Brother, Where Have You Been?

As Miach came around the corner, all of the browns and blacks in his coat seemed to blend with the shadows and become undiscernable, but those vivid white facial markings struck a memory. He knew who this was, and his nostrils flared to confirm his suspicions though even with knowing who it was, his muscles did not relax.

The eerie feeling of running into his long-lost brother after so long of searching for him made his skin crawl along his spine and made his thick hackles stand at full attention above his shoulder blades. It'd been so long since he'd seen Miach, and when they were kids... Kane had always thought Miach would outgrow him, but maybe the wilderness didn't fare as well on Miach in their youth. He stopped assessing his brother and looked right into his ruby gaze, noticing both of his eyes still completely unmarred. They had matching eyes when they were young, and now Kane only had one.

There was a beast deep within Kane that he'd been previously unaware of. He had always been so disassociative with his emotions that he never let feelings of loneliness or fear really bother him out in the wild, away from Lirim. After every attack, he had done what he needed to survive. Every lonely night was met with a sound mind and careful planning for the next day, he was a man of logic. Yet, seeing his mother and his sister had unlocked some sort of attachments within him that he thought he'd outgrown- and now seeing his brother... unlocked some feelings of anger and fury he didn't even know he was capable of. His red tongue writhed behind his teeth, licking the backs of their curves as his jaw muscles clenched and he fought himself not to act on impulse. He was not an impulsive being, he was stable. He was stable.

He lifted his chin in a dominant display toward his brother and focused on his words, his apology. His impish ears became risen to meet them as his single eye never once faltered away from Miach's own gaze. When Miach mentioned their father, the young man couldn't suppress a scoff. The sound was louder than he expected in the close quarters of the cave, but he made a conscious decision to let that be his last slip up. So Miach was more concerned with the whereabouts of their father, the one that never gave a damn about them than he was with Kane? Had Kane wasted over half of his life so far searching for someone who could care less?

He remembered the feeling he'd gotten when he'd roamed the canyon in search of Miach when he'd caught the scent of so many other wolves in Miach's company. His observation of carnage and blood in the area told him that those wolves were dangerous, and he'd left the canyon without finding any lone trail of Miach... though he had no idea he'd never find another trail from him again after that. Maybe he wouldn't have left prematurely if he had known he'd never find another sign of him again until now. His muzzles started to relax finally as he calmed himself, remembering that it wasn't Miach's choice to have Kane follow him. Kane did it on his own free will, and everything he'd endured was something Kane chose to endure the moment he left Lirim.

His posture remained unforgiving, however. Tall, dominant and stoic with his head craned upward to establish such a look. He decided to negate all talk of emotions, to ignore Miach's mention of anger and instead form a plan on what they would do now. "If you are looking for our father, I've already found him. He's here, with our mother."