The pale dove erupted, burst, and his juvenile mind understood all the nuances of her rage – if someone accused him of being an abomination, like a plague gliding over the earth, smiting and destroying with no rhyme or reason, suffocating, strangling, devouring, perhaps he too would have exploded, furious and ferocious, ignited by unjust cruelties and malicious slander. There was no justification for the censure and derision, the consignment and alignment towards oblivion, for the Haruspex knew she hadn’t committed any of these alleged crimes. Was this a fair trial? Was she to be subjected and punished for erroneous materials? If the only thing altered from their frames (and truly, there were all so alarmingly different, no sword the same spear, no tail the same length, no body the same shape) were the tiny sprout of her wings, intricate feathers promising to bloom and blossom into gliding features, how did it affect her behavior, make her corrupt? Wasn’t it their experiences, the brutality, the carnivorous onslaughts, chiseling, sculpting, molding them into presaged alignments and augured sentiments? Erebos continued to frown, so bitterly confused and torn between Zikar-Sin’s patient cajoling, constant insistence on the dangerous whims of a Pegasus, and Aithniel’s distortion and brooding calamity. The storyteller’s queries were perfected knots and rapiers, cutting deeply into the scorn, into the ignorance, into the bliss of his childish interior, as if he saw through his blood, his skin, his hide, and contorted how the little scion cherished, beloved, presided over his home, his land, his friends; drove the knife in deeper, bent it towards his brazen, emboldened frame. Would you allow her to wreak havoc and bring sadness and ruin into our peaceful little basin? No, but he wouldn’t permit anyone else either – so did it matter who the perpetrator was? He’d march and seize, harness and harpoon, whoever sought to annihilate his haven; and the slight inkling, the saddening, maddening image of a Pegasus swarming into the icy spears, wreaking havoc and terror in its wake pressed against his eyes. The child grew weary, tired, vexed and frustrated, until his features were naught but a blank slate, an indifferent stare his father likely mastered in his own youth, and the tight, rigid undulations of his frame promised naught but brazen platitudes. “It should be her choice whether she wants to keep her wings. Not ours.”

The speech littered and coaxed, and Erebos listened, frenetic and torn. “Oh, I do not want to see her become an enemy...” A sudden rush of determination claimed his impish soul, and the cretin ambience, the fiendish deliverance, the dominating regime of his archaic blood stormed, turbulent, echoed and rioted over the statement. Irreverent certitude pierced over the bounty of his taut lips, blue, sharpened gaze slashing towards the monocled beast, speaking through his teeth, emboldened resolutions framing searing endeavors. “She won’t.” Absolute certainty crossed and meshed amidst his boyish, pernicious pursuits, confidence and convictions without the words of the future, presaged, portended lights, too far gone and kindled, incised, by the rigorous thirst to prove the world wrong. His eyes glanced over to her retreating form, ivory and ash springing away, towards the brink of horizons, auroras, wondering if his new friend would eventually become his enemy, or if the earth behaved in generous factions, preferred children to live out their dreams in color and hopeful whims. His voice bled over the scene with infallible assurance, plunging through behemoth potency, brutal finality, feral, protective generosity from one child to another. “I’ll make sure of it.”