Jera grew up with the herd of cervitaurs that guarded the Tonglu (Copper Deer) Temple. The serene, rustic-furred alpha doe taught him from a young age that he was a different species through her bedtime stories of her youth. He understood why he could run faster, if not clumsier, than the other village children. When they raced down the mountain, he would sprint until he was far enough in the lead that he could only hear rustling behind him. He gleed at how he could leap far enough that ground would slope away like he was falling. Those advantages, the doe repeated often, were a responsibility.

Jera first saw Liming (Dawn) City at age seven from a clearing near the top of the main mountain. The entire range partially encircled the city, but Jera had never traveled high enough to gaze over the thick forest. From then on, he visited that clearing often, even when the alpha doe, Hong, began training him far harsher than his friends. To Hong’s approval, he became protective of the other children. He slept at odd hours to follow her rules and every few weeks, she sent him on long patrols through the range. For years, her expectations lined up perfectly with the morals of her bedtime stories: if any species was stronger than another, they must owe a greater debt.

Calluna, a cervitaur a few years older than Jera, left their village when he was 14. She whispered to their friends that she was traveling along the river to a rural, fishing town. Before disappearing into the underbrush, Calluna called back to Jera, “Open your eyes.”

The herd’s youth population dwindled from then on. After a trio departed together in one night, Hong flipped the temple’s offering table and set the curtains ablaze. One evening, as Jera knelt before Hong to be berated for his unannounced supply run, his mind wandered to Calluna’s words. When he finally questioned Hong’s expectations, she spat back, “Why else did I bring you here?” Although Hong never spoke about his parents, Jera was raised under such pitying gazes that he assumed he was abandoned. He laid in the clearing as the moon rose and wondered if the herd only accepted a predator for the promise that he’d protect them one day.

Sage, one of his only remaining friends, found him in the grass and proposed leaving, promising that none of their friends thought of him as a guard dog. They had long realized things Jera only just discovered: When Hong created Tonglu Temple to worship herself in the mountains, she was hiding, and Jera was a victim of her paranoia. The lion left with Sage without ever learning from who Hong had taken him from. They argued as they traveled down the mountain. Sage insisted on Calluna’s lakeside town, where most of their friends were, but Jera couldn’t imagine living rurally again, surrounded by dense foliage and the lie that he belonged there. Jera promised he’d visit, and they split up.

Although he was already 17, Jera was painfully ignorant in the Liming. His human form felt fragile and muted. While wandering the outskirts, a young police officer offered him her spare money. If he stuck to the right alleys, she promised, he could stay fed for a few weeks. She scoffed good-naturedly at his suspicion and explained it was part of her duties to help him. Jera's eyes flashed at the word "duties." Days later, he ambled into the Liming Police Department. He strung his single, remaining coin on a cord, but he was never able to find that officer.

Despite his promotions, Jera was haunted by the mountains on the horizon of his balcony view. He requested a transfer to the city of Prince, where the officers wore stiff uniforms and his accent spread like thick molasses over his words. In his new, distant region, Jera rose to the position of captain. He recruited his closest officers to his mobile intranational unit and was on a train by morning.

Esther Elosegui arrived at a robbery crime scene as the city police department’s rookie liaison officer, but more notoriously as the daughter of a political tycoon. She’s surrounded by rumors that she could only graduate from the academy straight to a detective position at Dale, a city so close to the capital, through her father’s influence. The rumors ignited when her very first task was to assist a mobile intranational unit’s investigation of a high priority serial burglary case.

Jera cared very little about the hearsay, just as he cared very little about collaborating with the city police overall. He knew the department only called his unit when the robbed rich pressured them, but by then, the thieves were already far more experienced.

Jera’s unit slowly accepted Esther as she made clever observation after observation. However, she was suddenly asked by the unit's sergeant, Ismail, to resign from her liaison task under orders from Jera. The next day, Esther tailed the team as they rushed an abandoned warehouse. The arrested rugged group of men pleaded to be allowed to return home to Okrad. The corporation owners they robbed had polluted the Okrad River. The thieves promised to leave a significant portion of the burgled money for Jera to return to the Dale police, but they needed the rest to fund the only hospital of their impoverished town. After a long silence, and to Esther’s disbelief, Jera gave them 48 hours to leave. Later that day, the rookie officer asked Ismail about progress, but the sergeant merely commented that the thieves were likely intimidated by Jera’s arrival, so there was no need to worry about another robbery.

