• Children of Winter• || NamMin

1. Lonely Horanghi

I wanna be with you
And I wanna stay with you
Just like the stars shining bright
You're glowing once more

Right here beside you, I'm still
Walking wherever you go
You will live forever in me
Breathing deeply, within me

• Children of Winter •

He hears that far away, there is an explosion. He turns on the futon and gives a groan of deep annoyance. "Are they ever going to stop burning each other one damn day?" he grumbles through his teeth.

With his hand he pats the floor, gets a cushion and puts it on top of his head, wanting to muffle the sound. He would go investigate in the morning. He's not going to waste his sleeping hours on another explosion. It's been going on for months at this point and it's unbearable.

The faint roar at his back makes him turn, meeting huge green eyes with dilated pupils. He snorts, reaching out to pet the head of the striped furred animal.The huge sized feline, a tiger, purrs and leans back towards the man with ears and tail matching his own.

"Did they wake you up too Mon?" he asks quietly. "It's horrible. Let's pretend it doesn't exist." He pats him affectionately and the tiger licks part of his face.

The rumbling went on for a long while, but they managed to ignore it to rest.

~ * * * ~

The earth, as well as the leaves of the trees still alive, is dressed in white because of the snow that does not stop falling. A persistent, long and strong winter that prevents them from showing their true colors. Among the many mountains, one of the most distant and complicated to access, there is someone coming down with a Bengal tiger by his side.

He is a tall man, with a large and muscular body, half exposed by his open clothes; his hair is loose and moved by the breeze that does not stop. The strands are orange, with a black and a white cape, matching the ears that come out from the sides of his face and end on his head.

Tiger ears, an animal to which he is genetically related. This man is Alpha Kim Nam-Joon. In more distant villages he is taken as a myth, those who see him with relative regularity, wish it were not his reality and disappear.

His eyes are just like those of the tiger walking beside him, Mon; slanted, sharp and grayish-green. As well as ears, he has a tail; moving at a calm, almost playful pace. Namjoon keeps an eye on everything around him, that no one is following him, that there are no threats nearby and that his day goes as smoothly as all the others.

It takes him half a day to reach what interrupted his sleep in the early morning, it is a town almost razed to the ground, with its inhabitants doing their best to rebuild.

"Looks like last night was worse than usual," Namjoon comments to Mon. The tiger's jaws ajar, restless and hungry. A feast is practically on display here.

"A-ah! Na-Namjoon-nim" A girl runs from where she is to Namjoon, giving a small bow to the opposite. "S-sorry, but I don't think it's a good idea for me to be here today."

"During the hours of the morning the fuss wouldn't let me sleep," Namjoon says warily, showing the fangs so pronounced. The girl, a Beta named Yurim, opens her eyes in surprise. "That's why I came to see what happened."

"You heard it, from your house?"

Namjoon tilts his head to the side and she stammers. Namjoon lives more than five mountains away. It seems almost impossible to her that his ear is so sensitive and capable of perceiving such a distant event as a "scandal".

"We are very sorry" Yurim bows apologetically and Namjoon straightens up. "As you understand, there is not much we can do. The conflict of the imperial courts only gets worse and with how close we are to them, it is not surprising that we suffer so constantly from their clashes."