dulram, vart eg under hengd mann He has crept from the Mire for the evening, not wanting to be around during mealtime. It’s often a battle, and one Emrik has yet to win. Perhaps not physically, but it’s a fight all the same. He might be bigger than the royal cubs but they are… like they are. Different from his own siblings. Emrik misses them - misses his family. More than anything else he wants them back. But he knows he grows stronger the the mire; each hit and strike teaches him, moulds him. One day he’ll be a soldier, a warrior, and able to protect his mother and siblings. So even though it hurts, and he misses them, Emrik has to stay. But right now, tears sting Emrik’s eyes from how much he misses them. He knows better than to ask Erna for sympathy, or understanding. Crying is weakness, and she hates that more than anything. So he does not cry around her - or any of the Mire lions - and when he feels that pressure build to breaking point he flees, like the coward he is. The sun sets over the valley, and Emrik curls up on the hillside inside the last of its weak rays. Snow is piled up, and he hates the stuff, but there’s nowhere else to go. He has a branch held between his paws, and he chews on it - ripping and tearing bark from its wood. It helps, strangely. But as occupied as he is, Emrik is aware enough to hear… something. His ears snap back into the thick, black mohawk sprouting along his neck. "Who’s there?" It might be Erna, or Alaric, or one of their cubs coming to ambush him. It wouldn’t be the first time. @Mordane

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she slipped from the comforts of her home for far different reasons than @Emrik, though they gnawed at her all the same. she was treated well and lovingly by her kin, and yet insecurity still festered beneath her skin, infecting that tiny little heart like a wild-born plague. she had never been able to shake the looming feeling that there was something else out there for her, somewhere, despite the fact that she could not pinpoint what this mysterious tether tied her to. only that it was there, chaining mordane to something that was inevitably missing from her simple, stagnant life. she kicked up dirt as she went, idly making a game out of a small pebble that she had happened upon on the trail, keeping it in line with her as she traversed onwards. evening had fallen, and the cool grip of winter tugged at her flesh -- but with her eyes set downwards, she almost missed the company of another amongst the rolling hilltops. it was only the rise of their peaked voice that indicated to the girl that she was not only, prompting amber-coated eyes to snap whilst she froze in place, one paw raised and tucked close to her chest. it was only then that she swiveled her attention towards the shape of another lone cub amongst the setting sun, gaze squinting, slightly, before the girl's lips parted. "mordane." she replied simply to the question, not quite realizing that there was politeness to be found in an apology for intruding, even though it had not been her intention to do so. "who're you?" the question tumbled from her chords just as quickly as before, given that the valour rarely had the opportunity to meet other cubs beyond the walls of her own pride. this was partially to blame for her feeling so bored, so trapped, and so ill-fitted to lounge beneath the canopy of the brook -- the world seemed so big, and yet was ever-lastingly beyond her reach. fear makes the wolf look bigger

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