I’ve…never heard of him, sorry.

Aneistri blinked. That couldn’t be right. Everyone knew who her father was. He was a living nightmare, a boogeyman, the kind of demon lions told awful stories about. Of course, he wasn’t any of that to her—he was just her lazy, overly-ambitious dad—but to the world, he was the worst thing imaginable.

How had he not heard of him??

He gave his own name, @Temero, and tried to relate by offering his mother’s name in turn, a name he seemed to imply carried its own weight. Sadly, Aneistri didn’t recognize it, didn’t understand its importance, and she wondered briefly if she said so aloud if it would disappoint him as much as his admission of not knowing her father had confused her.

But the sharing of names, the bringing up of parents in the conversation, made her think back to her own mother and father, one cold and calculating and the other brutish and vain. She’d never given thought to other parents before, and found herself suddenly overcome with curiosity. “What’s she like?” she asked with a bridled interest, barely giving away her lack of knowledge on the lioness. Were all mothers as scary as hers?

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He watched her reaction, the flicker of surprise that came with his admission. She didn't seem angry about it, but he also wasn't good at reading emotions that weren't either prominently displayed or his mother's. He'd had to learn how to see past her carefully constructed facade, that mask of disinterest she wore that he'd never mastered and doubted he ever could. @Aneistri didn't have that mask either, but she could if she wanted to, he thought.

Oh boy, he said with a soft chuckle when she asked what his mother was like. How to explain her? How to relate the crushing weight of expectations placed upon him as her first, oldest, and currently only son? Expectations that he simply couldn't seem to live up to despite his best efforts, but that he kept trying to meet anyway because he was so desperate for those scraps of approval she would give him.

She's uh... a lot. Mom works a lot with poisons and spy stuff and she expected me to do that too but it turns out I'm not really great with memorizing plants and she uh... wasn't too happy about that. Plus she's just kinda intense in general, and especially about the whole X'uekai thing and how we're rebuilding the family and all that, he explained with a slight shrug. It had gotten moderately better recently when he'd started winning some fights and being able to do things, but still.

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Ani thought for a second that she’d stumped him. @Temero didn’t answer immediately, retreating into his thoughts to gather them and sort out what he wished to tell, and it only made the plum girl more curious. Was she a complicated lady then? A difficult one to describe? Was she contradictory and confusing, wild with her emotions and therefore undefinable?

Worse. She was important. It sounded to Aneistri that she took her job—whatever exactly that was, she still wasn’t sure—very seriously, and placed those same rigid expectations on her son. Unexpectedly, Ani found herself nodding along in quiet but earnest understanding. That was familiar. The weight of expectation. A parent who sought to do something great and therefore expected no less of their children, no matter their age or temperament. Ani still remembered the day her mother charged her with being their family’s healer, how it had scared her with the importance of it while lighting a fire in her soul. She so desperately wanted to be seen as useful, as invaluable, to her family…it had been her way forward.

Until they'd left.

She swallowed, that old cold sensation of worry pooling somewhere in her middle at the memory alone, written into the very muscle of her body. “She kinda sounds like my parents,” Ani offered with a nervous smile, her fangs protruding past her lip. “My mom was always serious. In a scary way. And my dad, he wanted to put us on top of the world.” Was that what Temero’s family planned to do? These X’eukai? For the short time she’d been here among them, Ani hadn’t learned anything about them, their plans, their culture, their aspirations.

“Is that what your family’s doing?” Her tone was curious, perhaps confused. What was this family doing right that hers had failed at?

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I don't envy anybody that, he commented. He really didn't. At least he only had to worry about one parent, but she'd had two that had expectations. Uncharitably, he thought how little her father's plans had worked out for him, clearly, if he didn't even recognize the man's name, but he also didn't pay much attention to anything outside of his own family. It was entirely possible the entire thing had just floated right by him at some point. Or that he was too young at the time to have noticed.

I think that's what my mom and grandmother, Icefang, want, he replied to her question. Or at least to get the family back into things and for there to be more of us. Apparently for years my mom was the only X'uekai in Amaryllis, and then Icefang was kind of coming and going from the Bluffs before she settled down here, he clarified. He didn't know if sheer numbers was the goal or if it was making a name for themselves. Which they certainly had when Icefang had come for the Brook, though he hadn't known it at the time. As he'd grown and learned more about the lands he'd realized what turmoil the pale high sovereign's actions had caused. Though truthfully he didn't understand why. Who cared where one lived as long as one had family around them? That was what he thought.

@Aneistri

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Icefang. The name registered for the girl, if only vaguely. Aneistri hadn’t met the lioness personally but she’d been around long enough to have heard the name in relation to their pride. The one who ruled the Vermeda Brook, their queen and high sovereign. It seemed to make more sense then, why @Temero felt such pressure from his mother, from the weighty family name he too carried because of these relations of his, to fit himself neatly into that image they were building of him. It seemed she’d been right to assume they were following a similar path to the Saxe. Albeit one of their own.

It all made the plum girl reflect on her own life, the choices others had made that had landed her here—the choices she had made to land here. A frown furrowed upon her brow, turning her periwinkle eyes thoughtful, distant. How might things have been different had her family still been here to dictate her life? If her mother and father could still choose her direction.

She asked from that distant place, “Is that what you want?” It was a question no one had thought to ask her, a question she still did not expect anyone to ask of her now. But it felt right to pose it to Temero; it was his life, after all. “To…be big on the island and have everyone know your name?” That was the short answer of what his family intended, wasn’t it?

