Notes: Apologies for not finishing the Einherjar request yesterday, I fell asleep... No date for them yet, what a thing. I'm getting old...
Stats: 500 words for Kellam and Panne.
Kellam was trying really hard to disappear.
It wasn't an enemy he was running from, though. It was his own family, playing hide and seek in the woods with him.
He had wrongfully assumed he could fool them, but they were Taguel and they tracked him differently than he was used to. Humans could... would always miss seeing or hearing him. And Panne had actually confessed the same applied to her sometimes when she was distracted.
However, that's where their bunny noses came in. No matter how many times he had scrubbed during bath that morning, or how he had left behind his bulky armor this one time, or how much of a lead they gave him to run, they still tracked him so effectively by scent alone in this thick forest. He was starting to feel self-conscious.
And what was worse? His children were stealthy, his inheritance for them, so he never saw them coming until he was falling face first into the ground, a Taguel child on his back. Obviously in hide and seek, this was already too late to notice.
...like right now: "I win!"
One of his daughters this time. With great glee, she jumped time and again on his back, as if it was made of steel instead of simple human bones.
Yarne, his eldest son, was a lot more considerate, getting his sister off their father. "He's not wearing any armor, you'll break him."
"But I still win."
"Nobody said you didn't," Kellam said as he got up, rubbing his back.
His other children soon gathered around them. He guessed that if he wasn't their father, he'd have found the group of fluffy bunnies to be the most adorable thing in the world. But he was, and he knew better than to think of the Taguel in their rabbit form as anything but dangerous to his health. In human form? Cute, and he loved to hug them. As rabbits? They sometimes bit too hard without intending to.
...like right now, his other son playfully chewing his pant leg, but unaware he was biting the flesh under too.
"Can we play again?"
"Dinner will be soon."
"But it's so fun to hunt you!" his younger daughter was an absolute psycho.
"We're playing hide and seek, stupid!"
"Don't call your sister stupid."
"We're playing hunt. If it was hide and seek, dad would be looking for us!"
"It's Taguel hide and seek!" Oh Naga, not infighting again...
But he saw his wife arriving just in time to save the day. "Warren! Dinner is ready, let's go home. No fighting on the way back." She knew them so well.
Their bunnies hopped away together, headed to their cabin at the forest's edge. Panne shifted back to her human-like form, and went to him when he opened his arms to embrace her.
"Were they too rough again?"
Kellam sighed. They had been, but... "No, honey. They were such little angels."
"We should have more, then." Oh Naga, no!
