mala suledin nadas — o. dual joining

[SULAHN]

[align=center][div style="width: 500px; text-align: justify; font-size: 9.5pt; line-height: 1.4;"]Sulahn lagged behind out of a weariness the child couldn't describe. His older brother had to be strong, but Sulahn- he had the luxury of grieving, and of a frustration with his own inability to understand everything happening. His mother -Revas', technically- was dead, and so was Sulahn's birth mother; both of them caught illnesses and died, months apart from each other, and the boy didn't know what to think of that. What if he was the reason they got sick? His birth mother died not long after he was born, but he could still remember bits of her, mostly how warm she was when he couldn't see or hear anything else. When she was gone, Revas' mother took him, and she was his mother as much as the other was, except now she went where they couldn't follow. It didn't escape Sulahn's notice that he was around when both of them passed, but he knew if he said anything about it to Revas, he'd just call him stupid, that there was no way he was responsible for it when he tripped over his own paws all the time.

He hoped he never found an answer, because if he did, it would mean someone else would have died too, and he didn't want to think of that.

Sulahn did his best to focus on how pretty this land was, the way Revas was doing. It was beautiful, he just couldn't wrap himself up in that completely, so he began to lag again, and when the darker fox turned to beckon him on, he had to pretend he was busy staring at a bright rock. "Hey, you're the line-leader! If anyone's slow it's you." The cream fox picked up his pace anyway, stumbling a bit before making it up to Revas' side, huffing indignantly.