Snow sweeps over the ground, drawing it’s skin over the world, stretched thin until it almost runs out of mass and begins to give up. It brings more of it’s ashes down from the sky like a spray of tears and misery. Cold air nips at her thick hide with it’s teeth slowly sinking deeper. Hobgoblin snorts, rolling across the white body in boredom.
“Too cold. Go home. Zhu need.”
How do you know that Zhu needs us?
“Zhu with Monster. Monster not good for baby. Zhu need.”
Worry strikes her like a brick wall and she can feel him smile, purring out low groans, knowing damn well that he’s won in manipulating her into returning home. There was food, easy food more importantly, back in the Dragon’s Throat, and he could gorge himself with the fresh stock of winter sea life driven south.
Some weeks, he even choose to leave to for days at a time, only returning with a full belly to watch as Sikeax let Zhu cough, tired of the constantly draining sensation of her fear. The child would be okay, but Sikeax was weak in the heart and in the soul for it, and thus Hobgoblin exploited this at every chance. Even the mere thought of something happening to Zhu worried her.
Spending some more time out won’t hurt. Amara will take care of him well.
“Monster bad. Monster bring no good. Monster hurt Zhu.”
She can’t help but feel her heart break, hoping that someone else was with them, that someone would be able to save her son in case something was to go wrong. Amara was loaded gun with no safety that randomly fired, shooting without thought as of what it might hit.
“Zhu need Si-”
Let’s go. We’ll stop at the Rotunda.
His body explodes into something more agile, trading in blubber and fat for a lean, agile body of black fur and long legs, yellow eyes that seemed to dig deep into her soul with the intentions of pain each and every time.
Zhu will be okay.
She follows with impatience, before long forcing his Serval form to be thrown atop her back so that she could move them along quicker. Her son would be okay, Zhu would be untouched when she came home, waiting for her impatiently and more than happy to see her, making his odd, distorted sounds of happiness, all of it for her, for all the efforts she’s made to make sure he gets the best of life, all of it for-
Buce?
“Who Buce?”
Insanity damns her. Maybe it’s all the time alone with an almost deaf child, a mare with a hidden bloodlust with no known triggers and a mind shared with a monster, but she can feel it creeping in. Bucephalus is standing there, near her, within her own eyesight, speaking to a bird she can faintly remember, acting as if he doesn’t understand the workings of a bond.
Speech between them did occur as it did with her and Hobgoblin, right? The words that splatter from his ebony lips don’t match the beauty and fashion of the ones they once shared. Now, they seem to replace themselves with nonsense and little meaning, no longer fluttering with intelligence and sweet, calming grace that she’d rarely gotten to experience in this world. It’s even a miracle that she hasn’t come down to her brother’s level of speaking with how long she’s had to listen to it.
There’s a slight urge to leave, to head on home like this meeting(or sighting) never occurred, that Bucephalus as of right now is nothing more than a figment of her imagination, driven to insanity through the worry that Zhu relentlessly brings to her.
But she’ll take a chance, and try to trust Amara.
“Buce? Is that you?”
How many times has she said that recently with the inklings of insanity haunting her every step? Is this what motherhood brings to the table? Was Rikyn, Cera, and now Buce, all but hallucinations she wasn’t meant to have?
Even his bird is there, so it must be real.
“Where have you been?” Her voice carries like a soft song, searching out to him when her entire body is to set to run, fearing him because this isn’t the Bucephalus she knows. Hobgoblin watches with blind, arrogant curiosity that tempts him to chuckle, thrashing a long, black tail with decaying grace. He takes the moment to wonder what the bird will taste like.
The first click of her hoof against the floor comes to her ears like a thousand screaming banshees, heralding her towards death and the possibility of never reaching her son again.

OOC: Hobgoblin's earlier mentioned form is a Leopard Seal and the current form at meeting Buce is a Black Serval.


"If you could hear me then, can you hear me now?"

Sikeax;

i'm missing the beauty in your soul