Ryuuza had wandered out a little bit today, down to a nearby small waterhole; it was a drizzling, somewhat miserable day. The stormy grey clouds above couldn't seem to make up their minds as to whether or not to pour out on the lands below: they settled, instead, for an on-again, off-again approach, and the freezing sprinkle that came down had deterred many creatures from wandering out of burrows and caverns. Even the huge preybeasts, too large for either in the normal course of things, had retreated into the shade of the savannah's acacias, to wait out the day, moodily chewing cud.
The weather hadn't stopped Ryuuza, however; she seemed impervious to the chill, and she casually wandered around the edge of the water, red eyes gleaming, until - pounce! A beetle that had been lingering too close suddenly found itself enveloped by two curious paws. Gleeful that she'd caught something, the little girl opened her paws carefully ... only to find that she had pressed too hard, and the creature was already dead. Her ears flattened in shock and dismay, eyes pricking painfully. She hadn't meant for that to happen. But the emotion doesn't last long, before it's replaced by something more volatile.
"Yeeeah, stup'd thing," she snaps.
Angry, and near tears, the child kicks the bug away, watching it's lifeless form skitter across the water and sink. With an angry huff, the white-and-black child turns away from the water's edge to stalk over to a rock, her features stony, ears back.
Ryujin had come to be a shy seemingly cold child now. Constantly pushed around by his look-alike siblings he was manipulated and pushed constantly, and soon he feared, they would take him away from here, his mother, their family because of a hate hey said, that ran deep and constant in their veins. He had never understood why they despised their mother so, visions they said, but he had not had such visions. He saw things of happy times, smiles, nothing like his siblings said. Though he was small, tiny in comparison to either one of them, moreso, to both. They worked together as if claws and mouth, one would speak their words, the other, forcing it upon himself in anyway they found necessary.
He was afraid to tell his mother, afraid they would find out, but now he had wandered away, afraid to even go back. They threatened him, told him if he said a word to their mother about the future plan, that he would regret it. But he loved them, oh the poor boy could not deny the love a sibling felt for another, even if the others were so shadowed by a feeling he did fear in the midst of a cool night. Silver eyes set on nothingness as hi paws carried him through the chill water that drenched his fur, made it cling to his skin, his ears were back, tail low, head craned over looking at the ground as it soaked and drowned in the wetness as he was drowning in manipulation of blood ties. He felt he could not escape.
The little girl was irate; everything she seemed to touch or do seemed to go wrong. Mostly, she stayed away from her siblings, with a kind of wary, self-interest. She was, for the most part, too large of a cub to be picked on easily, and her sudden - and sometimes irrational - bouts of anger made her a less-than-appealing target. Plus, she fought dirty. Ryuuza didn't seem to care if she got hurt in the process, and rarely does anyone want to fight with someone who has nothing to lose. So the child seemed to be mostly left to her own devices.
She moodily splashed a paw in the water, her ears snaking further back, pupils constricting in annoyance as she hears someone coming, but she can't quite see them yet. Her tiny tail lashes, tail-tuft striking the ground with force as she growls loudly, a warning signal.
He heard someone, something famliar, an his silver eyes fell on the familiar form of his sister, adroend with the mark of their mother but to a different sense. Not exact as the twins, so she was sparred the curse that he heard his mother mumble abou once in the night in her nightmares. His ears folded back as he heard her growl, and he lowered himelf closer to the ground, "Ryuuza, its me," he said softly. He was erhaps the kindest and easiest to have at anyone's side. He did not protest, did not wish hate or anger or it seemed like anger never touched him once.
He did not understand why she went off on her own, but felt as if today they had come to the same conclusion, to get away, to be away from everything that was family, except for themselves in one another's presence. "Ryuuza," he said again softly, saw her expression, adn his features softened, "are you alright?" he had compassion, but perhaps that might get him into trouble one day.
What? The voice was familiar, as was the form that came out of the mist. It was too damp to smell anything, however ... but it certainly seemed to be her brother. The quieter one, in any case, and therefore the harmless one. The growl dies in her throat, however, and she merely watches him distrustfully as he approaches. The white girl settles back on her haunches, ignoring the wet and cold, and stares at him blankly until he speaks.
Her shoulders roll back into a careless, slow shrug. "What's it matter, 'n why d'you care?"
Ryujin's ears fell back as he heard her reply, and he stopped walking and sat back into the damp grass, tail curling around himself. Silver eyes peered at her with uncertainty, soaked form not feeling the chill. "It matters because your my sister," he didn't say younger. True, he was the eldest of the litter, however, he probably acted more like a cub than any of his siblings. A child forever at heart.
"Why are you always going off on your own Ryuuza?" he questioned, pestering perhaps, but he was used to that term from the twins. "Have Ka and Kai told ou about their visions, do you see them too?" did she see the ones her siblings said they saw, or pretended they saw. Ryujin could not be sure.
She snorts at him, her tail-tip twitching with irritation - maybe at herself, maybe at him, it's hard to tell. Maybe both.
"So? Why's that make it any different?" She knows that she's whining, but doesn't care. She scowls at his next question, but, amazingly, answers it. "An' I go off on my own 'cause I can. Why do you? An' Ka an' Kai don't tell me crap. I don't talk to them, they're gits." As to 'visions' ... she doesn't want to discuss those. Her mind shies away from the idea.
Ryujin took a step back from her, and lay flat on the ground. His eyes fell from her o the ground, the cold now gripping to hi but he tried to ignore the shivers that wished to run down his spine, "I wanted to get away from them,"did she know, know about what they wanted to do? "Mother doesn't like them, because of the mark, you have it, but its not the same, so your free from it," he mumbled to himself.
Mother didn't pay much attention to him though, he was blank, plus, mother spent a lot of time with Daemonascus nowadays. "They want to hurt her, I think," he mumbled again and sighed. Seemed no one in his family liked him at all.
The child shrugged, looking rather indifferent to the entire mess. "Then she should get rid of 'em," she murmured, flicking a bit of mud off her shoulder. "They're tiny right now, they're gonna get bigger someday, an' she won't be able to deal with 'em then. An' if mother doesn't ilke them, maybe they're justified in wantin' to hurt her, if she's hurtin' them." The tiny eyes narrow angrily.
Ryujin narrowed his eyes, felt a slight twinge inside of him, "But she didn't do anything to them!" he said in defense, standing up, head at an angle watching her. "She's done nothing wrong! There's a mark on them, their shoulder, which seems to make her apprehensive, a amrk of something, it means something, you're spared from it evidently, which makes you special in her eyes," he said with a grumble. More special then him evidently. "They talk about it, and she's done nothing, how can you not defend your own flesh and blood Ryuuza?!"
"I am defendin' my own flesh and blood." Sly amusement seeps into her tone as she watches him. "They got every right to be angry at her if she's gonna look at 'em funny for some mark that they got," she reasons, then sprawls on her back, getting mud plastered on her white pelt. "Seems really silly, worryin' about a stupid mark."
Ryujin wanted to argue more, but it seemed like it was no use. Sighing, his ears still lay back againsthis skull and he turned from her, head down, eyes looking at his pawprints in the grass and mud, "Maybe they were right..." about what he kept it vague. Maybe they were right about this place, things were strange and uneasy, blood and flesh and relatives were on different heights, different levels of loyalty, they needed to go somewhere to be welcomed, have a place. Maybe they were right. He turned his ehad to look at his sister, watched her, her eyes, and turned away again and walked of, cold and drenched, but he felt nothing, nothing at all.
