#mjara

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A childish set of giggles worked it's way through the trio of youngsters as they'd successfully slipped their way out of the village and that day's set of responsibilities. Even though they were less than 10 summers old, they knew enough not to go too deep into the jungle, but staying out of earshot when everyone had a few fulms of ear to work with did mean getting well into the dense forest. That and they hadn't turned the corner from fearing their mothers and aunts more than they feared the beasts stalking even in the nearby wilds.

Once they'd felt like there was enough distance between them and all the stuffy adults in their lives, Einar whips around to face his two partners in crime, flashing the rather opposing forces of the duo a smile. "Last one to the top of the tree has to eat a beetle!" Mjara and Shar didn't get much in the way of time before the boy had leaped up onto the trunk of a nearby tree and had started working his claws into the bark for a proper head start. The immediate shouts about it being unfair were lost in a sea of cackling from the young boy, and eventually his two friends as they rose ever higher up the tree.

Though he'd given himself the early lead, it wasn't long before Einar was passed up by his particularly pale friend. Shar shot out her tongue briefly as she made her way into the lead, being one of the more hunt focused of the bunch and very particularly not wanting to have to eat a bug. Mjara on the other hand, while being nimble on the ground was likely the weakest climber and Einar was making full use of that. As such, she was left standing on a limb well short of the tree-top looking into the smug faces of her two friends, her own dark features twisted into something between a pout and a scowl. "Einar you cheated! You ALWAYS cheat!"

"I'm sorry, I can't hear you 'cus of all the beetle breath you're about to have!" A sinister giggle twists into the boy's last few words, a chorus that Shar happily joins. The rain of teasing from on high drove Mjara into a pissed thump of her food against the branch she was standing on, swiftly followed by a couple of more. The laughter was cut horribly short as a crack of wood replaced it, and with a flail of limbs trying to get hold of the trunk the young girl started to fall with the branch she was on giving way from beneath her. Her companions were too stunned to react properly at first until Mjara impacted back-first against one of the broader limbs back first, and lay distressingly still.

Einar and Shar both were nearly screaming out their friend's name when they finally got the sense to start rushing down towards her, nearly slipping from the tree themselves in the process. She was still breathing when they got there, but only just barely. "I.. I am going to go get help! Maybe one of the huntresses can get her back to the healer in time!" Shar's words fall out with a tremble before she left a silent Einar knelt next to his battered friend.

When words did finally reach the boy's lips, it was a string of pleas to any power that would listen. From promises of better behavior, to do as he was told, on down to swearing to Mjara he'd never make her eat another beetle if she'd just wake up. The palms of his hands work back and forth over the unconscious form, as if somehow he'd find someway to make it all better if he looked hard enough. It was in one of these passes that a trickle of understanding hit him, his palms swiftly moving back to her core. Even though his eyes were half blinded by rivers of tears, he thought he could almost see where Mjara was broken. Not sight so much as just being able to read along the lines of the aether that made up his friend, and where the flow was wrong.

Willful and ever hungry, her appetite bottomless, Mjara devoured even the largest catfish with ease. Some days, they were lucky enough to happen upon a stray deer. Aja chose ones whose mottling had long-since passed and used their antlers for a bow, their hides for cured pelts to soften where they slept.

Coeurls were rarely tamed by her tribe. Everything she learned was at the end of Mjara’s quickly growing teeth, or an errant paw to the face when she played rough. Even with a haunch of meat as a reward, Mjara often took to ignoring her, one ear swiveled in Aja’s direction as she laid on a branch, head rested on her paws. Sometimes she would steal Aja’s things and stare at her in challenge, tail playfully raised, just so she would chase her.

Eventually, she was no longer a starving, young thing. She grew into her paws, but her one, stubby whisker never grew. Eventually, bites fierce enough to scar, bites of fear, became gentler nips of warning or affection, with a rough, wide tongue on her forehead to wake her most mornings. Even the tamest coeurls were of course, at their core, wild beasts, Aja knew. Moons passed and she stood at her side instead.