The young girl's mouth tastes like iron, salt and blood, dripping gore which suffocates each pore and envelops all tastebuds; she cannot shake it, cannot cleanse it, and rage knots and tangles in her skeletal architecture. It's Lilómiel's fault; it is he who makes her want to scream, to shake her head until the infectious, noxious taste is gone. How do I turn it off? How can she ignore this prevailing sensation of feeding, of thick and desiccated meat crunching between her fangs jowls, the blood webbing between each primate-like paw? Frustration gnaws at her tripes, chews at her brain until she pulsates with veritable fury, brows set hard over her frozen cherry retinas. Muscles flex and feather along her verbose jaw, corded steel lancing with pain; please stop. And yet the dragon feasts nonetheless, on the sickly corpse bursting with rot and crawling with cockroaches, ravens and blackbirds and mongrel things who make their living off death.

Eyelids dash shut and stay close as her gullet works. How sick she feels, illness prevailing through her gut, twisting and clawing at her stomach. The filly could not focus on missions— not when all she wanted was to rend the air with her shrieks of gods-forsaken sorrow at the murder laid out before her.

Each crack and crunch reverbrates through her bones, until at long last the greedy black arises from his prey find of the day. Horseflesh. Disgust prevails over anger, loathing and antipathy which counteracts the sickly pleasure emanating through Lilómiel. There is a tentative concern reaching out for her, tendrils of feral thought aiming to weave hands with her degenerate revulsion, but she cannot abide by his lost pity. The worst part was how he enjoyed it, savored the taste of carnage on his tongue. It's not his fault. The black was only a dragon—a carnivore, a predator, true and tried. He didn't know...

And she shouldn't be angry at him for what was part of his nature. What did she expect? For Lilómiel to be a vegetarian?

The feeding frenzy done, the lithe girl turns towards their birthplace, trailing a few hundred meters behind her brother and his bleeding. Her head does not swing low to the ground, any more does she look sorrowful for what she watched today; the emotions still swirl and harangue about her body, but whatever plays on the inside is not reflected on the outside. Of all things she can make her own, her emotions is one of them. Nobody may steal that from her— not easily, at least.

As she broaches the familiar mountain path up into the vast, flowered meadow, she breathes. Here the perfume is so strong that it nears to a reek, so sweet it is, and it cavorts, lingers, in her dark nostrils gleefully. Alongside her brother are two others, both short and thick, compact pegasi who look to be warriors above all— she ignores them, attention pinpointed upon Vérzés and Volterra. Lilómiel chirps from her shoulders, a high-pitched trill of delight (he never lost that joy of revisiting the red) and took from her shoulders, winging his way towards the couple companions.

One brow rises in menial puzzlement as the red plunges towards the flowers, flashing claws hooked into dark soil and clawing into the skin of the earth. There is a hasty quiver of objection through their bond as Lil nears the scene; through their simmering connection, she can feel his loathing for the task set before them. If she knew, how to explain it, how this was necessary, she would. For now she just lets Lilómiel to hover and flutter about his red brother.

"Volterra," The daughter of Confutatis calls, quiet, wary of the others but for a nod of greeting sent their way; "using your dragon for menial labor now, are we?" A coquette smile flashes across her sharp face, slithering away as readily as it came.