Barrow Fields tiger's hunt
457 Posts
Ooc — mixedhearts
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#1
All Welcome 
Although she missed her family, Moorhen was enjoying her time flying solo as well. While the trips she'd taken during her time as Akhlut had been eventful, they'd always been tinged by a terrible guilt for being away from the island. It was hard to reconcile how much being made a pack leader meant to her with how much she cherished ranging the wilds on her own. Perhaps that was why the world had seasons.

Moorhen felt deep in her bones that the season of wandering was drawing to a close. Her heat had passed and this time, did not seem to be coming back. Some of the fire that'd lit her blood was dissipating, leaving room to miss people now that some of the need for violence had been displaced. Today, she picked her way along the coast, looking for familiar scents and wondering if Eastwood was still at that cliff pack.
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Ooc — Anthony
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#2
In her mission to find a place to settle, Julep had moved south instead of north where the cliffs were. She was certain she didn't want to live right on top of her closest allies, knowing well that trouble could spark up any minute, but she also realized that he couldn't bear the idea of living too far inland. The one thing that changed that idea was the plains that she saw herself crossing to reach the ridges along the borders of the mountain range. That shit was endless, and it would take making an actual effort if she ever decided to have a nice beach day. So the idea of the ridge was scraped just as quickly as it came up.

So she turned to find her way back to the shore, picking up her pace realizing how much she missed the breeze. And just before she hit the coast the tigress came across a stranger. From a distance she didn't think much of it, and as per usual she made her way right towards them to strike up a conversation. But when she got closer she couldn't decide whether she believed her eyes. The markings along the stranger's torso weren't so strange at all, and if Julep wasn't mistaken she had never seen anyone with those exact same marks that didn't bear the name Cairn.

Oi! she barked from afar, trotting her way down to the coffee coated wanderer with a weird smile on her face. Hopefully she wouldn't think Julep was a lunatic.
457 Posts
Ooc — mixedhearts
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#3
The greeting was a strange one; Moorhen was not sure it was a greeting at all, and thus, when she halted and swung around to face the stranger, it was with an air of deep suspicion ready to snap into aggression at the slightest provocation. She didn't mind company, but was not in the mood to tolerate unfriendliness, at the moment.

But when she looked at the stranger and caught her scent in the wind, it was as though her mind was put through a total reset. For a moment, she was a small seashell on the beach, watching Doe's shadow go one way and Doe's daughter the other. She had been caught in between, stuck on the beach and unable to choose.

She'd had her time with Coelacanth.

"Jule?" she said hesitantly, padding closer. The paler girl had been bigger than her when they were children, Moorhen had long since caught up to the other girl, and though she might even be a little bigger, now. She observed all this in a few swift seconds, coming back to herself, to the present. So much had happened since that day; Moorhen had never expected to see her again, even after running into her brother.
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Ooc — Anthony
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#4
Her jolly advance was halted as though Julep was walked right into an invisible wall, but in truth it had been Moorhen's words she had ran into. The tigress cocked her head as a curious pup would, wondering whether she'd misheard the other. But how could she, when she was so close? She had heard it loud and clear. This girl knew her name.

So why didn't she know hers?

Then it hit her like a bullet. The first memory came with a thought of Piper, and the grown up Smokestep which much like her own father had abandoned her at Stavanger Bay. She hadn't really though of the other two member of their litter to even be alive especially when neither Piper nor Smokestep had made any specific mentions of them. But this was most definitely Moorhen.

You're alive? she gasped, unable to pull herself through the realization completely. But it was true, and she was standing right in front of her little cousin.
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Ooc — mixedhearts
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#5
Moorhen was just as bewildered. Although she'd been sure that Julep was alive somewhere, it had never occured to her that they might one day meet again. Especially surprising was that today had become that impossible one day. Still, her body caught up to her brain soon enough, and she gave a tentative wag of her tail.

"You are alive," Moorhen replied with apparent pleasure, beginning to get the look of someone who had just discovered a happy accident, rather than someone who had just had a coconut dropped on their head. "Moorhen," she reminded the other girl, just in case she had forgotten. Moorhen had not known Julep's name until Coelacanth had reminded her. She'd also been surprised to learn that Julep was her cousin and not her sister, but looking back, that made the most sense, anyway. "You are Julep Cairn. I remember you - all the time."

In truth, she did not think about the girl all that often. But whenever she thought back on her childhood, she wondered what had become of the older girl. It was heartening to have the opportunity to have those questions answered.
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Ooc — Anthony
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#6
Moorhen's name had not been forgotten, nor had the names of each and every other member of the cairn family that had resided at the bay alongside her. Those times were the ones she kept in her memory as the sweetest and most peaceful times in her life, and they had never faded, for as much as she hated the memory of it.

I know she asured her, and dared to lean in for an embrace that she did not know how much she had needed for so long. If Moorhen objected Julep would step back, but her intentions were unmistakably pure. I thought you were dead. After Piper I just- she couldn't finish her sentence, a knot in her throat keeping her from pouring her ever aching heart out for her cousin to witness.