Rylee | Female | 10 | Kid | Dall Lamb | M: Sylvar; Matei, Open

Rylee kicked out playfully as Matei grabbed her by the horns, shaking her lightly. Her eyes crossed slightly at the momentum and she bleated again as she wiggled her way out of the hold. She stuck her tongue out at him playfully before turning back to Skylar.

The man looked down at Zen with a funny look on his face before turning to address Matei. Seeing as neither one was paying any attention to her, she shuffled off to the side a bit, perking up slightly when she noticed how many people had woken up. She ignored the two as they talked, and she would have bounced off to find someone else to hang out with had she not been distracted by the figures emerging from the forest.

The conversation behind her quieted and she glanced over to Matei out of the corner of her eye. The boy looked almost lost as he scanned over the field, seemingly searching for something. She didn't have time to ask about it though, as Sylvar began talking again.

She huffed a bit as the older pointed out their food situation, and she leaned to the side to look past the man's shoulder. Sure enough, the hunters had returned, with some dead rabbits in tow. Her eyes lingered on the red stains on the pelts and tried to ignore the way her stomach twisted uneasily.

He avoided her kicks and let go done teasing her sticking his toungue out back at her. Soon Matei zoned out as he thought, barely making out the conversation between the two. Something about food and not eating meat. Hearing that he shook out of his daze. He had forgotten the younger kids were not meat eaters. He would have to be on the look out for things for them to eat when they traveled.

Looking up as a familiar scent caught his attention. Matei gave a sigh of relief as the only other wolf in the group made his way into the space. His brothers fawn colored wolf walked into the camp and found a tree to sit under. Stress looked like it weighed heavily on his shoulders. Seeing everyone else was returning and that food was going to be coming soon Matei stood.

Excusing himself from the conversation between Rylee and Sylvar, Matei headed over and slid down to sit at the base of the tree with Theo. "How was the patrol. " he couldn't really think of much else to say he still didn't know what to talk about after being away from his brother for so long.

+He turns his head towards his new arrival before he sighs with relief seeing as it was his younger brother, his ears flatten at the question from the younger before he opens his mouth to speak+ "So your interested in patrol life....and it was good but we have to keep moving" +He says softly trying to hide his laugh at his first question his eyes soon go back to scanning the camp site around them+ "U should get ready to eat before I use you as my bed for the day"

,

+But as soon as those words leave him mouth he wraps his tail around the boy as best he could laying the head of his wolf form onto the boys lap slowly closing his eyes trusting the boy enough to do so+ "Why can't we just run away from here...and live a life free from this mess"

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+After skinning the first rabbit she stands up staright her snake blue eyes scanning the camp site before the fall upon the kids playing. Making her way over with a skip in her step she quickly sits down her hand going into a pouch she had on her side slowly half emptying what it contains. Fruits ranging from a few apples to wild berrys and herbs soon were placed in a pile in front of her and the others+ "I may be a meat eater but I do remember what type of animals we have in this group....sorry it's not a lot it's all I could find right now and also of they aren't the right fruits and herbs you guys eat...I have more in here but was planing on saving them for the others"

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+She says her tone of voice soft and sweet before her hand reaches behind her neck giving it a slight rub, avoiding eye contact with the non meat eaters+

She comes back, and grabs the fish. She takes it to where there was a fire. She puts them on some flat rocks and starts to cook them. She looked around, most of the camp was awake now. She looked at the fish, it was cooking fast. She looked around again, and seen a snake, wolf, and lamb hybrid. "There a lot of us." she thought.

Matei was hungry but laughed as his brother joked and decided to nap on him. He thought about what Theo said absentmindedly scratching the wolfs ears. He though about the potential of leaving with his brother and being free of the past. Learning how to shift and hunt with his brother. Matei had only shifted once for a brief moment four months ago when he turned 13. He couldn't remember anything other than extreme pain and the smell of fear as his mother watched him change. Knowing his father was cruel and was one to take advantage of his new abilities. She helped him escape before he found out. He wiped a tear away quickly hoping she was okay. After a moment he replied. "I understand that, but I think being able to help them makes me feel like I'm clearing out a little bit of the bad that I've seen." The wise

statement that came from the young wolf was cut short by a loud stomach growl making Matei laugh again. "Do you want me to grab you something when I get my food?" He questioned as he pulled a few brambles out of Theos fur.

