The teen waded gently through the water, watching the sand shift below her paws and the tiny minnows dart around. They tickled her feet and she grinned down, a somewhat rare expression on her face. When they were at the clan, Malina had been raised in a group environment - all of her female with relatives with pups of their own watched out for her like their own, the young were more like her siblings than her distant cousins. It made up for her father’s distance, snatched up by her older relatives and kept away from the child he brought with him. She didn’t see him often, but when she did he was always ready to shower her with love. Still, the ginger femmes that let her sleep curled up with their pups and gave her baths and taught her compassion before the elders implemented their cruelty in her. Those months were the best of her short life - she felt loved, cared for when she had felt the lack of her mother at its peak.

They’d sent her father out before the elders had decided to start training her, though there were lessons imbedded in her already. Still, Caspian had taken her with him when he’d returned to Blossom Forest. They were loners - a first in her father’s life. They had a den by the Falls, where she would return tonight to share a meal and they’d sleep side-by-side. She missed the days of her adopted littermates pressing paws into her ribs and a tail flung protectively over them just in case some violent cousin decided that the clan’s progeny were meals ripe for the taking. Those women would fight to the very death for all fourteen pups, and sometimes it hit a little too hard, a little too close to home. Shae had fought to the death, and sometimes it had poured out of her without a filter. She spent hours sobbing into the soft, downy ginger fur of her nursemaids, soothed by gentle licks and nuzzles.

The long-legged teenager looked up, whiskey colored eyes roaming the sandy shores. They landed on the small form of a pup, cowering close to the ground. Memories still hooked on her adopted siblings, she made her way slowly out of the water. ”Hello,” she called sweetly, tail curled between her legs and wagging slowly. She crossed the sand slowly, hunkering down as she moved to lessen the height difference. Malina knew how strange her bloodline could look to others, and didn’t want to frighten the boy. ”I’m Malina,” she called, stopping a few feet away and laying down. ”What’s your name, little one?” she asked, lowering her head onto crossed paws.