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Me? Hell no, he replied almost immediately. Really wasn't his goal in life, not that he knew what his actual goals were. Besides impressing his elders, which he didn't have a damn clue how to do. Just leads to having a target on your back, from what I've seen of things. He supposed it was one thing if you were an inherently good or helpful family, but he knew the X'uekai weren't that. Chaos marked everything they did, and they acted without thought of repercussions for others. So yeah, the more in the shadows he could be the better, he thought.

They can do whatever they want, though. Not like I can stop them. I just try to stay out of it, he said. Maybe that was a defeatist way to look at things, but it was all he had.

He wondered if he ought to ask the question that was on the tip of his tongue, but he decided just to do it. Might as well. He'd already stuffed his hind paw into his mouth in this conversation so he'd just be keeping that up. Was that what it was like for you? With your family?

@Aneistri

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Eyes widening, Aneistri grinned and chuckled at how quickly the answer came to the rosy lion, the absolute disinterest he held for the lofty goals of his kin. While she could agree and wholly sympathized with him, a brief bout of worry crawled across her shoulders and she let her eyes shift about their surroundings, ensuring for herself that none of his family were near enough to hear. The words sounded dangerously like heresy to her, something that would surely have earned a reproach from her parents if such bold words had been uttered by her tongue. Given the mounting similarities she was seeing between his family and hers, Ani worried @Temero’s fate, if found out, wouldn’t be much different.

Thankfully, they were safe—for the moment, at least—and she only managed to stifle the nervous chuckle that rose up within her in answer to his assessment of targets being made of the ambitious. It wasn’t very long ago at all that she’d felt that same target upon her back, a bright red thing painted in the blood of all the lives her parents had negatively touched through their self-serving choices. Just as Temero claimed, there was no stopping them, only surviving the chaos in their wake, and for the first time since joining the Brook, Aneistri worried. She was here now, an ally of the X’uekai, just as much at the mercy of their decisions as this poor boy was.

Had she fallen right back into the same situation her family had created around her, only now behind a new name being spoken with venom?

Maybe it was apparent in her face, how the pieces were being put together, the little seed of fear their conversation had planted in her gut, but he noticed something enough to ask. Was that what it was like for you?

“Yeah.” The answer came automatically, needing no thought or censorship; her life had been dangerous because of her parents. If not for Reti having stepped in, ensuring she had safety in those first months after being left on her own, she wasn’t sure she would have lived to this day. So many had wanted her dead simply because of her name. “That’s exactly what it was like.” Her gaze became anxious again, a little nervous furrow pinching between her brows as she stared at Temero and said with sincerity, “I hope it’s not so dangerous for you.”

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He did notice that she seemed uncomfortable, and while he thought that the best way to avoid that was to stop their current topic of discussion he couldn't help but be curious. Besides, she'd mentioned her father first so that kind of made it open season, right? Eh...

Well, it sounded like it had sucked for her, which he kind of expected. Being popular wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Now that he thought about it, it was the same way for the Dieu. Everyone knew to be wary of the lions in the Bluffs. I don't know why anyone wants that then, he commented. Wasn't it better to live in obscurity than that? But there had to be a reason if so many kept wanting to do it.

Yeah, me too. If not for me then for my younger aunts and uncles, he said. (Because as of yet his mother hadn't had her little ones.)

@Aneistri

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Younger aunts and uncles. Ani’s ears folded slightly, that worry in her chest deepening. She knew all too well how heavy those burdens were on children, how much it stole their childhood from them. She might not have been fully conscious of how much she had lost because of her parents, but the anxiety it left within her was telling enough. She, too, hoped better for those young children, born into a life they hadn’t been able to choose. She hoped they were strong enough to make it to the other side.

Her gaze lowered, roved the forest floor, feeling suddenly at a loss for words. Spotting a little white flower—White weed—nestled at the base of a tree, one of the few she and @Temero hadn’t dug into, Aneistri remembered: she had plants drying further inside the territory. She was supposed to be collecting while walking the border.

She’d gotten distracted from her responsibilities.

A pinched look, disappointed and guilty, crossed her face as she noticed more of those flowers dotting the ground, sparse but enough to collect if she took the time. “I was supposed to be patrolling,” she admitted, feeling safe enough in saying it to Temero since he didn’t appear so strict as the rest of his kin sounded, “and picking flowers to use in healing. I should get back to it.” She paused, thought for a second, then looked to the rosy lion again with a slight hesitation. “You can come along and help? If you want.”

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+5 Patrol your borders

At her words, he realized that he too had gotten off track, but at least it had been for a good cause. Meeting another member of the pride, getting a chance to talk to her for a while, that seemed good. Even if his family didn't agree, he liked knowing others that weren't related to him. It seemed good to have fresh perspectives sometimes. That and he didn't have to deal with any of the expectations he felt were placed on him.

Oh yeah, I was patrolling too, he replied with a slightly embarrassed huff. Sure! Happy to help, he agreed. That way he could be doubly helpful. Maybe you can tell me about some of the plants too, he added hopefully, because he wanted to know how to be useful to the pride and obviously his skill with poisons wasn't there, but he had gotten good at reversing their effects... maybe he could expand upon that.

Either way, he had to complete his circuit of the border, so he would get back to that with her and hopefully get some additional knowledge in the meantime.

-exit temero-

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