OPEN — there was a cat that really was gone

[DIRT]

AND HE LAPS UP THE VICE LIKE A WOLF IN THE NIGHT

It seemed that he had been too late, as the kitten bled and the brothers cried at each other, all grief and rage and loss. A couple of others arrived, Gael, notably, and asked everyone to take a step back, and that is what he did, stepping backward and away. Teeth thankfully out of reach of the Tanglewood kitten. On his best behaviour now, you see.

The kittens explained their reasoning to Gael only in the most dramatic, and heartbreaking of terms. As children do. His orange eyes drift from one to the other, resting on the one that he had truly had every intention to protect. Ah, well. A scar was a lession. Strike first. The darkest one ran off, and Dirt found himself tired of all of this drama, now.

And then there was Kydobi. Asking them why the brothers had not been separated. If only he had been a little faster, had been around a little earlier, to see them try. Dirt could feel irritation rise in his chest at the assumption that he had simply let the child bleed, but. What did it matter, really. A child that can't live through a few scrapes was barely one at all.

Dante and Kydobi's conversation held no interest for him, at least initially, he did make an effort to listen, long enough at least to find a place to interject.

"Forgive me for the intrusion, but we tried to separate them. Angry kittens are not exactly easy to wrangle." Darting between your legs and underfoot and all of that. Dirt had no experience with children on his own, and the prey he caught was very often something larger than a mouse. "I had no wish to harm either of them in the process."

Perhaps next time, his teeth would find flesh. And what then?

Dirt did pick up on the unrest, between Dante and Kydobi then, Dante voicing his experience, from a Pitt that unfortunately was long gone, under the panther's rule. He would keep Dante in mind then, he decided, and see exactly what was going through the hybrid's mind, how he felt about all of this.

He turned to Atticus then, bleeding, grieving child, and his expression softens. He sees something moldable, in the little one. Children carried a lot of potential. Someone to keep an eye on, perhaps. Like Dante had said, this experience may very well shape him.

code by spacexual