chernobyl

i was not caught, i crossed the line
i live among you, well disguised

His pain made nothing related to pity stir in her gut, but something did stir indeed. Her ears flicked up as his pale eyelids drooped over his icy eyes. She squints because she's not sure why she's standing here watching him suffer, watching his body figure and lifeless gaze seemingly fall in a pile on the cold ground. She sucks in an involuntary sigh, almost confused but not quite uncomfortable. He looked like shit and the butterfly girl, young and naive looking, but sweet apparently, touches him as if she's trying to bring him back to life – trying to restore some sort of light in his crumbling spirit. Chernobyl almost whispers... “That will not work, child.” But she catches the words before they fall from her charcoal lips. Instead only a plume of curling white breath streams from her nose and silence keeps her voice.

Mauja's voice is just as broken as one would guess by looking at his baggy, bony body. Will I just watch him die here? Will I go? There is no help for him. This much is obvious. She tips her face to the side after he speaks, “Mmm.” She hums this while watching the wrinkles in his face deepen. She's unaware, but concern can be found in her abysmal black eyes; emotion stirring in her stare. Something she would deny in the future, certainly, but it's is present now as she leans toward the spotted, dying stallion.

She just now notices the sniffling girl's defensiveness for the sorrowful sight in front of them. Chernobyl's rather insensitive to things like this, such as emotional comfort or even genuine sadness. Self pity she knows well, but real, desperate sadness – no. She blinks a few times and takes her focus away from the girl and her guarding. Bull makes no effort to step backward, or forward, but simply looks on in observation and pretends she does not notice the girl's beady stare. Something about the depressing silence was quite meditative, aside from the child's territorial tenseness.

The child within her wiggled and kicked. Small stones began to kick up and fall down just around the dark mare's feet. It is subtle at first but graduates quickly to the stones floating for a few seconds and tumbling again, as if losing charge to suspend. Within her the fetus jerks harder and the small, snowy pebbles flick toward the girls feet, but fall sort of hitting her (they'd do no damage). Bull notices, hoping the girl does not, and steps aside...hoping to slide out of range of whatever her parasitic gravity altering child is trying to do to the winged girl hovering protectively over a sickly stallion.

Stop it, you little shit. And it does stop. Everything resumes as it was, melancholy and awkward (or is it just her?).