These are the days we won't forget.

“Hey, @Cleo,” the mottled youngster called out to her sister in a sing-song voice when she was sure their father wasn't watching, and turned to face her with a shit-eating grin designed to provoke. Should she gain the other girl's frustrated attention, emerald eyes would narrow to dangerous slits as she uttered, hushed: “fight me.”

Tail boldly flagging at her rear, Rea tucked her chin in preparation for any assault, hind limbs braced to steady herself against impact.


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Unfortunately for Rea, who had swiftly ignored her mother's most recent warnings, the High King had been lurking closer than she thought. The mottled youth slackened her defensive stance and her eyes nearly rolled right out of her head as she emitted the most dramatic groan of defeat.

“Uuuugggghhhh,” she pinned her ears, hating that her efforts had been squashed for the millionth time, and she shot her sire a pointed glare. “You are all ruining my life!”

Ah, the joys of parenting teenage girls!


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For months she'd only tried to play, to wrestle and find her true place among the hierarchy of littermates only for parents to put a stop to her efforts each and every time. Their interference set her firmly at the bottom, for with this behaviour her siblings could see clearly how she differed from them. They claimed to prevent her scraps for her own safety, yet all she felt was the crippling isolation it brought.

She wasn't special, she knew, no matter what Quicksilver might say to try and lift her spirt. She was simply a weak link in the Boesch chain, destined to remain in the shadows of her far mote impressive brothers and sister.

“This is no life,” she hissed, slumping down into the dry grasses and propping her muzzle atop an elbow; she huffed a dandelion away from her nose.


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She heard him, as was clear by the cant of a blue-grey lobe in his direction, but chose not to respond immediately. Rea quietly and grumpily considered the many ways she could answer her father's question: to become stronger, to assert herself over pushover siblings, to prove that she could.

Most of all, however, she simply wanted to fight because so many told her she could not.

Frustrated, the girl rose her head to seek the High King's gaze with a sharpness to her glare. “Because everyone else can, and you tell me I can't.”


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Rea huffed, loudly. Life wasn't fair, and throughout her time in the world it continued to present new difficulties to navigate. Cleo and the boys did not suffer as she did, did not need to remind themselves to pee and be reminded continuously to stop gnawing their lips. They could wrestle and spar and train beneath their mother's guidance, while she was forced to linger on the sidelines.

“I don't wanna be different, dad,” she sighed, exhausted with the challenges she faced - including arguing her point with her parents. Ira's suggestion that they explore her desire to pursue the paladin skill had sated her only briefly, as still she tested her guardians' patience. “I just... why can't I be normal?”


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"One day", "know your boundaries", "learn how to listen" - she'd heard it all a hundred times before, and she was tired of it.

Lifting her chin and deliberately turning her head away from her father so he couldn't see, the mottled youth rolled her eyes to accompany the very dramatic sigh that spilled between her lips. She stared out over the rugged terrain for a long moment before she clacked her fangs at a piece of dry grass that lingered close by, so frustrated that she felt the need to bite something.

It wasn't fair. It would never be fair, and she wasn't ready to accept that her life was on hold until adults could say otherwise. Done with the interaction and wanting only to be alone, Rea propped her muzzle atop her forelegs and frowned to herself, sure to ignore anything else the High King had to say until she got the hint that she wanted to be alone.


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