Cradled between the two bodies of his friends, Cera had hardly paid any attention to the words Gaucho had spoken. Useless, empty words. As hollow when it rang as any the world tried to give him in consolation for a loss he felt he could never recover from. So as they had dispersed, Gaucho's voice quiet and their dismissal apparent, Cera had turned and pressed his muzzle to the shoulder of both Hector and Megaera. His eyes did all the talking for a voice that was too choked to work. Thank you. Their smiles had been enough to force a shaky breath into his reluctant lungs, given him the strength to move forth into the desert, away from the congregation. He had his duties, as did the rest. Work, at least, would keep his mind off...everything.

Except a familiar form was moving to intercept him, dainty and beautiful as ever. Cera felt guilt wreck what little was left of him that wasn't subdued in forced numbness. How long had it been since he had seen the beautiful maiden? He felt as if he had abandoned her, as effectively as he had Amani. Was that why he was such a failure? Because he followed in his father's footsteps? Nonetheless, he owed her his company for that if nothing else, and so the painted boy moved to reach her in tandem.

Her voice washed over him as they came ever closer to one another, her scent familiar in his nares. A soft hello was spoken over his shoulder, and Ilaria made a soft chittering noise in response, warm brown eyes regarding Sikeax lovingly. She adored the girl, and hoped that perhaps the blue-spotted youth could pull her Prince from the depths of his agony. But even she had little faith in that regard. It would take quite some time, and a lot of effort from those who loved him, for Cera to really heal.

For a second he basked in his name, spoken in her soft tone. And then, like flame eating away at a tender leave, he curled in and shriveled away beneath the weight of her questions, simplistic though they were. His eyes were moist, breathing ragged, within moments at the mere idea of telling her the truth.

"No...no, Sia I'm...I'm not okay," he managed to choke out, his wings trembling with the force of his agony. "My brother...Hototo. He was killed trying to stop Gaucho. He was...he was all I had left, Sia," was whispered, and like a broken dam that had been too weak to begin with, he broke. The tears streamed down his face like twin rivers, and the mere effort it took to lift his eyes to her face seemed to exhaust him. "My father left me for the will of a God. My sister thought me a liar, a danger to her son, and we have yet to reconcile. And now...now I have lost my brother, when I had just found him." His frail chest shook beneath the weight of his silent sobs, shoulders drooping like broken wings from his nape, hunched beneath the awareness of his loss.

At the wounded cry he gives she sinks into him, a balm to the raw edges of his soul. Perhaps it doesn't heal him, but it negates the fiery burn that seems to consume him. It gives him enough time to catch a breath, to feel the void that is so close at hand. Like a puppet whose strings have been sawed through, he collapses against her frame, until they are so intertwined he believes they will never be two whole individuals ever again. It is not a daunting prospect, perhaps it is even a delightful one. To be sewn so close that she can never truly leave him. That she can't abandon him like everybody else. Her lips touch to his shoulder, grooming him, as if she could rid him of his agony with the cleansing of his outsides in tandem with his insides. He presses up to her, wings bowing forward as if to embrace her, shelter her, when it is he who needs the canopy of her love.

A sorrowful sigh of his name falls from her lips like rapture, and he drowns in her like she was the ocean and he desired to find the limits of her being. He wets her nape with the salted substance of his tears, frail chest shaking with his pain as if fit to fall apart at the seams. Yet she's there, ready with glue and love and patience, prepared to put him back together every single time. It only makes him cry all the harder.

He knows she'll never judge him, somehow. That she won't find him less manly, or some ridiculous notion. So he doesn't attempt to fool her. Even if he did, Cera suspected she'd be able to see past it anyways.

Her words came to him, one of the few that he cared to actually listen to, and they sank through the opening she'd jammed herself into and deep where he could actually hear them through the siren wailing of his own despair. He clung to her helplessly, praying she would be strong enough to weather him through this particular storm. Even if he doubted her words, the ones that told him he had friends, that those friends loved him, he couldn't truly refute her. The evidence was right there before his eyes.

Megaera and Hector moving to his side to give him the support he needed. Sikeax seeking him out after the herd meeting, holding him together and letting him cry upon her. Amani lending him strength and support at Hototo's funeral. How could he claim her a liar with those events so closely present?

"You have me, and I promise that I will not leave you like the rest have."

Cera's breath caught and held, feeling as if she had just offered him the entire world on a silver platter. Even if promises could always be broken. Always were broken. It was still a start, still a buoy to his pain until that promise was shattered apart. Maybe it was smarter to not take her up on it, because he knew the pain would only be delayed. But desperate people did desperate, foolhardy things. And so he choked and cried against her neck, feathers reaching and folding so far inward that they sought to touch the sides of her pale belly.

"Thank you," he whispered in response to that solemn promise. It extends to thanks for her words concerning Hototo, the advice she gives with Ranjiri and Ryuu. "How can I face them? How can I be strong for them?" it was weak and pitiful as it came out, a plaintive cry for wisdom, for help. He could only help she would be so patient and kind as to continue giving it to him.