Brother from the Same Mother

Misten wasn't one to care about parentage, normally. Unlike Jinx who, if she suspected a pup was their mother's, would hound the poor thing until he or she broke, Misten couldn't care less. If a pup was their mother's, then good for Angel, he supposed; but dislike the adult pom-mix though he did, Misten certainly didn't believe in revenging himself for her actions upon her other children. Pups didn't deserve to suffer for their parents' crimes, so it was better off he not even ask.

Still, this Yoyo who had joined up a couple days before was... a curiosity, he had to admit. There was no denying that she was Angel's daughter; the likeness was impossible to miss. The golden fur, azure eyes, fluffy tail... she could have come from no other mother.

And yet... her scent... it was close to identical to his own and Jinx's. Those Pangel puppies, they carried Mr Patch's scent as well as their mother's, but this girl had the odour he's long come to associate with their father.

It was impossible, of course. He and Jinx had been the only two in their litter, he knew this as surely as he knew his own name. And yet...

So when he caught sight of her alone, Misten decided it was time for some answers. Not wanting to spook her, the DoberPom made no effort to hide the sound of his approach. Again, he caught the whiff of what seemed to be a combination of his parents' scents as he stepped out into the open.

"I hope you won't think me rude, but I've got a question or two I'd like answered," he stated as he stopped a respectful distance from her, looking into the blue eyes that so eerily resembled his own.

"What I want is to know who you are," He frowned as he looked her over. There wasn't a vast amount of physical resemblance to Buster, he'd give her that, but the scent...

"I don't normally care for parentage; it's no way to measure someone," he began, continuing to scrutinise her closely. He knew that, for himself, he certainly didn't want to be judged on who his parents were; he was different from either Buster or Angel, and proud of that fact. Still, the fact remained that if this girl was who her scent told him she was, she ought not to exist. "But my nose is telling me you should be my sister, and I know that can't be the case. I'm hoping you can explain."

"You said I could ask, so I asked. No point beating around the bush," the older canine replied shortly. Whether they were meant as such or not, the girl's first words struck him as a criticism, and the tone of his response was defensive enough to make that plain.

He frowned as she continued, however. It was a relief, if he was honest, to know that his nose wasn't the only one to pick up the similarities in scent; but it didn't answer any of his questions. In fact, her implication that they did, in fact, share parents simply raised more.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess - and I'm hopefully wrong - that they're called Angel and Buster?" Misten was aware that he'd look pretty damn stupid if this wasn't the case; maybe the similar scents came from them being mixes of the same breeds, not any actual relation? Perhaps the sheer similarity between their scents was nothing more than coincidence?

Oh, great. And here, he'd been hoping for a simple explanation. Misten ran a paw over his face, trying to make some sort of sense of this. "It... looks like it," he agreed. Though it didn't strike him as possible. He and Jinx were the only pups in their litter; this he knew for a fact. He also knew that Angel hadn't gone back to Buster after she had run away; Aunt Annette had learnt as much during her disastrous attempt to force the dober-mix to take him and Jinx off their paws, and Misten had subsequently learnt it by eavesdropping when she had recounted the events to his other two aunts.

"I'm going to need filling in on the details, because I can't imagine why Angel would have gone back to our dad for more pups when she was ashamed enough to abandon us," he stated bluntly. Anger at the memory of the pomeranian walking out on them stirred in his gut as he mentioned it and his eyes glinted with rage; an unnerving sight on the usually placid male. If it had just been him she'd abandoned, Misten could have taken that; but Angel's leaving had crushed Jinx. His sister had never been the same since, and it was for this that Misten would never forgive their mother.

"Jinx, my sister," Misten replied with a nod, answering the simple part while he processed the rest of what this sister had to say. That was nowhere near simple.

"I think I know what happened to us," he replied, shaking his head adamantly. "Buster doesn't even know we exist, and Angel never wanted us. She took off as soon as she could and just left us for Uncle Scamp to deal with. I heard one of my aunts say we were a reminder of a past she wanted to leave behind, whatever that's meant to mean."

He massaged his forehead, willing things between the pair of them to start making sense. "Ugh. I hope you have some idea how our stories both fit together, because I'm stuck."

Misten nodded, frowning. This was ridiculous. "I'm not going to pretent to understand it," he finally replied with a shake of his head. If there was any way to make sense of this, he sure didn't know it. He wasn't going to argue that his story was the correct one, that was for sure; quite aside from having no way to prove it, he was sure Yoyo thought hers was just as real and it would get neither of them anywhere.

"You said 'we' as well. You've got brothers or sisters too?" Maybe they could establish some normalacy in this conversation by talking about their siblings, rather than backstories that were more inconsistant than Jinx and Sophie's accounts of one of their fights. Whatever siblings she had, Misten would bet they weren't as much of a handful as Jinx so often was.

Two pairs of one brother and one sister each? Misten couldn't help but wonder if maybe they were... well, it sounded dumb even to him, but something like alternate versions of each other? No, that was ridiculous. If they'd looked more alike, then maybe, but as it stood...

"It's not easy to describe Jinx without making her sound bad," the male had to admit when Yoyo asked about her. Misten loved his sister, he truly did, but... well, she didn't do much to endear herself to anyone else. "She's taken a lot of shit; I don't want you to judge her on the effect it's had on her." He sighed. Somehow, he'd come out okay, but he knew Jinx had struggled a lot more with everything life had dealt them than he had.

"She took our mother's leaving really hard, and she's never been the same since." While she had been there, Angel had been a barricade, a shield for them against the disapproval of a number of the family's other members. Her removal had left Jinx and Misten to fall squarely in the path of Collette, Annette and Scamp's dislike; and while Misten had managed to weather it, Jinx's only means of coping had been to retreat into the little fort of bitterness she gardually built up around herself as the months passed. "She's... she's very bitter. We've never much been liked back home, and that's always eaten at Jinx. Our bond's about the only thing that's kept her together."