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A fiercely proud grin lit up his features at his brother’s compliments, and for a moment he felt just as excited to be standing upon two legs as he had the day he first managed to shift. “Thanks.” Cerulean eyes watched the older boy’s features as he spoke of trying to impress his mother. Jackson nodded, knowing the feeling. The hybrid may be an unruly child in the sight of those with authority, but the only one he ever tried to watch his behavior around had been his father. He still looked to the Acidic man with boyish admiration, the likes of which Scorpius appeared to have for his mother.
As the coal-furred brother showed him the map and began his explanation, Jackson recalled the existence of ranks specializing in knowing the caves. In anticipation of his own approach to adulthood, the hybrid boy had been doing his best to commit the Anathema ranks to memory, so that he may choose his own rank with confidence when his time came. He was a little embarrassed that he hadn’t figured that to be his brother’s motivation right away. He nodded as Scorpius pulled the map away again. “Good idea. It’s an easy thing for newcomers to get lost around here, I’d bet.” Growing up in these caves left Jackson with little fear of getting lost, but he knew that new members of the Anathema family could hardly feel the same way. Scorpius’s maps could turn out to be quite a valuable thing for them.
They moved on through the caves for a briefly silent moment, Jackson eyeing the uneven walls of the tunnels around them as they walked. His gaze snapped back to his brother when he questioned him. “Fire tending,” he said at once, oblivious to the fact that the wild element was the reason his half-sibling’s features were partially obscured by that mask. Truthfully, the boy had deliberated long and hard about which path he would take for his rank as an adult. Each had alluring points for the young boy, but in the end, he decided he would enjoy taming fires for the pack, rather than animals. It seemed like such a task specific to ways of Anathema that Jackson had taken an unexpected liking to it. His eyes were drawn to one of the nearby torches. “It seems like something I could be good at, I guess.”