Something had happened, but nothing had happened.

Everything stayed the same when it changed.

The world stopped, but no one seemed to notice.

... a bunch of other poetic and completely vacuous sounding shit.

The wealth of Helovia might not have felt the shift, but Isopia did. Whether it was because she had God blood running through her veins, or simply because her mind was open to more than just the possibility of where her next poop would be, was irrelevant.

She had felt it, and simultaneously felt something else as well: annoyance. Isopia was annoyed. Annoyed with her Father for failing to tell her about whatever it was that just happened. The Gods just, what? Just decided to waltz to the four corners of the globe and just hit pause a while? Why? For what purpose? And by what means?

"NOW WHAT." She bellowed challengingly into the sky without concern for how ridiculous she must have sounded. For one thing she didn't even need to speak out loud for her Father to hear her, and for another, he was clearly gone. All she was doing was shouting at trees - at one tree in particular. The tree of her brother. "Shut up." She mumbled under her breath, scowling at the Hototo-tree-shrine. "He probably would have told you where he was going." She continued, folding her mis-matched wings against her flanks, giving ample time for the tree to respond and say something in its (his) defense. "-It isn't as if ... you know, I'm particularly clever or anything. In-tune with nature. Worried about metaphysics. Or that I'm the Storyteller or whatever it's called and should be filled in." Sarcasm felt strange in her mouth and she didn't particularly like it. She didn't like this feeling of uncertainty and not knowing, especially when she assumed that her brother, as well as the other offspring, were likely to have been filled in.

Social isolation was something Isopia had grown to embrace. But intellectual isolation? That was an inner circle she would always strive to find her way into.

[MAYBE FOR @[Roskuld] ???]

Uncharacteristically Isopia felt her skin crawl back a few inches as a cold rush of water infiltrated her bones. It was a mixture of, who snuck up behind me - who's there? and did they hear me? Spinning nimbly on her impossibly long legs, the earthen child was both surprised and not, to see her stout cousin.

Of course it would be you she thought, her lips pouting slightly to see the shit-eating grin plastered over Ros's dark muzzle. She edged nearer, listening to her older cousins' account, but not wanting to believe it. "They shouldn't do that." She mumbled under her breath once Ros concluded, sounding very much like a wounded child. Obviously they should do that - that seemed the entire point of the underlying tone in Ros's voice, and yet it made Iso feel better to say it out loud.

Then, with a sort of hostile defiance in response to Ros's hoof-stomping, Isopia tossed her head towards the sky, causing her russet mane to flare away from her blood-splattered shoulders. "And if we don't handle it?" She inquired, as if tasting the way resistance felt. "What if we let the fort just go to hell? And why shouldn't we? There are consequences for our actions, why not theirs?" She held her death-masked face higher, narrow chest puffed out slightly. Perhaps it was because she didn't revere her Father and her aunt and uncles as Gods because they were related - but the idea of punishing them suddenly felt tangible and attainable. They couldn't just do this to them - and, if it happened as often as Ros said it did (which Isopia was banking on, for it only justified and further inflated her sense of righteousness) - and maybe now was the time to prove that.

"Right?" She asked after the moment had warn off and her doubts began to grow. Her golden gaze rolled downwards as she tried to maintain her heroic stance while at the same time looking at her much shorter comrade.

Since when does Ros have blue fire? She thought distractedly, noting the patterns of light on Ros's already oddly patterned coat.

…but I guess if they did, we wouldn’t have been born, huh?

Huh. Isopia had never considered their creation to be because of the failings of their parents. She assumed it was just ... necessary, just like gravity or bowel movements. But to think that their parents needed them put an interesting chink in Isopia's soon-to-be rebellion.

The nearly-shock and awe on Ros's face made Iso swell up slightly higher. Hubris was not an emotion that she felt often, but now, so soon after seeing Ros's mocking smirk, it made her feel even larger than she was (as if she needed the boost). It’s like…okay, yeah, we’re being driven crazy by something that feels absolutely wrong but what the fuck can we do about it? Isopia nodded as Ros reiterated the current state of affairs, deciding that her cousin's portrayal of it was exactly how it felt.

But then she had a rather odd thought.

"So ... They just left. Four corners of the world, four Gods, and poof. They just head off into the sunset, and we're left with this itching feeling-" Like someone paused a movie and there's static on the screen, but you can't un-pause it because the button is sticky with some soda you spilled on it last night but didn't bother to clean up and now you're fucked, staring at Willem Dafoe's half-smirking face on the screen. "-that only we seem to feel. No one else seems to have noticed. They are just going about their business like time hasn't just ceased to exist. So you know what we do?" Now Iso lowered her death-marked skull so that she could more easily peer into Ros's face. An eerie and confident smile parted her dark lips as she spoke. "We say no because it can't be real. How could it? Really? You think we just happen to be the only ones who noticed that the Gods just left? That they just paused our lives while they stepped out for a bite? I don't buy it. "

It's too bad Isopia didn't know what the Matrix was, because referencing Neo would have made things a whole lot more clear.

"This isn't real. It can't be. It doesn't make sense. This is just a dream, or a test ... maybe the Gods did this to see what we would do, to see how long we would scurry around like chickens or lemmings or sheep. But I'm done with this game. How about you?" She muttered again, her golden gaze refocusing with renewed confidence. "We have to wake up."

The how questions Iso was okay with. She could answer those - and so each time her cousin opened her gray-tinged lips to demand an answer, Iso was ready to give one. That is, if Ros would ever shutup. Hilariously, Iso had roughly the same qualms with her shock-themed cousin that Ros had with her: she thought she talked too much. Flatly Iso listened and stared, waiting for the endless dripple of how we gonna do dis' that was pouring from her cousin's lips to run dry. She had a PLAN. Did Ros really think she was the type to enter into this sort of passive-aggressive rebellion without one?

Truth be told she might have - it wasn't like the two were close. Not yet anyways.

But then a different sort of questions came spewing forth - ones that Iso didn't have the answers to. But was she about to let that stand in the way of her grand scheme? Her plan? Her destiny? No. Way.


"LISTEN." The youngest of the Demi-gods shouted, trying to drown out the insistent and incessant questions of her older cousin. c’mon, give me some ideas! Something, anything "I WILL." She concluded finally, fully aware that as of yet she had nothing to respond with, but was simultaneously fully resolved to hide

Nibbling on her lip, Isopia looked around the Veins as if searching for some way to respond to her cousin's final challenge. What was it that she wanted to break? What rule? What custom? What norm? What would have the earth shattering result of freeing them from this fallacious and illusory prison?

Then it hit her. Earth Shattering.

"Listen." She repeated again, although this time her hardened stare reflected the certainty that her mind was currently spinning around. "Kill me."

She let her words hang for a moment before dropping her quad-horned skull. She had been this close to her cousin once before - somewhere far away it seemed. A cave? She couldn't quite remember, but she remembered the closeness. The righteousness. "listen--" she whispered a third time, extending her wing to try and slap (although far more gently than a real slap would have entailed) her cousin's shoulder. Her feathers extended and spread, anticipating the hard flesh that they were seeking to find. Wouldn't this instill a sense of anger? Of frustration in Ros? Or, like the dream Iso knew that they were in, would it be twisted into something else?

"Kill me. Do it."

[I BLAME WINDOWS 10 AND ALL ITS BULLSHIT FOR SPELLING MISTAKES BECAUSE FUCK.]