Winter is coming

Sirius's words ring in her hears, and Hazel thinks for a long moment. Did she miss them? Her father, not at all. He'd been a nasty, volatile man, with a foul temper and a foul mouth. Her siblings... they hadn't been close. Hazel stood out like a sore thumb among them. She was too much. Too loud. Too brash. Too... much of a pain in the ass. Whatever. It was really no matter, because they were gone now, they weren't going to give her shit anymore. And then there were thoughts of her mother. Oh. Her gaze drifted, something far away. "Sometimes I worry about my Ma... everyone was too hard on her, I think." It's hard for her to really assemble the memories, but shit Hazel's dad did a lot of yelling, and her mother did seem to take the brunt of his aggressions.

Hazel is grateful for the change of subject, coming back down to earth after a moment. Her tail wagged loosely at her haunches, stepping beside Sirius with her easy gait. Though it seemed for every one of his steps, there were two of hers, she didn't have such a hard time keeping up anymore. In all her time here, she'd grown. Though that growth may have initially been stunted by malnutrition, and she'd maybe lost an inch or two for it, you'd never be able to tell. She's growing into something capable. "Would you help me make something for him? Something nice?" After all, the pair had spent some time fashioning all sorts of makeshift armor and jewelry for each other, including the somewhat lumpy friendship bracelet that Hazel was awfully proud of, but this needed to be something special. Something really special. It was thanks to Basilisk, really, that Hazel had seen her second year at all.

The Warlord's question gives her pause, though. For all her thinking, Hazel had never thought about... wanting something. At least something material. Softly, the red and pale girl hmmd to herself. A long consideration. It's a few long moments before she speaks. "I'd like more responsibility. More training... I want to be the General some day, and I want to learn how to get there." Her green eyes danced over to the Warlord for a moment. There was a strange relentlessness to the girl, something that had cropped up since her spar with Azure. There was a way that he looked at her, like he didn't take her seriously. Hazel wanted to prove the second alpha, and everyone like him, wrong. She'd show them all.

"Speech"