+His ears lower on his crown at his brothers words before he curls around the boys frame more letting out a soft whimper opening his maw to speak+ "Your right....but you are not bad and never will be...I was the bad one that's why I was sent away...from you from mum" +He quickly shakes his head before he stands

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"You go and get something to eat...I'll eat once everyone is finished after all I am use to going without food" +He chuckled before he tries to nudge his brother along+ "Your a kid go play with the others..don't worry about me"

[Trigger Warning: Blood, Trauma, Abuse, Death (possibly more)]

Tarn | Male | 15 | Hunter | Tiger | M: Arya

Tarn continued to practice his stance with his bow for a while. All of the children had woken up by now and some of them were hungry. The patrollers were not back, so he knew that he shouldn’t go hunting. Even if some of the other hunters had already. It wasn’t routine, it wasn’t schedule and it wasn’t safe. The patrols purpose was to scout the land and make sure that there weren’t any hunters around. It was for their survival and people needed to remember that. He played with the tiger tooth necklace around his neck. Remember, he reminded himself. He didn’t want to relive what had happened, but it always descended on top of him like a flood that he could never avoid. The claws, the gnashing of fangs and the fear that grew in his chest and stayed there. He clenched his jaw at the memory and shut his grey-yellow eyes. He held them closed so that it seemed that he was concentrating and focusing on the noisy bustling of his fellows around him. Like it was another training exercise.

However, he was not listening to them. He was hearing something else and his ears flickered as if there was something creeping around him. He would randomly flinch as well, like a dog who was deep in a doggish dream. His mind’s eye flashed memories. His mother and father frantically talking together. Their hungry eyes that latched onto him whenever he passed. How his father always seemed to hold him tighter than usual and how his mother was reluctant to leave him alone for too long. How his aunts and uncles licked their lips in an animalistic way when they were around him. How his cousins tried to steal them into their house. Tarn didn’t know but he had released a low, tigerish growl at the memory. He remembered the deep, stabbing, cutting, ripping, mauling, burning pain of the transformation followed by his parent’s shrieks. Not shrieks of fear, but shrieks of joy mingled with jealousy and a deep, bottomless hunger.

Whenever this happened, his mother wanted his blood and would try to tie him down and lock him in the closet. How she was slowly loosing her mind over her craving desire of turning into an animal herself. His father tried a different approach to reach the same end. He tried to soften his boy with “friendly” games of archery where his arrow would “accidentally” skim across his son’s cheek, causing him to bleed. How then he’d soak the blood with a cotton ball and end their practice so he could suck on it. With each passing day, they grew worse. Their eyes turning more and more red and their features turning more and more like mad, snarling human-hybrids who’d happily rip out their own son’s throat to taste his metallic blood in hopes of becoming what he was. They weren’t scientists. If they were, he’d been caged up and experimented on with potions and drugs from the first signs that he was a shifter. And he would’ve certainly have died, imprisoned by his own flesh and blood.

Every night he could hear his parents silky growling for his abilities. So he decided it was time to go before they lost all of their humanity, plus the other shifters were ready to leave as well. He loved his parents, even for their brutal, cut-throat and selfishness. They had loved him well before they knew about it and he knew how they were like before thoughts of power drove them mad. He woke up on a moonless night and took one of the bows that his father had so carefully taken cared for. He also stole the leather quiver of twenty-four arrows. It wouldn’t carry any more and he felt that taking the other quiver was being selfish. Arrows are loud, however, and they rattled whenever he moved. His mother heard them shake and stumbled towards her son with her tigerish teeth bared and a sharp kitchen knife in her hand. She couldn’t have gotten it from the kitchen, however, as it was located on the opposite end of the house. She had been sleeping with it beneath her pillow.

