[ P ] warm guns

To be free is to unhinge oneself from what others succumb to fear — at least, this was what he was taught by the denmothers of his earlier years. He could still hear Cassia's voice as she lulled a younger Finn to sleep. They will tell you that your kind is a poison. That your ways are archaic. Don't let them take your duty from you. You owe it. What empowering, nightly whispers she had cooed to him under the moonlight, raising a child that was not her own by blood. As his teeth would hasten around her teat, not yet able to run and play, he would settle for her bedtime wisdom. Every night ended the same. His limbs would grow heavy and weak, and he would slide down her chest to melt comfortably into the grassy embankment. Dreaming of witch hazel and olive trees, mugwort and clovers. Perhaps he'd even dream of his mother — her chilling silver gaze as she watched him from beyond the grave.

Those dreams would become less frequent in his adulthood. Cassia and the others had escaped the crown for the time being, but he had more work to do before he was to rejoin his coven's antics, and thus his childhood dreams.

Returning to the Highlands was a rare feat. As a creature of anti-habit, he tended to bounce to and fro from region to region, careful to keep his patterns erratic and hard to pin down. Every once in a while, though, he felt drawn back to the arms of his mother's homeland. She'd welcome him as she used to — with careful strokes on his temple, as light as the wind that rustled through the city's streets. If he tried hard enough, he could even twist his perception, imagining the smell of thick, herbal lilacs when he was surrounded by nothing but trees. Her perfume, he would think to himself, eyes heavily-lidded with the memory. It stays with me despite the ache of death.

Gently, he'd creep over a fallen log, hindquarters scraping against dry moss as he ventured deeper into the mist. It was mid-afternoon, and the snow from past winter had already been melted by the warmth of a curious spring. Now, everything was layered with moist blanketing — the flora was abundant and straggling, the fauna infantile and new. He felt the thrum of excitement in his veins as he awaited the tell-tale signs of nature's timely birth. Soon, the young of the forest would be making their first steps towards the edge of the wood.

Where he would be waiting, the smile of a jester played upon his lips.

For now, though, his mind was elsewhere. Finn's muscled legs flitted through the overgrowth with a flash of gunmetal haze, his eyes narrowed on the path before him. The scent of rabbit curated in his mind, a fog of hunger wafting through his nostrils as saliva pooled in his jowls. He would like to say that he reveled in the hunt just as much as the kill — but it wouldn't be fair to compare the sweet sensation of blood against parted lips. He rounded a corner, keeping his body low to the ground, and sprung.

A quick snap and the neck of the poor creature was broken in his jaws. His tongue prodded against the jugular, wetted by the crimson flow. The satisfaction was imminent. A low groan felted through his body, and he crouched over, swiping delicate lines over the wound on the rabbit's throat. With a pool of blood quickly swelling, he began to work at his meal, not paying much attention in his bliss to those that may be hidden in the shadows.

IMAGE BY FRIZBEE

@Lorcan

There is a faint stirring in his broad chest as ancient memories are awakened by the whispering winds which carry a ghostly chill that even he can feel past his dense ruff — memories of himself as a young boy, struggling to keep up with his father's unrelenting stride. His still-tender pads were cracked and bleeding but he forced himself to push onward, for his father would not wait for him. The titanic chief detested any show of weakness, and so the whelp would bite back his whines and keep his head high, not daring to limp.

Finally his father stopped, a shadowed silhouette against the early dawn. The winds nipped at young Lorcan's fur as if they had teeth as he came to join his father at the cliff, covered in his own blood and fighting to catch his breath. His father did not look at him, nor acknowledge his pain; he only began to recount his own tale, of a lone boy abandoned who grew into the most ruthless of barbarians who carved a bloody hole into Perth, where he made himself a chief.

It was his strength and self-sufficiency, his cunning and his brutality, that kept him alive and he expected his son to emulate these qualities faultlessly... or he would spurn Lorcan just as he had done to his firstborn son. Muiredach never let him forget his standards or the consequences of falling short.

So strange that there was a time such things impacted him, that he was once so afraid to disappoint. First he wanted to make his father proud, then his mentor, then his lord, then his brother... he based his worth too much on others' perceptions. Now he is who he is and it matters not what anyone thinks.

Though, some part of him does still wonder if any of those men would be proud of the man he's become. He's sure his oldest brother would hang his head in shame, after all he'd done to teach Lorcan love and virtue, only for him to regress to the beast he was when he first set foot in his brother's vale.

He stalks the crags, his growing appetite gnawing at his insides. It is this sense of longing that pulls him here — longing for simpler days, for a hunt, for a break in the monotony. The sweet smell of iron hangs in the air as large paws toe the edge of a stone overlook, where he settles into a crouch, pilose chest touching the cool earth, ardent eyes trained down below on a wolf hunched over a freshly-killed hare.

Unsuspecting prey, too absorbed in his kill to notice a thing. The hare is tantalizing indeed, its scent causing the ebon brute's mouth to water, but its hunter is the far greater prize. The behemoth remains perfectly still for a few calculating moments before setting his paws into position. Burly muscles tense up for a moment, then he throws himself over the edge, plummeting down at the ashen lupine paws first.

@Finn

he wears the smell of blood and death like a perfume

there is fire in his eyes and ice in his veins

he is a star, burning with the light of a thousand suns