Cera
_{I'm an angel with a shotgun, fighting till the war's won, and I don't care if heaven won't take me back}

As her voice echoes back to him, he feels Ilaria's claws - small and dull though they are - dig into his skin. You haven't spoken since the Goddess' battle, she reminds grimly, Cera's excitement having bled into her own until she'd forgotten as well. He pauses as he hears his name circle round his ears, hoof lifted in aborted, instinctive movement towards her. A magnet drawn to her polar north, always circling back to her, ever since she'd looked up at him with this big newborn rubies and followed him around the Foothills like a lost lamb. How can he not go to her? How can he let this come between them, when he has reached absolution? When he is finally, perhaps, worthy of her forgiveness? 

His smile dwindled as she surfaced, not because he was unhappy to see her but because he remembered. And what a fool he was to have forgotten in the first place. He moves towards her swiftly, surely, one wing lifting for Ilaria to scamper across to the magnolia where she climbs to the lowest branch to watch over them as a steady guardian. 

"I'm sorry," he says, as sure and strong as the stone beneath the earth, the metal tempered in his blood, the rock solid foundation Midas had secretly fostered inside of him. He is unswayed in his apology, his humility, standing before this guardian of his forgiveness with the world in her eyes and his heart tied neatly beside hers in her chest. He stands for his judgment, a figure of repentance, and awaits the fall of her blade upon his nape. That, or the sweet kiss of deliverance. 

"I was so blinded by hate, by loss..." and he can say it and still breathe, now. That he can breathe at all is a miracle, but he is a man of faith, bolstered by sainthood. "But I've spoken to the Goddess. I've righted my wrongs. I've found salvation in my Lord, and in the Earth God's forgiveness. I know what I did...it was foolish, beyond foolish. I know I hurt you," and he softens, whispers, because that is a mistake far more grave than attacking any goddess. To have hurt the child he'd sworn always to protect, to love, to cherish above all others...he deserves her sentence of death, of rejection and abandonment. But he prays for her to stay, for all his foolishness, for all the mistakes he ever made and will surely make again. He prays that she loves him enough to stay. 

"You've grown so much," he whispers, and his throat is tight with remembrance. Chances another step forward. "I looked away for a second, and..." he can't speak past the lump, the collection of all his mistakes blotting out any attempt at finding words. "I was so proud of you, in those battles. I wanted to march over and kick those hovering stallions in the head, thinking they needed to protect you," and it's a choked attempt at a laugh but Cera manages it anyways, head shaking in disbelief at the ghosts of those he never knew. Didn't care to, if they could not see Ranjiri the way he did. And nobody would ever be worthy of her, because that level of love and the height of the pedestal he put her upon could never be equaled by anyone else. "And I'm sorry. For what I did. Both because of the hatred that drove me, and because I scared you," and his eyes are soft and green, and he begs her to look into them and see the sincerity for herself. "Can you forgive me?"