral lines and taking no shit but that didn't make them evil by principle. they were a family. they had families. the voice and actions of one did not reflect the voice and actions of the whole. it'd taken wintersbane a long time to realize this but now that he does ...it's challenged and changed the way he'd previously thought. "i seek to learn more about the religious aspect. it fascinates me." he admits, thinking back to the rite he'd attended with the listener. he's decided, this time around, he wants to be more than just a peon. he wants to be immersed into their culture in full.