He made his way down the hallway, steps light and inaudible on the carpet, down the stairs with an ease that, in hindsight, was silly of him not to possess when he first traversed them. Strangely, he waited at the bottom of them for a few long moments, and then, with an almost bored look, he moved on. Slipping through the front door, it was the first time he noticed that something was off. The fur on his neck prickled, and suddenly he looked around, turning just in time to see Nour, and for a moment his eyes flashed with anger before they softened. 

He gave her a deadpan look, "what do you think you are doing?" Looking behind him just to make sure Kier wouldn't somehow appear from the shadows of the fence nearby, he turned towards her with a force scowl on his face, "have you run out of cats to bother?" 

He wanted to defend the so called baby-brother accusations — because he was bigger, he was stronger, he was smarter — but he simply scowled, though his anger held none of the same passion that it used to when he was teased. It was softer, less annoyed though not at all entertained. Delicately, he removed her arm from around him, crawled forward until he could face her again. 

"Jolly," he rolled his eyes, "and I don't sneak off anywhere, I have you know. I don't have a lover of any kind —" he gave a slightly shifty look, "or maybe I do. Not that you'll know, because I'm not telling you." Despite the fact that he probably had somewhere to be, he followed his sister anyway, head held lower, the same sarcastic look on his face, unimpressed and aloof. 

"The marshes?" He didn't much like the thought of water right now, but shrugged anyway, "alright, we can go to the marshes. But you can't go home being all dirty and muddy, so you have to have a good wash before we go." 

Strangely, he was almost glad, even though he hadn't intended to humour her. "Big bean?" He mumbled, not intending for her to hear that, either. He realized his reluctance to take the lead like he usually did would have been strange, but he really didn't have the energy to do anything else but trail behind her, watching out for any potential dangers, things she could trip over, trying to play into two very different roles: the protective brother, the bodyguard. He was already technically doing this Kier thing for her, why not go the extra mile. 

Still, he scoffed at her suggestion — "I don't know what you're talking about. And we aren't sneaking into the medicine den, father will have my head." Not hers, probably, because he adored his daughters oh so much. "We go to the marshes, we go home. No sneaking anywhere." A little ironic, considering just how often he snuck around. He'd gotten quite good at listening in on conversation, as per Kier's demands. He had also gotten more bitingly sarcastic, the childlike arrogance being replaced swiftly with something more intense. 

Do you think there's really magic there? He thought for a moment, "yes. Magic, monsters … curses," he added it a little quieter, almost under his breath, a test to see if he wanted to bring it up yet, "there's plenty out there we don't know about." His trip to Dayclan had really been magic enough, but he was sure there was more out there. "But I don't think we will get superpowers from a silly old rock," he paused, tossed the question around his head for a moment, moving more to walk beside her now, though he still kept his head low, "Invisibility, maybe. So you can't follow me around." It was slightly teasing, and a small hint of a smile graced his lips. 

He gave her another deadpan look, thin-lipped, almost unbelieving. Perhaps it was his nerves, or the new instilment in him that Bermondsey was so easy to dissapoint, that he was a terrible son and had to make up for it. Kier's words had cut a little deeper than he'd like to admit, to his own worth, to how he viewed his father as a whole, especially regarding the curse. Though, he'd always been one for the rules, the bossy one who ordered his sisters around, the kid who would remind the teacher they had homework to still hand in. 

"I'm sure it isn't," he hummed, chiding, teasing. He let himself fall back a little, stared down at her (he loved rubbing in the fact he was taller, but stayed quiet this time) for a little longer than necessary. She always seemed so careless, reckless; his antithesis, his mirror, where she was loud, he was quiet, where he was book smart, she was people smart, she was senseless, a little stupid (in the most loving way possible, despite his annoyances), and he … wasn't.   

Then, he looked around them, eyes cast towards the depths of the woods and above, in the trees, like someone would drop down on them. "Personally, I think your stench would give you away," he smiled, a playful grimace. Then, he looked out again, moved so he was just in front of Nour, "I bet I can beat you there." It was almost sudden, the invitation for a game he usually thought himself above. A race, as if he wasn't Laertes who never played silly things like that. If he was going to traipse around with his sister all day, he may as well do something productive, he did have some things to practice. 

He blinked down at his paws, lifted and turned them over for a moment before he stared at Nour again, "my paws aren't that big," he stopped to look around, decide where they would start, before he moved towards a small, discarded twig on the ground, picked it from the undergrowth and dragged it forward. He spent a second fiddling to make sure it was straight and laying horizontal. He lined his paws up so the tips of his toes were just grazing it. 

