[private] wish I could tell you by now that I felt more indifferent

[bolder]

His feline head tilts curiously at the unusual greeting, as if she was surprised to find him here. He had told her once that Hyaline was home, and though Bolder wanders often, he is never truly gone for long. Sinking his claws into the bark of the three, he stood and then stretched, languishing in that shape for a moment longer before he began to make his way down to the ground.

When there were only a few branches left, he leapt the remaining feet from the ground and let the wings he had been born with coast him the rest of the way. He lands close by, near enough to hear her next words. If Malik was her brother, that meant Myrna was her sister as well. It meant that they were all related, and she had even more cousins waiting within in Hyaline.

Did she know that?

She looks uncomfortable, and so Bolder takes the intensity of his stare away, turning it towards the mountains instead, hoping she might relax. His copper nostrils flared at the sight before them, inhaling the scent of wisteria and shortgrass in summer. ”Did you know that makes us cousins then?” Bolder asked her in return and the beginning of a smile curled against his dark mouth, wondering what the girl who had scurried with him from branch to branch chasing shadows as a squirrel would make of that. She had left so quickly that day, and now as he returned to look back at the purple mountains ahead, he wondered if it was his mention of Hyaline that had chased her away.

Hyaline had been the only place that Bolder had felt truly accepted. It was where he grew to his full potential.

It was home to the Pack.

Why would Sickle - a talented shifter herself - avoid it?

@Sickle