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❝ IF I LET GO, WOULD YOU HOLD ON? WOULD WE FLY? IS IT SAFER IF WE JUST SAY THAT WE TRIED? ARE WE LAUGHING AT THE DANGER? ARE WE DANCING AFTER DEATH, YOU AND I?. ❞ ━━━ Matt Maeson
. . .
HOPE HAD died with his mother. His father forcing the weapon into his hand and holding his finger over the trigger was evidence of such. A child's innocence gone with the infidelity of the Emerald Zircon of Zaun. A boy to grow up yearning for the love of a mother whose body decayed at the bottom of the under city's polluted rivers, two golden bullets lodged between her ribs. Her legacy was that of a crime lord for a husband, a weak man for a lover, and a son with a beautiful face that rivaled her own with far too much blood on his hands for such a young age.
ORIN WAS far too much like his late mother for his own good. Resented by his father and looked upon by the residents of Zaun like a piece of meat, he sometimes wished it was him who'd wronged his father, that it was him who'd caught a bullet in his stomach. Anything would have been better than sleeping in a rat-infested barn with nothing but his own clothes to keep warm and a stick to fight off the rats. There weren't many that cared for his well-being, let alone where his father saw it fit for him to sleep, or when he finally allowed Orin to join him for a proper meal━━not one that consisted of the scraps his father's cook left in a bowl outside the barn doors.
HE WAS not loved in his family. Least of all when he spoke up for himself or sought out something that he wanted for a change. He was expected and trained to be a dog that did what he was told and obeyed. Obey, obey, obey. Anything less was despicable. And Orin wanted out. He wanted freedom, a life that wasn't governed by his father.
SOON ENOUGH he got exactly what he wanted. But at a price.
THE COST of his freedom was a hunt where he was the prey and his fathers men were the predators. Orin would die if his father had anything to say about it. His running away was a great offense, and he would pay for it with his life. However, Orin wasn't willing to die━━not the by hands of his father or the men who worked under him by any chance. So he kept running, stowing away in the safest places he could find with his fathers most prized possession trailing after him; a blue-eyed black and white striped tiger with a missing leg. Etha, he named her, because to his father she was destined to become his finest pelt, hung on the wall of his home for all to see. But, to Orin, she was beautiful beyond comparison. Even despite the missing appendage that resembled his own tragedies far too perfectly.
