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[imgright]https://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/imag ... idings.png[/imgright]Distant Thunder had spent quite a while pacing angrily through the lands, meandering the heart of the swamp, stewing in the vast ire of his heart that had spread to his hooves. Verily, he could scarcely believe the land not be on fire from his anger, such was the extent of his fury as he splashed aggressively into a river and out the other bank.

The dog had come with. It was a reminder of what has happened, and what was still happening, but some petty part of him thought that perhaps it was the last insult he could hurl at the creature he had sworn never to see again.

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"Father?" A querying voice, calm and quizzical - it was his son, who had quite evidently inherited the patient temperament of his mother. Illumination had slowed when he heard the mad splashes and promised his brethren he would join them later after investigating the noise, shoulders stocked with branches.

"Son," he had tried to say in a normal tone, but it came out at such a dark, deep growl that he was briefly surprised himself, before his scaled brow returned to its furrowed state. He was being mad at a very good clip. The dog barked, but he told it to shush.

"Father," Illumination said again, almost wryly but careful not to mock, and bowed his head as the respectful young buck he was.
"Something troubles you."

Thunder sighed. With his sigh, his shoulders slumped, but the irate restlessness ate at his calves. So yet, he paced.

"I found my dream, son."

Illumination was immediately intrigued, he had heard (quite enough) about his father's dream figure, and in his adulthood many a time had to bite his tongue on the childish dream that his father had. Some part of him was surprised the Motherfather had let it be real. Or perhaps it wasn't, what with his angry stomping.

"And -?" was the most diplomatic way he could think of putting it.

"- it was a buck. The entire time - just - I had been chasing, and I had been wanting, and I'd found what I was looking for, and it was such joy, such joy for what had felt like an age and a half, so short, yet so long. He was so beautiful, so perfect. He had lied to me, that he was a doe."

"Would it be very terrible," he repeated mockingly, voice high, "if we couldn't have children of our own? So he said. What a little -"

"I mean," Illumination interrupted, "you do have children." And a dog for some reason, he thought, glancing over at this very unnatural looking canine.

"We were MEANT to have children together!" Thunder exploded, uncouthly, in front of his son. There was an uncomfortable silence after; things left unsaid.

"We were meant to be happy. Instead it was the Motherfather's wicked game, that...that buck is wandering around out there somewhere having made a fool of me for an eternity now, given how long I'd been searching, and here I am, with this bile in my throat and nothing to show for it."

"There, there," Illumination wasn't particularly thrilled to be parenting his father, after the vast amount of terrible things he had just said, but he was rather used to doing this for the tribe.

"Come on Father, we could use some help at The Friends today. Would you take some?"

He neatly placed some branches on his broad shoulder, and beckoned him towards the rest of his pack, hoping they wouldn't be too troubled by the presence of his angry, bigoted father.
Illuminations was not prepared for just how much of their fermented fruit juice that his father could swill, but considering the type of buck he was, he should have been. He sat there, willing the patience of his compatriots through his desperate eyes.

Distant Thunder was lubricated and very chatty, at the moment, keeping the hellhound at his legs, mournfully regaling them with the tale again, with more expletives and lush description.

"A lying...snake...of...an acha," he moaned dramatically, lying on his side with such a victimised look on his face, "Motherfather knows how long he had planned to keep it from me, when I had...such hopes...such hopes...to drag me about at the end of my dreams...We were meant to be together, start a family together -"

"No," he replied blithely, legs dangling and his eyes opening just barely to look at him (he had also just found out today that Ail was a buck, much to his son's distress), "if I did, wouldn't I be called Distant Thunderf-"

"Okay, no," Illuminations confirmed in a hurry.