"all things linger—" "—IN OUR SHADOW."

hey y’all! now here’s a muse that i’ve just been dying to write for a while now. please like or reblog if you’re interested in interacting with kindred from league of legends. semi-divergent canon / independent & semi-selective / written by quynh anh!

we have many faces—                MANY MOUTHS!                          —and many names.                                     HEAR THEM AND COWER!    but which do they know?

"Roasted apples, dear Wolf." Lamb takes one and holds it up. It's scorched soft bronze, and emits a wonderful smell. "The human habit of putting meat and vegetables to a fire sometimes extends to fruit..."

"A hot meal! Someone was close by," Wolf exclaims, sniffing around the campfire. "Lamb, I am hungry."

Lamb laughs and tosses him the apple. "Try this, then," she says. Wolf surges up and snaps it from the air. Apple juice spurts between his teeth, which crunch the roasted fruit with ease. Then he growls and spits it out.

"GRAH! Too sugary! They're ruined, Lamb!"

"Tsk-tsk, you mustn't waste, Wolf," chides Lamb, however soft. At that, he puts his ears back and sinks to the ground. He trembles, fangs bared.

"The fire burns. Are they nearby?"

;– ❀ There have been tales of the duo, whispers that would echo throughout her G A R D E N of Lamb and Wolf that would come across every being before they would leave for the other side. She hadn’t encountered them in her short life, but now here she stood in their presence and feeling rather scared for the reason as to why they have appeared before her.

         Had her time come?

         The fawn stood her ground though barely as her legs trembled beneath her, hands tightly gripping her staff. Doe eyes examined the two and listened attentively despite her heart pounding in her ears. 

        ‘ f-fun? ’

        The ancient creature known as Kindred simply wanted … fun?

        Well, she wasn’t entirely sure whether or not she would be able to provide such entertainment. She honestly hated being chased down …

                                           … Especially by such an aggressive Wolf.

      ‘ u-umm please don’t be too hard on me if i lose. i don’t like tae run for too long. ’

Kindred didn’t pay much mind to flowers. Wolf didn’t care for life that wouldn’t spring up and run the moment they saw him, and Lamb preferred to admire their brevity rather than their beauty. But once a blue moon, a bloom might catch their eye, and Lamb would pluck it, or Wolf would bite it, to tote along between his fangs. These they often left at their next hunting ground. Other times, they brought the flowers elsewhere: to somewhere unspoken, and secret.

The dream fawn was another such strange flower. In response to her timid request, Lamb only regarded her, meanwhile Wolf roared in joy and protest alike.

“NO! Run long, run fast, never stop! That’s how the race becomes fun!”

“Hush, Wolf. Don’t mind him,” said Lamb. She bent down, until her mask was even with the fawn’s wide blue eyes, and her voice came calm and unshakeable from behind it. “He is just excited...and I won’t let him get carried away. It has been a long while since we've had someone to run with, outside our hunts. We will remember your acceptance, and we thank you for it.”

Beside them, Wolf dropped to the ground and rolled, this massive, masked lupine head panting impatiently. He twisted his face into the earth and whined. “No more talk! Lamb, when can I run? I want to go fast, faster than the flower-fawn can go!”

“Something even you'll find out, Rhaast!” says the Wolf, dragging out the vowels into an open-throat snarl: rhaaaaaast!

“No,” comes the soft-voiced reply, “although we’d like to, very much. But what was once your time has long passed...and so life moves on, sir hunter. The question is, where next? Where to?”

But while the horned, masked figure of the Lamb regards him calm and indecipherable, kid-gloved hands tossing between themselves something like a toy— The same can’t be said of the white Wolf by her side. The beast’s ears press flat against its skull. Black lips curl above long, wet fangs. Wolf snarls, pacing, frothing like ocean-foam over empty, frigid air. His eyes glitter gold and irate.

“Fallen! Fled! Snatched from our hunting grounds, right under our claws! Lamb, I smell the thief here. I will crunch it to bits between my jaws,” says Wolf, his voice endless and guttural.

“Yes, Wolf. We know its face.” Lamb throws the thing in her hands up — catches it again. Light shines across its edge; it is an apple. Ashen smooth, tinted pale purple. The same color as Lamb’s braided hair, and the marks on Wolf’s rippling fur. She is looking straight at Yone — or perhaps, at the pronged mask over his face. It’s hard to tell which. “The shape of its teeth, and the marks of its claws. We will remember these, for when the time for its punishment comes. But ah! You.”

Lamb cocks her head, then. She is still for a moment before she tosses the pale apple to the man before them, underhanded.

“You weren’t the thief, but the thieved. You left our hunt, yes. But not because you wanted to."

“Still. You left,” Wolf rumbles. “And we don’t forget. And we don’t forgive.”