the time of your life (you just can't tell)

[Laruku Tears]

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Laruku had never been a wanderer. Both times he had left home had been involuntary. A make-believe father who hadn't really cared in the end and a fire that had consumed his entire life -- those had been the only reasons, though there had been so many other things that should have driven him away. For reasons he still had trouble understanding (so much that, like most other things, he had given up on trying), he had chained himself to a place he had never belonged, though arguably, he didn't really belong anywhere. They'd been his family, or they'd told him they were his family, but they were distant and they were different, and he had never considered himself part of that tree. He should have died long ago with his real family, but he didn't really dwell on that either anymore.



Laruku was not used to being a loner, but it felt natural (since it was what he should have been all along, if not dead). He flicked an ear and stiffened a little as the other elaborated on his current living situation. Phoenix Valley was undoubtedly the pack Iskata had spoken to him about on that rainy day, named after a mate that was apparently no longer around. Oh, definitely, he said with a hint of something unidentifiable in his voice, She would have a place for me. Iskata would be thrilled out of her mind if I went to live with her. The slightly younger hybrid was not familiar with Deuce's racial intolerance, but wouldn't have remembered if he did anyway. Their encounters had never been important to him, and so he'd forgotten them quickly. Maybe he should have been surprised that someone that was against hybrids was leading alongside his cousin, who had a mixed child of her own, but the thought came and went, and he decided it didn't matter.



Laruku, he answered absently, turning back to the sea. The stranger's name did not stir anything in his mind, unlike his voice and his scent. He had encountered amnesia before, of course, in the case of aforementioned cousin, but it was not common enough for him to jump to that conclusion first. It was easier to believe in his own madness, which was a tried and true conclusion. My father was a coyote, the blind man said, I would have killed him if someone else hadn't already. Nothing to be proud of in that bastard. It didn't occur to him that his words might be taken as anti-coyote, but he probably wouldn't have added anything even if it had.

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