Tyr shifted uncomfortably when she asked about whether he had older siblings. "Rather a lot of them, actually," he admitted. "Younger ones, too. Our sire was a bit of a..." he paused, considering how to phrase it delicately for the young female. "He had a lot of wives. I was the only pup from my mother before she died, though, so they're all only half-siblings."
The girl seemed to tumble suddenly into sadness, speaking of the difficulties in being noticed in a large family. "Better that than to be singled out so that everyone knows everything about you. Better to be invisible than ridiculed." But he relented and rose to his feet, skeletal form shadowed in the dimness of the cave as he limped over to her side of the cave to curl up again next to her, to share what body heat he had. "It's hard when you're young. You don't really have a choice in how they view you or what you can do about it. But... now you do. You get to decide where you go and who knows you. Family isn't everything, it's just one thing..." That last part was said to himself as much as to her, a minor revelation for him, in a way. What his family thought, how they'd treated him... it really was just unimportant in the face of the enormity of the rest of his life stretching before him.
