For all his youth, his vessel was scarred and battered, and as her blunt teeth sank into the pitiful meat of his shoulder he gladly took each blow. All his life he had despised his scars, but he had grown to accept them. Anything she gave him he would wear with shame and pride in convoluted mixture, and he deserved the dull throbbing pain that took its place in the depths of his skin and muscle. But he held tight to her fury and her righteousness, quelled her with the force of his love and his own desperation. Cera had been raised to believe in the power of such emotion, led to understand that love would always triumph over hate if only because of its contrasting purity. So he held on, held tight, until her struggles slowed and she lay compliant and still beneath his grasp.

Still, the Prince kept his hold on her, though he loosened up so as not to hurt her any farther. Tresses fell from his mouth as he slowly relinquished her, careful not to retreat too far lest it was a ploy to get away. They hung in silence, time seeming to tick loudly in his head, deafening. Cera could hardly seem to hear her speak, hear his name on her lips. He felt her sigh swell against his own hide, reveled in her stillness, the life he knew was thrumming right there against him in her lungs. His sister's posture was one of defeat, of great burden, and he steeled himself as much as he could with the awareness that whatever it was, it wasn't going to be pretty.

Cera had anticipated so many things to fall from her tongue in explanation. She hated him, hated the Throat, wanted to leave him, found him broken or lacking or overbearing. That Ryuu was dead, or Roskuld, or some other horrible thing that she thought she had to bear on her shoulders alone. His sister was proud, after all. But never, not once, did Cera anticipate what actually came to his ears. "Dad's dead." It was never a possibility. It was inconceivable, absurd, completely unthinkable. Midas...Midas was indomitable, immortal even beyond the realm of what the Gods had offered him. For all the bitterness Cera harbored in his heart for the man, he was incapable of defeat, of death. It...it simply wasn't possible. Cera staggered back away from his sisters, wing slipping limp to his side, breath suddenly coming fast in his thin chest. "What?" Croaked, whispered, quavering on the brink of breaking. Hoping, praying to every God that he had always, always, placed his faith in that she would speak up and prove everything wrong. Dispel the hateful, terrifying illusion she'd cast upon him with her words.

In his eyes he was again a colt, words foreign on his tongue, lonely and starving and wanting. From a new perspective he saw once more a smiling face, paternal and unsure, the smile he'd grow up chasing in hopes of instilling pride in his father. Glimmering gold eyes, a warm side that had chased away the chill of his abandonment and filled him with love and purpose. “No, little one—I will not leave you.” Cera had never forgotten those words. A promise his young heart had believed, one Midas had broken but that the child inside had still held desperately to its chest. Tears and tumultuous flights, fatherly sparring, learning how to fly - oh Gods, Hototo - they warped past his mind and all throughout he could only see that smile. Gone. All of it gone. It couldn't be. It couldn't be! It was unfair, because though Midas was not his by blood, the man had stayed with Cera instead of Ranjiri and Ktulu. Cera knew him inside and out, had lived and breathed for the man, loved him so very deeply. His absence had therefore hurt all the worse. But Cera had still loved him.

He didn't realize he was crying until he was heaving desperately for air, a wounded noise ripping from his throat that he'd never thought he could make. For all the injustices the world had placed upon his small shoulders, this one was a burden too great even for his physical body. Knees crashed upon the sand like a sick, twisted version of prayer, rubbing raw and caustic against his skin. He felt nothing, it was a sliver against the roaring pain inside his heart.

"NO!!!"

It screamed from his maw, louder and sharper than any noise he'd ever made or heard in his life. Head thrust to and fro in sharp denial, legs kicking uselessly as if to try and stand, failing. Crumpled to the sand, pressed the flat of his forehead to the sand and s c r e a m e d. Wings convulsed at his side with each rivulet of breath he forced out of his lungs, as if trying to expel a poison that could not be purged. Midas is dead. Father. Father. Dad, Daddy, no! His forelock was matted with his tears, and his body heaved as he sucked in a breath that froze itself in his lungs like dry ice. It came out broken in crystal shards, tearing through his throat and rattling around cruelly in his chest. "No," he moaned, broken and strung out into multiple syllables with his hiccuping sobs.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

I never got to tell him I loved him. That I forgave him.

The moon in her infinite cruelty poured her light down upon him, happily seeing him through the darkest time of his life, stranded and directionless on the sand.