The two tiger-hybrids circled each other. Tarn was fairly weaponless as the bow was not strung and an unstrung bow wasn’t better than a stick. He made a desperate dart for the door, but his mother grabbed the back of his shirt before he could make it. She leapt upon him cursing him and whispering that he was hers and only hers. Something about his father no longer being the competition. The two hybrids fought the other, Tarn refused to bite or shift as he didn’t want to hurt his mother. He pulled his punches until the master bedroom’s door was bumped open. He saw the once-white sheets of his father’s bed soaked in a metallic red. The stillness of the figure on the bed and a continuous drip, drip, drip of the blood draining down from the linen and making a puddle on the floor.

He remembered how he had lost control. How he had not flinched during the sharp, agonizing transformation. How he had attacked his mother in a fray of revenge. How she screamed and started to cry. At that noise he had paused and started to return to his more human form. While his guard was down and while he was enduring great pain, his mother had swiped the blade down his left side and he yelled with that sharp, stinging pain and the brutal agonizing change from animal to man. He remembered feeling light headed and his mother started for his side, whether to lap up his blood like a dog or to stab at it again he did not know. He shoved her to the ground before she could do either and continued his fight. She fought back and bit him with her pointed fangs and he howled. He remembered finally knocking her head against the wall and her falling into an unconscious heap. For that moment, she was calm and looked the way she looked before that awful night and before the disclosure of his abilities. Besides the blood smeared on her face, she looked peaceful, but she was alive. He saw that during the fray, she had lost a single tiger fang, root and all. It was bloody as it had been knocked from the gum entirely. There was also a shocking hole at the top from a terrible cavity. It was ugly to look at yet he absentmindedly put it in his pocket where there was also a long piece of twine.

He entered into the master suite where his father laid. His mouth was open as if he was frozen in a scream. Tarn was disturbed to find out that his father died clutching a knife that matched his mother’s. The only difference was that his was clean. The blood still poured from the bed in its haunting drip, drip, drip. He froze and watched, hypnotized by its uncomfortable and constant drumming. Water rose in his eyes and he wept by his father’s bed, his salty tears mixing with the blood. It was almost late morning when he finally left the house. A house that he could no longer call his home from what had just happened there in the past few hours. Then he met up with the other shifters and kept his wild night quiet from them and their ears.

Then he was yanked out of his vision by someone passing by. It was the leopard shifter. Her name immediately rose to his mind, Arya. The thought of her was like water being poured on a fire. Or like a cool salve on a burn. Like a river, she wiped out his hurting. His fists unravelled. He hadn’t noticed that he had been holding them in a death grip until they had relaxed. His jaw hurt slightly from his clenching, but it was now slackening. She had jerked him from his miserable state and deep thoughts of his past and of the pain that had scarred him. She seemed to be a cool breeze on a hot day. He didn’t know why, but he wanted to pursue her and thank her for walking by. But that would be awkward, he thought immediately after he had taken the first step towards her. Every now and then he’d pause and think that he was being stupid. But he’d always come up with an excuse or another reason on why he should go after her. It was getting to the point where they weren’t even good ones. It was just a voice telling him that she was pretty or that the day was a nice for a walk and she would make a good companion. He wasn’t listening to how they actually sounded like. They were dumb reasons full of puppy love powder. But he was already caught and he had yet to notice this.

Then he finally caught up to her. He didn’t know what to do or what to say. He had followed her this far from camp without an actual idea of what to talk about. He certainly couldn’t say, “thanks for knocking me out of my blues” or “My mom killed my dad and I was thinking about that until you came along.” He knew he didn’t want say it either. Stunned and unsure what to say or do, he just stayed behind her, awkwardly.

Then he stepped on a twig and it snapped under his weight. He panicked because he knew she would probably have heard that. Immediately he endured the stinging sensation of the shift and was then a tiger. He wasn’t sure why he did that. It was out of fear maybe, like how he reacted to his mother after she had killed his father. That wasn't fear, though. That had been anger. This wasn’t fear either, he realized. Was it embarrassment? He suddenly felt his fur grow a raging, fiery heat all on its own. He was happy he was a tiger now. If he was a human, he would’ve been literally glowing like a lightbulb. At least this is a pro to being a shifter, he thought to himself as he felt another rush of red flood his cheeks.

Hey guys it might be a little while until I can reply, I've been busy with things lately.))