When Esther began working at the department again the next day, her coworkers believed that the rumors were confirmed: an inexperienced officer that was rejected as a liaison could not have become a detective without outside influence. In reality, her relationship with her father grew tumultuous when she applied to the police academy against his wishes, so the side-eyed glances and careless whispers felt like an injustice. Jera’s unit felt like an injustice as well. Despite their sensationalized reputation, Jera seemed quiet and uncooperative. Raised sheltered and naive, she believed she was already witnessing the police corruption that her father had warned her about. Thievery was thievery. The world was so black and white.

Esther returned to the intranational unit’s base that night for the last of her belongings, but she found Jera working alone on a pile of papers. Partially out of spite, Esther asked if she could finish her work there instead of back at the police department where the incoming night shift meant a refreshed wave of gossipping. To her surprise, Jera agreed with tired eyes. Her report was unexpectedly tedious and frustrating as she tried to provide an explanation for the terminated liaison when there was none. Her head was swirling with her broken career expectations when she realized it was past midnight and Jera had fallen asleep at his desk. Esther stole the captain’s badge and used it to demand an audience with the Dale deputy police chief. She claimed that under Jera’s orders, the Dale police should storm the abandoned warehouse immediately.

Jera woke up congratulated for yet another successful case. After the arrest, his team had made up an excuse about how the city’s own department should be the ones to bring in the thieves of such a headlining case for the sake of public image. Esther threatened to expose his original plans if he retaliated against her, but Jera only scathingly responded that she should visit Okrad sometime. The team left Dale the same day.

The rumors stoped with Esther's promotion. She soon requested transfer to South Hallow, the “Beneath City,” for the opportunity she saw there. The police department was small and disorganized because the sky-rocketed crime rate left the city undesirable. The need for power roles allowed Esther to quickly climb multiple positions. She would not cross paths with Jera until months later when his unit was called into her city. Outside of formalites, the team did not acknowledge Esther’s existence.

The Beneath City had taken its toll on Esther. She realized the world was much more gray, and her turmoil spiked when a young officer in her patrol was spooked by a mob confrontation. He was killed in the crossfire while running away, yet the department chief did not want to honor his death because he displayed “cowardice.”

Flooded with guilt and desperation, she snuck through the balcony into Jera’s apartment still covered in the young officer’s blood. At the softest rustle, he was out of bed with a gun pointed at her head, and Esther briefly wondered how sleep deprived Jera was the night she stole his badge if he was normally so alert. He coldly asked if she was happy. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” Esther whispered, but Jera retorted for her to drop her manipulative tactics, and she left solemnly. She found a packet of chamomile sleeping tea on her desk the next morning.

A few weeks later, Esther caved. She hadn’t spoken to her father in months, but she begged him to move her to a different district. He arranged her transfer into Jera’s unit on account of their previous teamwork, and maintained her rank as lieutenant. Esther would not know until much later that Jera had to have approved of the transfer, but as she faced the team’s hostile glares, she realized she had lost everything that she betrayed them for. She wanted to outgrow her father, but in the end, it was so easy for him to pull the strings.

Every month, Jera and Ismail took a few days of leave to visit Okrad. Tiffany, a bubbly and sympathetic officer, advised Esther to travel with them. The train there was tense, but she was most overwhelmed when she finally saw the town. The locals had built shaky walls around the polluted river to keep the children away, so the officers spent most of the day carrying water back from the mountains. The hospital was abandoned because the building was deteriorating. The little equipment they had was shoved in the doctor’s own house. The town had pooled money for the case, but the arrested thieves would likely be sentenced for decades because the corporate owners could hire much pricier lawyers. The townspeople did not know about the betrayal, but the news stated that the Dale police made the arrest, so they largely did not blame Jera’s unit. The family they stayed with was incredibly hospitable.

Esther suddenly began crying as she hiked back to town with Jera at sunset on the third day. He wordlessly waited with her until she calmed down, and they arrived in Okrad at nightfall. Despite Ismail’s questioning, Esther did not talk much to Jera for the rest of the visit.

From then on, Esther became incredibly commiserating. She advocated leniency to Jera at every opportunity, although in the end, she would follow his orders without question. The intranational unit was popular to the public, as Jera was seen as the strict, efficient “Lion’s Tail” and Esther as his “Winged Mercy” right-hand. She gradually earned the forgiveness of her unit, and not many officers still disliked her as Ismail did. As Esther slowly understood her captain’s devotion to morality, she felt fake: Jera only accepted her suggestions when he already selflessly believed in that choice, while Esther was trying to make up for her past wrongs. Her positive reputation was haunted by her heartlessness in South Hallow and Jera's sharp eyes that always saw through her kindness.

TBA