I hear a mare's scream in the night. I wonder if it was her in her sleep, as I have once done once before. I peel my eyes open, expecting to see the sun, my mother silhouetted by it as she gazed at me adoringly. There is not a light behind my eyes, and as I open them, I realize she in not there. It is nighttime. Darkness surrounding us.

Mum is gone.

I wonder if she's only playing with me. But why would she be doing that? Why would she be kidding me into fear? She would never do that. "Mum?" I whisper into the darkness, my breath folding out before me in a faint shadow in the night. I look over to Leliel, who is fast asleep. I wonder if Gull is asleep.

I push myself to my frozen legs, a wobbly upright position. A blinking of blinding light in the darkness flares up over the slight slant of the white-blanketed hill. I couldn't see what was going on from this angle. I needed to get closer. Was Mum out there?

There is a silhouette of another, maybe Leliel's size. He stands over my mother, the light on her wings is a fire, and she is clearly fighting back. The flames burn in my eyes like the fire of the gods as I watch her snap and bite at him, pushing herself to her feet one last time, a vicious, throat-ripping scream echoing out over the endless rolling white plain. He steps upon her, and I rush forward, but not soon enough as I hear bones crack. My legs go wobbly. My eyes close as he goes on, I can't bare it. My mother was dying right here. Right in front of me. A curling, twisting, horrid acid seeps from my mind to my stomach, invading and making camp there. I scream, my cries small above her own.

I don't open my eyes as he screams out undeniably untrue words. "Tonight we drink the blood of the Gods!" The words don't come out as anything more than a few yells. I don't understand what he is saying. I am on my knees, burrowing my legs into the cold snow, my eyes hurting from my eyelids fighting for dominance. I burrow as deep as I can at the time, try to muffle my own screams. They are acid-ripped, just like my mother's. She is being crushed beneath him. I can feel the light in her eyes fading, just like if they were my own.

She screams something into the night. She has never, ever said anything that vicious to me. Never. I scream back, but I only get a mouthful of snow. My goal.

A few moments later, I hear only silence. And maybe it's not silence because I could hear it. Maybe I was just imagining it. My shattered soul trying to put back together the pieces of what I'd just witnessed. My mother's brutal murder. A sin on the scene. A bloodbath of types, ending in a broken, brutal, and bloody death. He is turning to the sky, in which there is no moon. And then he walks away like they were having a polite little chat. What a bastard! What a FUCKING bastard.

An eerie calm washes over me as I wait, knowing he could come back for more if he wanted.
If he wanted to beat the living shit out of an innocent that was already dead.
He could come back.
My mind is riddled in thoughts of her. And why she would ever deserve it. A mother like her would never do anything so horrible to deserve a death like that.

An hour later, I still sit there, expecting the murderer to come back and kill me as well, my body shaking from the cold and the bloodied body not six yards away from me. My cries muffled once again by the tasteless snow, my eyes long dried from tears. Now I was just screaming.

I quiet as I listen for the crunching sound of his hoof steps as I have many times before. I can still hear them as he walks away, mother's once vibrant wings balanced on his back. I hear nothing, yet I scream into the snow once more. Nothing could prepare me for what I was about to see next.
I push myself to my hooves, finding a footing after so long. I stand in the snow like a statue for a few very long moments as I asses her from afar. She is bloodied and bruised, gashes at her shoulders, the ground beneath her stained with blood.

Not once did she cry for mercy. Not in my memory of the whole ordeal. I walk to her, the eerie calm washing over me for the second time. I stand over her bloodied body, broken bones and all, but her face is calm. Untouched by the vicious horrors that were laid upon her. I could almost imagine her heart still beating, her eyes wide with light and worry for me as they always are. Or maybe soft and still alight with some happiness she has whenever she looks my way. I don't smile at this, because a dark memory has taken over my heart, the brutal killer, still a silhouette against the dark sky is stalking my mind. Even if he doesn't know it.

Someday he will die because of what he's done. Someday he will fucking die. I shake my head in a tedious way, my eyes falling back into my head for a brief moment before the acid came swirling up. Taking over my brain, making me want to faint beside her. Lay beside her for all eternity.
That won't happen. I look at one of my many wings, my gaze harsh as I reach over with a snapping maw, plucking a rusty feather from my still-growing wings. A hiss escapes my teeth as I nestle the feather in with the remaining ones around her broken and empty body. Her cold eyes. I cry out once more for the loss that has ensued on this bloodied plain.

A hiss in my gut of the pain I was feeling. A yelp from my mouth as I walk, tumbling down a snow slope and away. I walk for a short while longer before falling unconscious in a snowy white drift.


When I awake, it is to screaming once again. But this is not the kind that I was hoping for.
I was hoping for my mother, calling to me from the place we'd called home for the night. Wondering why I'd crept off during the night.
But it wasn't her. It was him. He'd come back and was calling for me. I yell at first. For him to shut up I was right there. I was right here. I stumble out of the drift and towards the sound of his yell. "Calm down! I'm..." I think of her blood-soaked body once more, laying there alone in the snow. He is standing over her. A splash of rust and cotton candy in the middle of the frosted slopes. I choke on the words as I near him and her. My steps are reluctant as I watch them, guilt splashing over my gaze.

I...
I did nothing to help her.

And how could I, believing that I would die as well as soon as I stepped into the battle. I'd been frozen in place, in time as I watch my mother being brutally murdered, bit by bit he had kicked her wings out of their rightful place. Out of their beautiful, RIGHTFUL....PLACE.
A huff in the morning light. I stare at Gull like I am something different. Someone different. "He killed her, Gull." I say. I feel the guilt rising up like the acid in my stomach. I push it back down.

As I speak his name I feel a deep understanding in my body. He has come to look for her, only to find her dead. What would I do in this situation? What would I do? I would scream and yell and panic. I would probably scratch my eyes out if it wasn't for the calm that had washed over me like a wave and somehow flattened my emotions. I feel mature as I call him by his true name. No more Da until I regain my innocence.
No more Da.
No more Mum.


"..."
@[Gull] - wholly shit muse overload and wow I'm sorry.