[html]
[/html]He had wandered from the forest he called home for so many weeks, frozen in a makeshift den beneath a tree, and ended up underground. The white male found solitude there, though the living situation differed from anything he had ever experienced before. It provided safety, sanctuary perhaps; how could they possibly be attacked in such a place? Attila sought privacy, secrecy; he sought a place to hide himself and his misdeeds, to hide those he brought home and the stories he consequently created with the aid of their bodies. Beneath the ground he found it, in this 'pack' of strange-looking individuals, of dark-furred creatures with dark eyes. There was an air of crime amongst them, he sensed, and yet he relished in it. He soaked in their shadowed eyes, the dark beneath their feet, as if that very blackness would eat him up, and dye the white color he was born in. His mother was no longer there to hold his hand; he had separated from her long ago, but had never existed in a pack without her presence. Markku, the owl, was hardly invited into a place like the underground, and thus the owl was left behind as well.
Somewhere outside, the barn owl stood sentinel in the trees hanging over the underground's entrance. As if connected by thought itself, an emergency in the owl's mind might alert the white Aston boy within. Perhaps it would be only his imagination, and he would be appropriately accosted. If it kept the owl busy, however, he would allow it to stick around.
For now, Attila crept from the land's underbelly, exposing his iced eyes to the equally frozen air; Markku, as if summoned by chime, swept over him and caught the branches in his claws. The owl chattered something incessant, something Attila hardly cared for, and thus the owl went unnoticed. Understandably so, of course. The youth's stomach gurgled as if emptied for days. "There's no game down there," the owl hissed. "You'll starve to death. Let's go home."
"No," the white firestarter said into the air, then dropped to his haunches and scratched stupidly at his ear. "Make yourself useful. Go find me something to eat."
And with a huff, the owl collected his wings and swept away.