We need to go.
Hobgoblin doesn’t come back down, crying more and more up until the fight ends, watching with second-hand adrenaline still coursing through his veins. Sikeax had forbid him to fight, and the dragons seemed different from him, with their breaths of flame and different sizes and colours, their fear of the sea and ice as if it’d kill them if it touched them. He wonders what it must be like to stand over them, to sink his teeth into their flesh and watch them wither and die when his many forms amount to skyscrapers before their feeble shacks.
He wants to see one prevail, hopefully the blood one who some sort of respect is tied to for the food, to stand over the gold one. The greeting is met with a low chirp, turning his head towards the golden one, staring with eyes full of wonder.
“Where new dragon come from?”
This isn’t time to have conversations. I don’t want Zhu here.
A short snarl is directed at it before taking off, reaching his throne atop his bonded, thus using his title to watch the coming show, because here comes the one she is so scared of. Zhu’s ears prick forward, alert, prepared for something interesting, expecting another repeat of his mother’s verbal assaults. 'Was that how all adults greet one another?'
She’d kept him hidden away enough that there was no way to be exactly sure, but it doesn’t keep him for wondering.
His white face and red eyes are an insult to her, an insult to her son’s existence, a poison that taints his blood. She’d give her own life to ensure that Zhu doesn’t indeed end up like his father, disgusting, uncaring, thinking only of sex and seeing nothing out of the world but that. If her son was there and if she wasn’t being forced to set an example for him, then this might go differently.
But not today, because he needs to know that this man is his father, and this stranger needs to know that he has willingly fathered a child.
The urge to spit clots her words. The look on his face is almost laugh worthy. Hobgoblin is quick enough to do it for her, spewing out screeches that in rhythm could match that of laughter.
“Skullface lost! Skullface almost as stupid as Monster!"
There's a little need to actually smile, to take part in the glee that rises out of Hobgoblin when the man is reminded of the outcome of sex. Zhu is left confused, out of the conversation and having no way to become involved.
"Are you an idiot, or blind? Did your mother never teach where children come from, even what a child is, where they come from, those sort of things, or have you messed up your eyes? Did you think that sex never has an outcome on the other side?”
In the back of her head, she hopes that he is blind instead of stupid, and might just be smelling the weird smell that clung onto Zhu. She’d rather have become pregnant by a man who had gone blind instead of an idiot.
“It’s your son. Look at him. Doesn’t he look like you, because we both know that he has nothing of me in him.” A step aside let’s her son, their son to come into better view for him, allowing Zhu to stare with white eyes dazed and small head finally tilting to one side, left in awe at the sight of someone taller than his mother. The ‘dragons’ that she had spoken of just a few moments ago seem more interesting than whoever this is.
‘Is it going to cry again?’
A useless thought, but one important enough to make him flicker his ears backwards and stomps a hoof into the snow. Anything but crying.
“His name is Zhu, just in case you’re wondering.” And with a mention of his own name does the boy make a try at looking better, turning white eyes to his mother as if she has something for him, maybe a brag or compliment. Amusement is all over her face, painted on with enjoyment. “Did you not want to be a father?”
And here to think, he might really be that level of stupid.

talk talk talk