Africa had grown from a wide doe eyed child we’d taken her in as, to a woman of both promising stature and breeding. Her wisdom and trust in yon god had saved the lives of our kin—a debt neither myself our Guacho could easily repay. When those brilliantly gentle eyes rose to touch turned cheeks, I very nearly flinched as a troublesome colt (who had just done something terrible wrong) might. Subconsciously my body stiffened and Fina whistled somberly, clacking her jaws together to make little clicking sounds. She shifted along my spine, picking up a lock of mane and casting it gently aside before shuffling upward with an unusual gentleness. The sun child then turned to Silas without her usual distaste for his coos of empathy, her eyes searched instead for some answer that perhaps he had the talent to give. The younger Zephyr was always almost more of a personable nature—and she was at a loss for how to comfort me.
Then Africa spoke and reached out, softly and soothingly—with words that pulled my heartstrings and crown concurrently back toward her stare. The chipped front broke apart jagged piece by jagged piece, revealing a heartsick soul who was vulnerable beneath—there was anger of an unjust life intermingling with sadness and fear. This feeling of bareness was raw, and likewise very uncomfortable; like a wound never completely scabbed across. Ktulu hadn’t ever seen me at my most weakest, and here I was nearly falling into pieces all over the floor in front of this...girl.
I hated to see pity, and more than anything despised this depthless emotion of misery. There were so many things I’d longed for in this life, and more often than not they were each ripped away. Gingerly I stretched out to meet the velvet of her smile with the nimblest of brushes—the warm fragrant mist of her breath lingered on my snout in a not so unpleasant way.
She added nothing else, merely stood by as a pillar of light and support. I sighed and withdrew again, watching the playful way the flames danced around her neck as if in a dumbstruck trance of complete null emotion. My soul started curling within myself as deeply as it might; wounds of rejection were fresh upon memory and trust wasn’t something anyone had picked up in our dim home. I’d come to realize of late, that even though there were so many bodies within this cavern, a deep hole of isolated seclusion was ever present. “There is little worth hiding Oracle,” an apology in its own birthright, “Ye sees a lonely man and naught much else.” Cera, Hototo, Jiji, Ktulu. They had all been captured by something.
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