Thread:Roleplayy/@comment-39024013-20190607112231/@comment-36195412-20190613131004

Hunta forced himself to stop being upset, forced himself to stop trembling and kept his chin up. He blinked, slowly but surely. "I'll...go catch a rat or something," he said quietly. "Wish me luck rat that alley over there!"

The humor in his voice was dry, however.

--

Gray, upon arriving to the alley, sniffed at a dumpster. "Peculiar things," she meowed thoughtfully. "All these examples of human impracticalness."

The gray tabby said no more and sat down with her tail wrapped around her paws in the corner.

-

And now, the scene that doesn't affect the story that you've all been waiting for...)

He was there.

He was right there.

"Mom, please..." A dark-haired boy, about fourteen or fifteen, kept trying to pull away from his mother's worried grip, but he couldn't. Though his voice was particularly loud, he had the build of a dreamer, not a do-er. That didn't stop him from trying, however. "Mom, stop! It was Hunter! I'm not crazy!"

His mother, a tall woman with his dark hair and pale blue eyes, sighed. "Zephyr, it wasn't. Hunter...Hunter was hit by a car months ago. You and I both realize that those were just strays, and you're in grief. I couldn't let you go."

Her voice was quieter now, gripping Zephyr's wrist a bit sharper. "I couldn't let you out in the street. Not after the...the incident six months ago." She paused, and then she spoke again, the words making her son want to cover his ears, want to cry. "Amanda's incident. And Buddy's, too, I suppose."

Zephyr froze. "This isn't about Amanda. This is about Hunter."

"Whatever the case," his mother finished, "it's getting late out. All the detail in the land's gone. We're leaving."

Then Zephyr and his mother left, his tears silently dripping down his cheeks, hers, held inside until a quiet, private moment.

-

(in case y'allsters are confused, Hunta is very bad at pronouncing things and his name is Hunter. Also, Zephyr's mom--just his mom, he had no siblings and never met his father because that dude's dead--moved to the city for a "fresh start" after an incident involving snow and her son's best friend. )