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Rikyn
I find that my ears fall further and further back the more my little sister yells at me, her words as much an excuse for inexcusable behavior as my own had been. And yet, my own hypocrisy adds the fire that lights under me as I glower back at her, hiding the softer words – I missed you, I thought of you, you haunted my nightmares and danced in my dreams – behind the harsh snap of vocal chords, the angry, twitching sway of my lion’s tail.
I cough, sneeze; the black film that glistens on the ground between us is a cruel mockery of the seriousness which lines my features. I bundle up my features in a grimace of outrage at being accused of being as cold as she was, I prepare my tongue to lash back with the same fire she delivered… I looked for you, comes the soft voice of my friend, and I turn away from the sparks and flames which threaten to bloom to life between Aithniel and I, nearly drowning in the cold, deep sadness that wells where smiles should be. He paints it as I thought it had been – that Aithniel had left him silently, with little more to lure her away than her own selfishness. He promises her that he would not have let them hurt her. I believe him. He would have been hurt himself in an attempt to defend her, and it was a hope that I had clung to during many nights when I wondered if, in my sudden attempts to cleave to the departing figure of my dam, I had brought death to those I love. And then… and then he says it. All the feelings that have knotted up in my chest so tight that it feels like my heart is rupturing are let fly on crisp, Birdsong wind; they dance over the rainbow waters at our hooves, make mockery of the pale white clouds which skirt the heavens above, those clouds which are not gray and heavy, which do not leak slowly in cold drips as my heart feels they should. The twitch of my tail behind me stills; the ears that had pinned in anger lift and splay in the heavy sorrow that I was gone too long to be needed anymore. I lean closer towards Erebos, wanting to vanish with him into the memories of our youth, before time and distance stretched long and intangible between us all. I am guilty, as well, of doubting how greatly he suffered, the boy with his family close to him and the mountain still promised to him by the rights of his father, a prince who surely was admired, if not loved. I had also, of course, never thought that everyone would leave as Aithniel and I did, all at once. "I’m sorry we left," I say again, not liking that I have to say it but saying it regardless, "but what was I supposed to do? I didn’t want momma to abandon me… I wanted to show her that I was strong and brave, that I was worth staying for. And instead she’s gone." My eyes are hard in the knowledge that I had been abandoned; my heart steels itself, refusing to cry, though the corners of my vision blur with dampness anyway. "I thought of you both, I prayed for your safeties, your happiness’s," and I did, just ask the Priestesses, or Xynia; stare into the depths of the Starplane and let each face which floats to its surface tell of how much I had loved them from afar. "I was weeks away, little sister, lost with no maps to guide me home," my golden eyes are sad; she’d never even asked where I’d been, why I had left, why it was I was home and mother was gone. Maybe her little orphan heart didn’t care, too calloused from her own hurts to see my bleeding soul. Maybe she didn’t care about anything but herself, becoming the very monster mother had warned of and that, I remember it so well, Aithniel had sworn not to become. "What is your excuse for your absence, when you were so close?" the question falls hard from my lips, golden eyes narrowing as I answer it for her, "I’ll tell you. You didn’t need us to protect you anymore. Your family does that for you." "The family that left you to die," its said sharply, angrily, all the childish hurts I feel flooding each hurtful syllable which I hurl at her, fully intent on drawing emotional blood - mostly because I hurt and I hate it. Misery, they say, loves its company.  |
@Erebos @Aithniel
