Nymeria

- the raven casts the longest shadow -

The sun streaming through the stained glass casts bright splinters of color across Nymeria's coat. Ash and coal, normally dark and absorbent, now shimmers with indigo and emerald, sapphire and gold; her eyes, red and haunting, seem to glow brighter rather than be diminished by the addition of color. Her neck curves to her right as she watches her brother approach—she observes his walk in silence, and notes the absence of his dragons with apprehension.

She's never seen him without his dragons before.

Finally he is close enough that she can see the emptiness in his eyes, the hollowness in his breast. To him she turns, pivoting casually around her haunches, ears sweeping forward in sharp silhouette to catch the edge of his greeting, the guttural snap of his voice. Volterra is here, and nothing has ever felt more wrong than this confrontation. He is—he is without emotion. Her brother! Her volatile brother was always overflowing with energy, always spilling over with tumultuous and violent feelings; what had gone so wrong that he looked at her so coldly? And why, why did he snarl at her when there was nothing she'd done wrong?

He's found out. He'd realized she'd been stringing him along—he'd realized that she'd been planning for his eventual rise to power—her thoughts fragment, convulse, and shatter, and she is left staring at Volterra without any words to excuse herself, her heart beating harder than it's ever beat before.

No. No. I'm wrong.
Nymeria didn't know, and she couldn't know, and that was because couldn't read him at all. (Where's my brother gone? Why has a stranger taken his place?)

There's more than one choice for her. She can see them diverging before them, full of calculated risks and promises of success. Some of them are excuses: ways to talk herself out of an argument, ways to talk herself out of a fight. One is a fight. And others are worse things, options full of violence and lies she wants to put aside. Despite this, the ease of which she could squirm herself out of a confrontation, when she looks at Volterra's callous face something in her weakens.

Wasn't he still her brother? Didn't she owe him an explanation?
(You could be wrong.) Perhaps this... this wasn't really related to her at all. Perhaps. She shifts back, lifting her head—curls sliding and tumbling over her neck—and she swallows back a mouthful of ash. For a moment she stands, stranded, on the precipice of here and there, but only for a moment. Then she takes a step of her own choosing, and that step is towards I owe him nothing.

To him she does not return a greeting. To him she does not offer brother or Volt, or even a smile. Instead her ears lash back to her neck and she steps forward, channeling all the rage and all the fury that's been burrowing through her soul. "You," she spits out from between gritted teeth. "You made me an aunt, and you never told me. You—you're a disgrace. How are you going to take over the fucking world when you're too busy fucking?"