"I don't have a 'ma'."

So that wasn’t ominous as hell. Cuz, y’know, everyone’s got a Ma. That’s just how it works. You’re shoved through a gross, slimy vagina onto the cold-ass ground and BOOM, childbirth. Even my Pa--fucking Glorious Lord of all time and whatever the hell—had to find a Ma for me to stick it in so that I’d…be. It’s true for me and the whole wide world of smelly assholes—why should it be any different for this little dusty-lookin’ shrimp of a girl?

It made me wonder what made her say something like that.

Besides that little intrigue, though, mostly she was just pissing me off a little bit more by having an attitude, like she was allowed to have one or something. Oooh, look at me! My name’s Aithininny and I’m big shit! I narrowed my eyes at her, my ears pinning sharply at her smug little face; if I had any sort of tail to whip, I’d whip it straight in her mouth and get some hairs stuck under her eyelids. Screw maturity--I’ll hit a kid who thinks they’re hard enough for me.

“Listen here you little--shit--!” I snarled—and then sort of shouted towards the end—as I whipped around to fully face her and charge her right down into the ground. I shouted because, as I had pivoted, my hooves slipped in something slimy, like mud or something, and I almost busted my ass sliding in it. But then I looked down to see what my hooves and fetlocks were splattered and speckled and caked with—and it definitely wasn’t mud--and you could see my skin at all, it’d probably go pale. My legs and hooves were red--one of the purest colors of red I had ever seen in my life—a hard red, bold and sticky and smelling like iron.

I wasn’t dumb enough to wonder what it was.

My gaze flicked between Mesec and Hototo—who was miles ahead with the whole blood investigation thingy—and Aithininny, and there was worry there for all three of them, because play time was over and shit was going down. I stepped over to where my bro and cousin were standing—using high, exaggerated steps, because walking with blood on the soles of your feet is as horrible as it’s gross to think about—and it was there that I saw the tragic bastard who had left this happy trail of blood in their wake.

I stared at the body. Hard. There was something cold sliding down my gullet and the happiness and the fussy anger of the occasion was over, completely and utterly, like summer had suddenly quit its job and a harsh winter chill had swooped in in its wake. And along with the feeling of solemn dread in the pit of my stomach, there was also a twinge there, this buzz in the back of my head and my spine—something familiar and all too hard to forget. Things started moving in my peripheral vision—if I cared enough, if I hadn’t been so shaken by this lifeless lump of horseflesh and feathers, I would’ve seen such a treat. All these gods, all in one place, just sort of popping out of nowhere for some macabre rendezvous. And all I had eyes for was this corpse and their cloudy eyes, their limp feathers, their lusterless coat and something clumped and stuffed in its mouth, something dark…

After a point, the buzz in my skin and bones reached a peak, and I had no choice but to tear my eyes away from the poor woman lying on the ground.

Shit.

It’s Pa.

So I walked over to him….