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02-28-2016, 06:00 PM
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isopia. She had gotten what she wanted. In the end, that was all that really mattered. Whatever other burden that implicitly she took responsibility of could be dealt with. The consequences, however dire, were necessary. It had to happen. And she saw that it did. It hadn't taken long after her tussle with Ashamin, for her to notice a drastic change in herself. Though the fur and fat continued to spread across her body to protect her from the harsh FrostFall climate, it had slowed. Because now her body only needed to provide protect for one. After meeting Kid, Isopia had carried the knowledge almost as heavily as she carried the child. She knew that Volterra had been with others ... she had even encouraged the behavior during one of her bizarrely academic attempts at flirting. Why hold back? she had asked him, but really, she was saying don't hold back with me-. But she hadn't said that. She had just let her assumptions fall where they might and her mind melded accordingly. Because they had always met under more or less solitary conditions, Isopia had mistakenly thought that she was as unique to Volterra, as he was to her. Her meeting with him and Erthe, and Ophelia, and the intimacy with which he seemingly knew both, forced her mind to extrapolate to the sheer number of others that there must be. And those were just his friends! Not to mention those who were more than that. The emotional connotations associated with more than that echoed through her gut which now served as a tomb. "I am an idiot-" She snarled to herself, her words saturated with regret and bitter rage. She, who thought she knew so much about the world. She, who thought that her academic mind couldn't steer her wrong. She, who hadn't even known how babies were made. Well. She knew how they were made, she just wasn't sure about all of the conditions. Somewhere, deep inside of the well of naivety that was far deeper than she would have liked to have admitted, lay that one particular dormant fact that had started it all. Their friendship might not be unique, even their tryst might not have been unique. But what came from it, would be. It would be uniquely them, and unlike herself, it would be born without purpose. Created not due to responsibility and requirement, but emotion and want. All of the instincts Isopia had hated and fought to hide and eliminate completely, now fueled and fed into the fire that would be this new life. For a sparkling moment Isopia seemed to understand. She understood how it was her brother could give his life for the mortals around him, despite their stupid narrow-mindedness. She understand how and why her Father cared as he did - and, as life blossomed inside of her, she thought that perhaps that commonality might bring them closer together. But the moment tarnished almost instantly. Starting with the Kid, followed by his half-brother. And that's when Isopia learned that nothing about she and Volterra had been unique. The thought of his muzzle pressed against her now made her shutter - and not in the way it had before. Now, as it had been the first time she saw Verzes flying above Mirabella, every thought of him was accompanied by a cacophony of nameless others. Only now, she saw her face in that crowd. She was among them, and she hated herself for that, even more than she hated him. And so, she had done what needed to be done. She had positioned, prodded, goaded and taunted Ashamin into a fight. She wasn't so cruel as to ascribe the death of the babe inside of her to his actions. The responsibility lay deftly with herself, but certainly he had played a part in it. But it was done - regardless of whether he would ever find out. Snow fell softly and silently among the trees. It fell so thick in fact, that nearly all of Isopia's hoof prints were covered. She couldn't shape-change in her current state - the dead tumor which resided inside of her made flying as a raven nearly out of the question, So she walked, but blessedly the snow helped hide her and keep this trek a solitary one, save for Hubris. The bronzey creature flew slowly ahead of Iso, gliding back and forth so as not to get too far. He was silent and had been ever since the battle, trying not to drown in the sea of unmistakable grief and regret which was constantly pouring from Isopia's heart and mind. He felt her stop and immediately circled back. They had entered into her clearing, where her hot-tub and hut were, but she didn't move straight into the structure as she normally did. Hubris' large, blue eyes scanned her softly as she landed on the powdery snow, head tilted inquisitively to the side. Isopia's own wide golden eyes peered back at him, before quivering with what appeared to be pain. It only took a second for Hubris to feel the phantom pangs that were racking her body, and he hurried over to her as the demigoddess dropped to her knees. Her body, it seemed, had finally succumbed to the plans of her mind. But first, she had to go through the harrowing and morbid process of ejecting the creature that lay dormant inside of her body. Of birthing the child she had murdered. The struggle was quick. Isopia's body was enormous and her hips widely set. The foal had been killed early in its gestation and so was quite small. It exited her body soundlessly, slipping into the frigid clutches of a snowbank, and immediately began to be devoured by the thick and fat falling snowflakes. Without uttering a word, Isopia rose. Her gaze fell objectively upon the small, lifeless red body. It was the physical manifestation of all that she knew to be wrong with the world. It was what she was put on this earth to avoid. It was why Hototo had died. It was what she swore to never succumb to. And yet she had. But it wasn't Isopia who had to pay for her sins. It was the lifeless child. In her minds-eye, she considered dropping her muzzle to the child's poorly developed shoulder. To breathe a goodbye onto him, before burying him. But the demigoddess was frozen in place. She couldn't bring herself to express the grief she was experiencing in such an obvious way, and so she paid tribute to the murdered-boy a different way. She began to dig. Rather than using her magic to heave the earth aside, Isopia used her hooves, wings, horns, and everything else at her disposal to create a grave. But because the boy was not very big, it didn't take very long. With Hubris' help, she placed the babe inside of the earth - a fitting place given his heritage - and stared down at him one last time. Her eyes were dry and her soul hollow, as she silently vowed to never repeat the mistakes that had initiated the boy's life or his death. With a final blink, Isopia reached for her magic, allowing it to gently fill in the child's resting place. |
