Sikeax,

The weathering of words cannot change her stone features, fixed and made permanent by the long hours of time that drag on and encourage her to do all of this. Her son is her’s to love, her’s to raise and ensure that he is well and grown nicely, given a better start in life that is far from the one that she experienced in her younger days. No child needs to live a life that way.
But it is Amara who seems to believe that she was damned to her life when there was the ability to change the current state, but only if there was effort put in with all the intentions to reach the end goal.
When the spit splatters across her hooves, she doesn’t move, doesn’t cast her eyes further down to the ground to stare at its mess across her cracked and chipped hooves. They hang with a firm grip to Amara’s disgusted state, watching her body sour before her very eyes.
Just like in the past.
A snort flutters from her, as if Amara truly had lived such a hard life out of luck. There was no luck involved. Amara had simply made the choice to live in such filth and never change her ways.
“We both started out in the same place. As outcasts. Maybe our births were different. My mother gave me into this world while we waited prisoner to a herd that cared not a single thing about us other than making sure we stayed out of the open and within their hold. You say you had no family, but here I am, always trying to be there for you. If you had said something to me as children, then I would of taken you home to my mother. You talk to me like I was born into this herd, that I was born into the rank that I worked and devoted myself to for almost two years to gain,  but you were there with me when the night wouldn’t end and were there with me when I choose to join.” Her child cries out for her from beneath her guard, begging for attention, for his mother’s eyes as he tries to show her his attempts at standing, at being closer to her when she has offered him what love there was to give before Amara arrived. The stare is severed with his blade as Sikeax steps aside, turning her face to him.
A warm nicker follows the placement of her muzzle against his frail barrel, pressing gently with enough force to give him some sort of support as his legs work to unfold from below. While he cannot fully understand any of the noises she makes to him, but there is acceptance, simply because it is her, because instinct tells him that all she's supposed to ever do to him is help him survive and get a start in this world. “You can do it. Come on.” Amara’s presence seems forgotten as she tends to him. With everything to him, there is nothing to remind her to the world.
He wobbles as she watches him, holding her muzzle into place until she is sure enough that he has gotten it down, gluing herself to him as his first steps towards her side are performed and he has reached the teat that cures the pain and suffering that hunger forces upon him.
“I think you want to be treated like a child because you’re acting like one. Look. Look for once with your gold eyes and see if you remember all the things that there were held out to you in hopes you’d take it, that you would see the better side of life and want to work towards it. My family band is all dead, and while I miss them, the love and family of this herd, the same one that time and time again, Amara, I have offered you sanctuary in. Offered you love other than what I could give you when you let me, offered you healing, that remember, you pushed me away as I tried to heal you like you had made the conscious choice to be in the state you’re in. I tried to give you a place to sleep where it was safe, people who wanted to make sure you were okay and would give you companionship and love and a meaning in life so that you might feel important. And what do you do?”
Silence hangs in the air like a bad odor as she allows the other mare time to think about what she’s just said. All the times at the beach, the time during the night that she had made the choice to go the Throat and stand trial before Kri like she had been the cause of suffering when she was all but guilty, even the marsh. Time and time again, there was always an offer to give Amara something better, given out of love and fear.
“Oh, Amara,” Sarcasm weaves itself into the tone of her voice like she means to be dramatic and sad, on the verge of tears when she is all but ready to scream and tear Amara down out of frustration from how fucking pitiful her existence was, how it was all at her fault. “You called yourself a monster when each time, and every time I stood there with reasons for you to still be accepted and welcome, and reasons why I didn’t see you that way.” Zhu pulls his attention away from his mother’s side now and places it in Hobgoblin. Yellow eyes stare with intense curiosity as the child returns the gesture, wondering what he was exactly.
