The breeze off the sea reeks of salt and decay, the underlying stench of rot reminiscent of her mother's hip. Nymeria blinks away the damp in her eyes, the translucent teardrops ocean's tears stubbornly clinging to her lashes, and lifts her head, taking a step away. Beneath her movement, even carefully executed, wet sand crumbles and molds to the shape of her hooves, the firm crust giving way to her weight.

Her brother's dragon hinges his jaws wide, the inside of his mouth not blistering with heat or flame but instead cold, an icy blast which frosts over her whiskers and the hair on her head, even when directed upwards; Lil purred, the rumble of his breast reverberating through her spinal column. Eagerly, in quick and noted response, he lets forth a blast of smoke from his nostrils, greasy gray rags spiraling upwards to indicate his approval.

Of course their dragons would be backwards. It would be more fitting for Lil to have a tongue of ice and glacial cold, one that might solidify the shapes of her water-dancing; and Volterra, the Earth Mover, to have a dragon whose heat would serve complimentary to his telekinesis. Naturally, it is all wrong: Vérzés with winter on his lips and Lilómiel with summer brushfire on his breath.

I suppose we do not choose our companions.

How fearsome Volterra looks, all chiseled architecture and black marble, his lines stark and painted bold against the wind-tossed sea. His breath, short and sharp, incites a sensation in her she cannot easily define, a hunger, perhaps, or envy, of his testosterone-buoyed strength and the inheritance of father-to-son. Beneath his smouldering gaze she burns, flushing beneath the severity of his bloody eyes, struck by him—all grown up! And his voice!—a deep bass that rumbles in her bones.

I will not ever command our armies when pitted against him.

Is this what she was going to be reduced to? Decor? No—she would not abide by that, not tolerate living off his familial sympathy. Magic grew in her veins, too, flourished in her blood and ached, pounded, forever looking for a way out; she would learn how to wield it as weapon. I will be feared too. And she—she would not be overshadowed by her brother's extra hand of height on her. It would be Nymeria and Volterra, brother and sister, twins birthed of chaos and death, who wreaked havoc, not Volterra and his consort; not Volterra and his sister; it would be them, together, as they were meant to be: united.

Lilómiel shrieks, beating his wings against the wind, his ululating call his lusty pride in his bonded.

Volterra's hoof scrapes against the sand. Forward she steps, urged by the knotted neurons of Lil's mind; a smile hooks up her lips and she reaches, aiming to affectionately nip at her brother's forelock. "You're so fucking protective," she murmurs, pressing forwards in attempt to rub her head against his neck, seeking the comfort of his warmth, the memory of their time spent lying entwined beneath Confutatis' hooves. "Mother is strong." And though she fights (and fights hard!) to inject a lethal dose of confidence into her proud words, her voice crumbles and breaks over that is, as if it might wither away in the wind at any moment.

Because it could. Who was even to say the World Eater prevailed? It had been seasons; so many things had and may had transgressed in the transition of summer to snowfall.

She hardens, surly, to his insidious suggestions, backing up and lips curling into a sneer both bitter and vindictive, ears slamming back against her crest. Upon her withers Lilómiel snaps his jaws, the hard, fast clip ringing through the oceanic air. "Do you think I'm any weaker than you, brother?" The spider demands, wrathful in pursuit of equality. "You don't get to choose what I do or do not do. I am my own self."

His head lowers, perhaps cowed by her words or perhaps beneath the weight of what they may or may not do, but she callouses herself against his puppyish eyes. One of them has to be strong. "You alone, probably not; but together, we can come to... something."