The days were really starting to get to me for I rarely saw mother or sister. Well, I could always hear mother, who could not hear her raucous laughter, her body barreling to who knows what. She really was an odd one, yet she was as beautiful as the sun, as radiant, and just as warm when she was shivering with excitement. When she was curled around us in the den, her ear twitches her mouth upon us in a rather rough but loving bath. She was my mother even if she was not my birth mother. How did I know she did not birth me? LOOK at me, I look nothing like her nor
Sistermine. I was young not dumb despite what others may say.


With quiet contemplation I find myself traveling over the border, something I have been doing much more often as of late. Once I followed that silly girl to Diveen, on that day I did not know why she would leave the safety of our pack. Now however, now I knew. There was nothing happening, nothing to keep our young minds and hearts captured. What were we to do but dwell on things too far complicated for us to understand at such a tender age? Tail lashes behind me as the dull crunch of snow fades into the background. Everything was silent, almost too much so, and I was on high alert. No puma would catch me off guard.


With excruciating slowness I find myself in the freelands, alone, with only my heavy thoughts for company. Was I wanted? Did anyone care about the missing spot in Rainbow’s den? Would anyone even miss me if I never returned for after all I was not truly a member right? I mean who knew if my mother was even a true member so that meant I was an interloper. I had no true family. On that note with a heavy sigh I lower my rump, curling my tail about my body, and it is then that I scent him: Flame. What was he doing out here? Lifting my body I stalk toward his cologne, a smirk rising unbidden as I remember our last meeting. And as the bush thins I am graced, well cursed, with his dull fiery pelt the icy flakes of winter doing him no justice. I can not even see the golden flickers that normally danced in his all consuming inferno. With a shake of my head I draw near, one word falling from my maw in what could almost be considered comradeship. ”Flame.”


I do not doubt that he will turn those piercing emerald optics upon me, and I wonder how he would react. Would he pounce or motion me forward? I do not give him the choice to send me away, my inner dominate driving me forward to attempt to brush against him in an almost brotherly embrace before settling before him. ”What has brought you out?”