Wordcount: 416 words
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Summary: Baron starts to Get Ideas and Flame is having none of that.
NOTE: This is the first draft of a story, so it will most likely contain plot holes, retcons, and other inconsistencies. I’ll come back and fix things once the story (or arc) is complete!
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Future Trees and Possibilities
Baron watched May go, thoughtfully, from slightly out of her line of sight around the corner he had come from. She was… interesting.
Her tree was as far from a rider as he might have imagined, but there was something there that caught his interest. Her brother was much closer to what he was looking for, but there were too many negatives, too many bad branches to take the risk. Riders were born riders, with the conviction Farris did not have.
But May had the conviction, although it was driving her towards something else. There were many of the qualities that could have made a good foxknight, if things had not pushed her down a drastically different path.
He could, if he wanted to, push her in a different direction. It would be a complete uprooting of what she was meant to do and what she was meant to be, but he thought he could make it work.
He was gathering his courage to go after her when a large red chest blocked his vision.
“No.” Flame snarled down at him, ears back and beak open in a hiss. “You will NOT.”
Baron flinched back, then stubbornly fought back his instinctual submission and hissed back, Although very softly. “But why not, I can see it there, if you look at the very edges—“
“Because she’s not a rider, not even on the twigs of her future. You would be destroying her life for nothing. The Laws forbid causing harm, you will pick someone else.” Flame was angry enough that he mantled, spreading his wings up and around Baron who only sort of did not cower by his feet.
Baron could tell he was only a heartbeat away from the losing end of a fight, but he kept going, stubbornness and a failed future to motivate him. “But why? Why are you sure that what she has is any better than what she could be? You can’t see everything– I could make it better.”
Flame was good at many things, but he was not very good at dealing with questions to the Laws. They were immutable things in his mind, laid down by the divine will and even thinking to question them was an insult. The one thing you never ever did as a foxhawk was question the Laws and Flame lit into Baron with a fury, his anger finally drawing the attention of his distant rider and a whole host of other people as well.
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