Everything he stopped to think about how he should just keep walking, he ended up stopping. Maybe he was just tired. His legs were stiff from walking and the ground was cold and frozen. There was no incentive to keep pushing himself beyond avoidance of this pending conversation. That should have been more than enough reason, but for someone so consumed by nihilism and profound apathy now, it wasn't. It didn't matter if he stopped to talk, and it didn't matter how much he inadvertently ended up remembering as a result. It wasn't like those memories had ever really left, and it wasn't like he didn't still dream every night about things he didn't want and didn't want to care about anymore. If everything was ultimately absurd, then it was absurd to try and run from it.
The tattered hybrid paused to turn again, and he could imagine Maluki there, older now, with one eye, and some odd collection of scars he could only pretend to see. But he could see the distance between them, the months and the years, and the memories that had been torn apart by that distance and time. The truth was that they did not share a single drop of blood. Acid had been from Ceres's first litter. Laruku's only string of a connection to the Sadira clan was that the white wolfess's mate and the father of her second litter had been Daituki, his uncle. Her first litter shared no blood with him, so the children of that first litter could share no blood with him. Step-cousins, perhaps. A relation of belated marriages and politeness and tradition more than anything concrete.
I want to be alone,
he said quietly, breath turning into ice in the air. He had been born a cactus. His first deed in life had been killing his mother. He had hurt everyone that had ever grown close to him, and they had hurt him. Cactuses belonged in the desert. Alone.