My c o l d desire
to hear the boom, boom,
b o o m of your heart

Her nose was desperate to find where Tesseract was. Once she had found her other half, then she could easily put together the rest of her world. Her children, or at least what was left of them. She imagined that they would be angry with her, and she could not blame them. How often was it that she and Tesseract had been angry at Nero? She would be ready take on that anger, take on their pain and hurt if only she knew that her Tesseract was all right, that he was alive. Her nose still searches for the most recent of scents. There was the only one problem. None of these were the ones that she wanted. She wanted her other half. She wanted to make sure that he was all right. In all her wanderings, the one constant was that she wished that Tesseract could be by her side through it all. The world was a large place, one that Caligula had had her fill of. Now she wanted her oceanside. Her beaches filled with loud, annoying gulls fighting over dead fish. Her children racing down the coastline laughing. It was that thought, and those memories that anchored her here. Caligula may have never been a good mother, or particularly doting but she did fiercely love her children in her own way.

There was a movement to her left, the crunch of pine needles and twigs. Her head comes up slowly, deliberately. Her eyes watch the young adult who stands so rigidly. For a moment she wonders if this was the challenger but noted quickly that he had both ears. She glances over him for a moment, before her nose again falls to the forest floor in an effort to find some new trace of her better half. It's only in this action that the seemingly stranger's scent washes over her. Praetor. Her son. Suddenly her head jolts up, watching him and tentatively moving towards her son. How he had grown! He was an adult now. The last she had seen him her was a gangly adolescent, still growing into his legs and skin. And now, now she was facing a young male approaching his prime. Wasn't Tesseract his age when they had gained Glorall? When they had their first litter? Had she really been gone that long? For the first time she allows her guilt to come to mind, and her eyes well up before she blinks back tears. Her tail wags slowly, her head lowered and her ears flicked backwards. She would ask for their forgiveness, she would remind them how she loves them. Starting with Praetor. She moves towards him, daring to touch him with her muzzle, before the motherly instinct to clean him takes affect and her tongue reaches out to clean his face. It wasn't even particularly dirty, but she makes sure that every hair stays in place.

It's only after this action that she steps back. Her mismatched eyes search his with a questioning look on her features. She was forever silent but expressive. She keeps her neutral stance, not exactly submitting to him, but it was a far cry from her normal dominant stance. There was only two that she had ever truly submitted to: one was her own mother, and the other was Tesseract. She briefly wondered if the originator of their lavender eyes was still living. If the half-blooded siblings that were a stain on her bloodline were still alive. Perhaps once she made amends with those she lost, she would continue her hunt to extinguish the half-blooded currs her mother had produced with whoever was willing. More importantly though, was that she mend fences with her own blood. With those that she would lay down her life for. The pink of her scars shine through the blackness of her own fur highlighting that she did not have it easy without her family. She had survived, true, but she had always been a survivor. She had broken her own rule: to protect those that you loved. It was a rule that she had lived majority of her life by and now, she had realized that her wanderlust had broken her own decrees of how to live. There was a soft rasp of air emitted from her throat, something that if she had a voice would of come out as a whine.