Blacktail Deer Plateau where the world ends is where you must begin

@Grezig ???

the hare was inches from him and he felt like he had spent all his energy already. there was nothing left, he kept telling himself, but the wild thing kept running and he continued to pursue. when he felt that he had no chance, he found a second wind and his limbs seemed to find a new means of hunting.

when the savage hound parted his jowls and snapped them close on the back of the hare's neck, he was filled with a feral triumph. his pace slowed to a stop and he swung his crown upward, nostrils flared, while he regained his breath. the broad length of his shoulders seemed to sway with his attempt to inhale. his catch was dead, dangling from his mouth, dripping blood to the earth. illidan lowered his skull and dropped the prey against his paws.

the touch of winter was on the wind. he could feel that there was a shift in the atmosphere. he'd never seen snow before. he did not know what type of hardship would fall on him during that time. instinct told him he needed to prepare.

Grezig came upon the boy—who was not so much a boy anymore—with a dead hare between his paws. “Good hunting?” she asked.

She was numb in general, emotionally speaking. As a way of protecting herself and others against further heartbreak, she had put up a wall between her and the world. She’d never thought that she would have resorted to such a thing. After all, before joining Liri and Kavik, she hadn’t had much experience with emotion in general. Now she wasn’t sure she wanted anything to do with it at all. And yet… Illidan had always pulled on her in a strange way.

Perhaps she didn’t need pups of her own if she could convince him to stay. But that would mean sharing him with Liri. Anger flared up inside her—unbidden and unnecessary. Liri did not deserve her anger. She deserved Liri’s anger.

“I will be leaving tomorrow to search for your family,” she said, forcing herself back to the present. “I am unsure how long I will be gone.”

I always get wordy when I reply to you <3

a question rose from nearby. the dark-hooded boy lifted his crown and turned with cupped ears to catch sight of the woman who had pushed him so far. something like a smile twitched at the corner of his dark lips before it vanished. “good enough,” he responded to her with a small nod, retreating back to his serious countenance.

the catch had been for the pack's cache, but he saw that grezig didn't appear to be in a normal state of mind. illidan was not even acceptable when it came to the realm of determining other's emotions. he struggled through many of his own, and so he regarded her with an interested glint in his hawkish gaze. something about the way her features were formed did not seem to suit her.

the boy plucked the hare from between his paws and tossed it toward the woman. as much as he would have preferred to never admit it, grezig had offered him the kind of tough-love that was necessary for the demonte-sairensu bloodline. she may not have known it, but it was only just softer than he was likely to have been treated by his own family.

“i had almost forgotten,” he admitted upon hearing that she would leave to search for his family. it was the truth; illidan had almost all but accepted his fate in the arms of the plateau. “i would go with you, but the numbers are small here and kavik could use the help keeping the territory protected.”

but it was more than that; illidan was afraid. he would never own up to such things, but he had often thought what it would be like to return to his mother, knowing what had happened to his father. he had thought of all the ways she might resent him for it, and it was crippling.

Grezig stared at the hare that was tossed and landed between her paws. She stared without seeing it for a few seconds too long and then shook herself out of her thoughts once again. Illidan admitted that he had almost forgotten, but her question at that was… what had he almost forgotten? His family… or the fact that she was going to go look for them? There was a huge and crucial difference there but she didn’t even feel like getting into it. She had too much shit on her own plate right then to care much about her adoptive son’s strange relationship to his parents and siblings. Regardless of how he felt about them she would still go look for them, even if now it was because she was in love with Kavik and needed a reason to get the hell out of dodge for a while.

’I would go with you, but the numbers are small here and Kavik could use the help keeping the territory protected.’

“Kavik could use the help,” she muttered, repeating the boy’s words. She snorted, now angry at him, as well. Angry at him, and Liri, and most of all, herself. “Yes. Well. It is good of you to make yourself useful to the pack. I am… glad that you seem to be settling down into this life.” She wasn’t sure what else to say, honestly, and was too irritated at her emotions to focus on the boy the way she normally did. A heavy sigh escaped her, which she did not try to explain. Instead she went back to sulkily staring at the hare between her paws.

Editing a quick ending cos I'm trying to clean out my threadlog! <3

In the end, she asked him if he could give her any information about his family, but he didn't give her much. She supposed that couldn't be helped. She would just have to get lucky out on her search. She thanked him for the hare and then picked it up to go eat it somewhere else and contemplate the journey to come.