The silence stretches out unerringly, a spool of thread which is pulled and pressed taut over an underlying tension of which deepens with each passing moment. She is not deterred by the chthonian quiet, nor the unerring edge of his grey gaze. There was... something tediously plain about those stony retinas, a lackluster gloom which does not match up to the vivid brightness of Volterra's stare. Disappointing, to say the least—he was just an ordinary fatality folded into the planes of a rigid face, at odds with the ripe scent of blooming destruction around them. In her mind's eye she had expected more than a boy whose balls have barely dropped, something more unearthly and more queer than a rigid countenance and a dullard's quiet; confronted with solid fact and un-romanticized reality she is forlorn.

His sigh is syrupy and far too thick, overdone to ears always listening for the faintest exhale of her mother's disapproval, practised audits knowing the signs preceding destruction. Tiny nares widen in furthered chagrin as haunches swing to her; she doesn't move. She's familiar with agony, torment, and above all pain, at least of the physical type. Callouses have long since been burned onto her mind, nerve endings hardened to the blows of her mother's metaphorical whip.

It's an overplayed song, a lament of bruises and lacerations of tender cinereal skin, and she could move. Flee. And yet she doesn't.
Face your punishments. Mother had always drilled that into her skull, with each blow, with each brutal hit; and she didn't even get the worst of it. As a daughter, Confutatis raised her carefully. Never along her face—it wouldn't do to mar that marking. Always along the shoulders, hips. Not the ribs—not enough padding. And scars, oh, the World Eater hated them. It wouldn't do for her darling daughter to bear the scars; that went to her twin. Volterra, who faced the brunt of the pain for her, whom she wept for despite Confutatis' chastisings.
She HATED seeing him hurt, more than anything.

A pale and startled deer in the headlights, she does not twitch but merely braces herself as his hooves strike out across her, cracking into the forefront of her left flank. Nymeria staggers, stumbling slightly to her right; head lowers, teeth champ. Submission. Ears soften, flex, and tail presses in a little tighter to her hindquarters. Greasy lids slide shut over bright eyes, brows creasing. He had hit her hard; the sort of hard that meant she had made a grave mistake, like saying Africa was leader of the Basin instead of Ophelia. Strange to think how easily she messed them up, two vastly different political figures—yet she did, all the time. It was so easy to think Ophelia was supposed to be the good guy, and Africa the bad. How was she supposed to keep them apart when she had never met them?

He's not supposed to hit her on the ribs.
That, more than anything, convinces her this isn't right.

Head cocks; ruby eyes gaze upwards from between narrowed lashes. "You're wrong." Echoed words, a soft question woven between each syllable. This isn't right. It rings, numb, through a complacent mind.