He glanced over his shoulder, "this is the start line," because he wanted to play fair, at least, "and we go to the marshes — unless you're scared to lose," he raised his eyebrows in a mocking look. He was more competitive than he ever let on, especially as of late. 

He met her with an eyeroll as she set off — unfairly, may he add, not that it mattered — though he went after at a worryingly slow pace, almost looking like he was admiring the sky instead of racing, but he was simply surveying. Thinking, planning, like a good little soldier should do. Without Kier's instruction, he was almost lost, like any other kit in a big forest, but finally his eyes singled out a particularly thick tree, extending branches that reached to its neighbours like it didn't know personal space. Nour was just ahead, careless and aimless, obviously figuring it out as she walked. Laertes took a deep breath and pursed his lips and shimmied up the trunk (he was still quite new to it, give him a break), steadily trying to keep his eyes on the branches above him instead of the ground below. He was getting better, it was obvious, and what harm was a little practice? He didn't need to win the race (though, he sort of did, for his own pride). 

He crawled across a branch, hardly had to jump as it crossed over another, to the next tree, and though he was scarily clumsy, almost toddling across, he found a certain rhythm to it. Bermondsey certainly would be proud, would he not? A slighter longer jump to the next tree, a wide pine, though it stretched wide and sturdy. It took some time to shimmy down, a half hop to the bottom as he neared it, and soon enough he was closing in on Nour, quicker than before. 

A slight grin crossed his features. Reaching out, closing the distance between them, he hooked his paw around her foreleg, tripped her up and pulled her back, gave a wider, sarcastic grin as he skipped past. 

"The undergrowth can be quite tricky!" He usually wasn't one for such taunts, more the sarcastic, deadpan remark kind of guy, but he was feeling especially competitive, and cheating was only off the table if you were soft, and Laertes didn't want to be, couldn't, be soft. 

He winced, noticeably, and went to pull his tail away, only to be pulled backwards, "Hey! Watch your teeth —" he turned, batted at her muzzle until she let loose, though he tried to keep it gentle, still. As he pried himself from Nour's grasp, he backed away, faced her like they were about to enter some extremely epic brawl, but instead he just stared for a few heartbeats, like he was planning, before he looked at the point just above her head. 

"What is that?" He called, sounding fearful. Before she could do much else, he turned quickly and darted ahead, scurried into the undergrowth and up the backside of a tree, mostly out of view unless you were looking for a few small, sharp claws and the tips of his toes. Creeping across the lowest branch that was still sturdy enough to hold him, instead of trying to cross onto the next tree, he stopped, leaned forward to wait for her to catch up. Having the high ground was important, and he hoped Nour was like all those cats his father had described, who didn't check the trees above them. There hadn't been anything behind her, of course, he would never leave her like that if there was.

It seemed no matter how hard they tried to best each other, there never seemed to be a winner. No matter how hard they pushed or shove, the other was there to do so just as hard. But he could work around setbacks, and so he continued on his way to the tree, scurried up and watched, trying to hold in an uncharacteristic laugh that certainly would have given him away. Heights still scared him, and sometimes he was still hit with the occasional wave of nausea, but he found focusing on something specific helped — that something seemed to be Nour, though it was difficult to watch when she was running around blindly. 

He turned to measure the distance to the next tree, and without really thinking he sprung off the branch he was balancing on, and surely the noise of such would have given him away had his form not been seen. He hadn't been too far up from the ground. 

"You look lost," he scurried onto a rather thin branch, tilted his head down as he continued to watch, and perhaps he leaned a little too far, considering how easily he, almost comically, lost his footing, tipped forward and plummeted to the ground beneath him with a strangled, high-pitched scream. 

For a moment, there was nothing, only the slight whir of the air and the blurred background that made him feel like he wasn't moving at all, and then all to suddenly the ground was close, and he saw a flash of Nour's face before he landed. There was a bang, or maybe a crack or a crunch, he couldn't quite tell, and a few milliseconds of silence where he could only hear his own heartbeat. He didn't expect the ground to feel so … soft, and lumpy, and … made of fur? He adjusted his eyes, lifted his head from where his chin still hit the ground, and looked at the thing beneath him, eyes widening immediately. Twisted at an odd angle was his sister's tail, sticking out in their strange tangle of limbs. He jumped off, and he felt something pop slightly. 

"Oh God — don't tell Mother —" he winced, shook off an ache in his paw quickly before leaning down to examine her, "why would you do that, stupid? Did you think you could catch me?" He sat back, suddenly looking very worried.