“But now, I think maybe you should go look into a lake. There’s a nice one over there.” With her horn, she swings her head into the general direction of the oasis. “You’ve chosen to become a monster. You deny everything that could help you get away from it. Hobgoblin has told me a thousand times that that’s what you are, but I always hoped you’d see that I wanted was what was best for you and wanted to help all along. Now, I see you want to be what you are.”
The feeling of curiosity grows in strength, remaining vigilant over her son and the serval, following the thrashing of the cat’s tail as Zhu investigates more, finally gathering up enough bravery to touch the Rougarou.
A quick flash of a smile, brought on by amusement, slips across her features as she watches her brother shift, chirping out of humor as the colt jumps.
Amara comes back into her field of attention as Hobgoblin leaps onto her back, talons clutching the untouched skin. Soon enough, he’ll paint her in new scars. The ones about the top of her neck where he typically hung to her mane are exposed with the lack of hair, and choose to linger about the large pink spot and its smaller companions like worried onlookers.
Her features have softened. Zhu’s ears brush against the underside of her barrel as he wobbles beneath her, looking out to the winged mare, wondering where exactly his wings are hiding. Tears are clotting the ores of gold.
They’ll wash away the blood and do her more good than I could.
“Monster not worth any help.”
Agreeing with him would break her heart. She expects him to become impatient and agitated that she chooses to do so, but instead finds herself relieved when he preoccupies himself with her babe once more.
“I don’t want my son selfish, nor do I want him to be like myself and have himself destroyed. I’d rather him know the times when to be and when not to so that he can protect himself.”
It strikes her that she still has no name for him, that there was no time to think anything out for him.
Do you have anything? “No.”
It’s not something to rush, is it? Every mother has a name for their child, don’t they?
“Name him Ew.”
Disgust, matched with confusion, burns itself across her face, but quickly finds the source of Hobgoblin’s ‘beautiful’ name suggestion. He’s given out a sneeze, his body’s work at trying to remove the last of any fluids from his passageways.
Hard eyes go to meet Amara, to stare her dead in the eyes when she has to look down upon her so-called friend when she’d much rather stand at equal height with her. “Fine then. I’ll name him Zhu. Is that pleasing?”
It’s not like Amara’s opinion of her son, now titled Zhu, made any difference to how she felt about it. Hobgoblin’s confused “Zhu? Zhoooooo????” rings out in her mind and makes sure to drag itself out as far as possible.
At last, her brother makes the typical choice, something she’s been waiting for to occur. He ignites a spark from his jaws and growls, snapping his bladed teeth outwards, directed towards Amara’s remarks.
On the inside, she breaks. Zhu didn’t have to occur. She didn’t have to give herself up as she did, but out of guilt from what happened to her brother, to how she wasn’t there fast enough to save him from the pain that she would of willing experienced herself, even tenfold, just to ensure that he was alright, she had tried to make up for all the suffering that she had brought him.
He’s just a baby.
“Do you always act so perfect? Is that what you’ve become? Are you too perfect for everything I’ve offered to you, that you choose to strike me down because a son I didn’t intend to bring into this world is now here, and that I’m more than prepared to suffer consequences that came with my choice? Do you really wish to know?” There’s a sob hung up in her throat that she cannot seem to swallow down, but her baby is here with her, looking up to her with innocent eyes, searching for something. If she’d known how badly handicapped his ears were, she would of been thankful at that time, but in his youth, she expects him to forget within a few hours time what she has says.
But she will not cry before him. No more matter how tight the lump in her thought is becoming, tightening when she drags out the sigh that always seems to come along when people are living at the brink of tears but using all of their might and willpower to avoid falling into the depths of tears.
“Goblin and I got burned. Maybe it was my fault, maybe it was his. Then again, it might of been no one's. But it happened without warning and without reason. That’s why I have no mane, why there’s a scar on my neck and why his wings are deformed and the fur on his front legs gone. And when I couldn’t find a way to feed him, or have him let me heal him, someone offered us a deal. So I fed Hobgoblin, accepted that I was pregnant when it became noticeable, and made the choice to take care of Zhu.” The next breath is long and shallow, drug out far as she tries to regain herself. “Or would you like me to lie to you, just so you can be happy?”


OOC: Oh sweet jesus this is long
Goblin is a serval at the start and turns into a Wyvern when the change is mentioned.

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