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[spirittai1]

kaden | nonbinary | jackal
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[spirittai1]

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kaden let out a yawn from his resting spot in a shallow cave on the side of a canyon, stretching his limbs out as the sound of creaky wooden wheels came into range. looking down, he watched as a small horse-drawn carriage slowly rattled down the trail below. the paper with information on his target was laid out in front of him - presumably the first of many his mother would send him. they'd be in the right position soon.

as he began to silently slide his way down the narrow path on the side of the cliff, his thoughts drifted away toward his mother and those stories she’d always told him.

he’d always loved the one about the jackal who loved the sun. the jackal chased the sun across the sky and rescued her when she became caught in the thorny branches of a tree. every time his mother had told him that story, he would tell her that she was his sun, that he would do anything for her - just like that jackal would do for the sun.

in hindsight, she was probably using his childish loyalty to her to justify making him do all this.

that, and, he supposed, most parents did expect their kits to take over their duties for them as they got older; the eldest pups in a jackal family take care of their younger siblings when their parents are off hunting, after all. did assassination qualify as a task to be taken over by one’s kits? his mother seemed to believe so.

jackals were the territorial type, too. it could be that she was just trying to protect his sister from dangerous kals, which this carriage definitely carried - he couldn’t possibly be the dangerous one in this situation. he was marking his territory. he ignored a sudden bout cheerful laughs coming from below and hurried out of a dip in his path.

slightly ahead now, he reached the spot that would give him the best angle of their carriage when it passed. he forced himself to focus on the task at hand, pulling his thoughts away from jackals and mothers. he set down his bag and pulled a jar filled with a thick, glowing liquid. he grabbed the bow from his back and gently dipped an arrow into the jar.

he didn’t understand magic or enchantments; those were his mother and sister’s domain. all he knew about them was that they were dangerous and illegal - not that he was in a particularly good place right then to judge the danger or legality of things, of course.

the liquid would supposedly cause the arrow to detonate when it landed on something solid. kaden considered the possibility of the gel dripping onto the bow as he brought it back to fire, but nothing happened when the tip of the arrow slid against the string of the bow, even once he began to pull it back. unfortunate.

kaden took a deep breath.

[spirittai1]