without your love, without your touch, this world for me is never gonna be enough
thinking about you as if i lost you

Together, they brave the night, time wasted along the shoreline as if they are a pair of aged soldiers, attempting to recover from their acts of war, to forget the sounds of pain and suffering as it rang through their deaf ears. She twinkles like the stars beneath  a spread of black ooze, one that wastes no time in threatening to stain her pretty, pale, scarred skin with its everlasting mark. The stench of herbs, sweat and hopelessness rolls off her pale body even though she’s tried time and time again mask it beneath the sharp aroma of mint leaves.
His voice fills up an empty place in her thoughts that she never knew existed these days, bridging a pathway that gives her the ability to live in silence and still have his aid. Guilt drowns her when thoughts rush over her brain like a tsunami’s wave, sometimes begging for some sort of humanity out of her companion when he helps apply herbs to her bleeding face, longing deep in her chest for a spark when he still wounds her, searching out his rage that seems to have parted from him.
Or maybe it’s because she doesn’t have the heart to push herself into socialization when she can’t even call her own soul brother a friend, left alone when she remembers that all of the people she’s ever considered friends probably aren’t friends anymore.
The spark arrives in a way that neither expect. It sweeps across the brightening sand, dancing, escaping with the same speed that it enters with.
Excitement explodes in her chest about the same time that dust flares up, watching with a half-attempted smile as Hobgoblin leaps on long legs, making tries at capture. He makes the choice to part with it and she is slow to follow, trailing his upbeat pace with her own lazy stride.

Her arrival seems later than the rest. The familiar faces that she had slowly grown to expect at these meetings have beaten her to the punch, gathering around Ampere in preparation. Embarrassment nips at her heels, pushing out a sigh when she accepts the fact that she's usually  the one to arrive late and hold up the flow of business.
Upon her entrance, she can’t bring herself to greet them, simply making use of her head and nodding while avoiding eye contact. The first time that she had been able to meet Maren seemed to have gone sour(with the use of Hobgoblin’s creative ways of making new friends and greeting company), and Cera, someone whom she had once seen as a dear friend, a special being that had the ability to be an endless well of hope and strength regardless of the circumstances,  hadn’t spoken to her since she’d attempted to comfort him after a herd meeting.
He'd taken a mauling for her, and her way of repaying him was unintentionally ignoring him.
”Some friend you’ve become.”
Her chest clenches tight in response as talons latch onto her mane and body like grappling hooks, bearing the pain once more as teeth sink into tired, weak flesh so that he is able to stand atop her as if she is his pedestal, crumbling beneath the weight of his pride that has been too heavy for her from the beginning.
Ampere, out of them all to do so, is the one that offers her something to run on when she pushes herself along on toxic fumes that do more damage than aid. A cure is a cure, and while the thought of her encourages snarls to slither across Hobgoblin’s scaled features, she is a flickering flame from a candle in the distance, guiding Sikeax out of the hurricane. It brings her ears to lean forward at attention, glazed, dull blues possibly wearing a glow of hope, not to be mistaken with the flickering lights gathered about them like an eyeliner made of fairy lights.
As for choosing a new healer to bare the flame, the choice would be simple. Badger had stepped up to the podium to carry the weight with her, and while new, she had accepted his lack of time in the profession because he had clearly applied himself. If the choice had been left to herself, then she might of chosen Morrigan, but the choice made by her superiors had better suited the herd’s needs.
All that was left now was to find a test that would prove any new knowledge and skills gained by the dark mare in the time that she had been studying within the herd.
”I haven’t found much as of how to achieve a cure or even how to work with the symptoms. Do you remember anything from your battles? Anything out of the ordinary that released you from your symptoms? The disease completely?” If the battles could do something for the diseases, or something was occurring during them or in the new lands, further investigations would have to be done.
”If you wouldn’t mind me doing so, would you allow any of your warriors to speak to me about anything they saw involving the diseases during the battles? Possibly one could accompany me and one of the healers to the lands where the fights are happening to see if there’s any clues?”
She’d have to make her planned trips to the other herds afterwards. It only seemed like the best idea to go ahead and get the runs done altogether, to work their way slowly towards the Aurora Basin and hope for the best along the way.
Cera’s voice is what brings her back into reality, his voice cheerful, alive,, something she’s forgotten to listen for for a long time. For a moment there, it takes her back to the times that she hadn’t seen her friend from afar and having to listen to sorrow taint his once joyful voice.
She can’t bring herself to imagine the well he says he’s created when she thinks about it. Hobgoblin snuffs out anything worth enjoying with his bitter feelings towards Ampere and she doesn’t have the strength to duke it out with him for her own pleasure.
And then it comes down to the Gods…
Sikeax had never been religious in her life. As far as she was to know they were real and existed. She’d seen two of them and denying their existence and part in this world after such events would be ignorant.
But the idea of killing gods seemed surreal, something out of a story a mother might tell her child to soothe their wild, young and curious minds. Gods do not simply die. Gods do not die at the hands of mortals if they do die.
While she is no expert in them, everything she’s ever thought about them as celestial beings that no mortal could ever amount to tells her they would at least have basic laws as such.
Or had they wanted to die?
Hobgoblin snorts, almost feels himself chuckle at the idea. It drives a shiver down her spine as if she’s been struck by lightning shaped by ice. How? Ho-
He makes sure to let it hit her exactly like a brick wall would if you’d thrown yourself off the roof of a skyscraper, slamming her so brutally that she has no time to completely process out what’s made him so heavily enraged until the voice spills itself over her ears. A thought makes sure to cross her mind that she’d rather have both of her ears removed if it meant never having to hear him again.
Disgust blankets her face and for once in her life, she finds herself snarling with her brother. Sikeax has never exactly found a soul in her life that she could truly hate(and such a strong word that is too), but after what occurred at the bridge with Abaddon and his oh-so-caring treatment towards Ranjiri, the brute might just be the lucky one.
”And here to think that this might of gone well.” A sarcastic laugh breaks from Hobgoblin, filling her mind when she whispers out her raw words, specifically directed to the loveliest company that could grace their meeting.



"Talk?"