tyrath

He burned like an evening star against the twilight tapestry of the sky, wings uplifted and carried by the wind which rolled from the ocean. The colt often took wing during the sunset and first hours of the night, there was a sense of freedom and respite, out of the glare and ever watchful gaze of the sun, tethers which seemed to bind him during the day unraveled and were lost to the night. His mind can wander freely and his emotions can erupt, he can wear them across his painted face and not worry who or what can see them, each one is a volatile volcano, it's rupture lines are the lines of his brow and the way his fanged maw twists downward. The sundering of the earth is the audible sound which rumbled from his burning chest into the heated air.


There's no denying that he is a turbulent creature from the events which have already transpired in his short life, from being left by his mother to wander the harsh expanse of their homeland and beyond alone, to nearly being devoured by wolves for it. All of his major milestones in his life have been missed by the one who should of been there to witness and teach him, and similarly been filled by another who swept him up as her own, filled by a father trying to do right by his far reaching brood. It's a bitter fuel which drove him forward, the thoughts which turned his bile sour at the sight of other colts and fillies being loved by their mother, it's the fiery sword he summons to give him strength when he is challenged and rises to the occasion.

Sometimes, when the glittering sky twinkled overhead, and his head lay against the grassy dunes, he thought about letting it go. Let everything negative disintegrate into the wind and let him be done with it, strike off his own chains and feel the suns warmth on his skin untainted by dark thoughts, let the light peer through the clouds and take his Grandfather's advice well and truly into his heart. It never happened, when at the precipice of the abyss, he held tight to those chains and slung them around him like a wrought iron bulwark.

Tyrath whirled closer and closer to the shoreline, the grass became sparse and sand took the place of soil, the smell of tallsun became the smell of water and salt. The air turned cool and caressed his ashen hide to rid it of the heat the day had left behind. Crimson pits spotted her though, from the corner of his eye. Her, the unmistakable white and grey, her golden threaded hair a halo to crown her with. The all too unique horns which curled from her head. She was no more a brief parting of words, a face and smell imprinted into his memory, which despite it's age never became muddied or crinkled by time. No she is as brisk as a spring wind in his mind, the smell of fresh grass in his nostrils and her words the tinkling of summer bells to his ears. However much he wished to stain it, kick the last remaining parts of her shrine within his heart to dust, she remained clear despite her shadowed dwelling. His heart soared and then plummeted with a hard clang in the bottom of his stomach, his flight is stopped, like he's crashed into an invisible barrier which has knocked everything out of him in one fell swoop.


Part of him wanted to leave, it screamed at him to turn and go, that this time it would be alright to flee. He's already descended, a falling sun out of the sky as his wings pulled against him towards the end. He all but crashed into the sand, his cloven hooves sunk deep to part the sand in a small wave. There are many words which want to tumble out of his mouth, there is a fire in his stomach unlike the one which lights him up from the inside out. Perhaps it's the shock of finding her which kept it behind the prison of his rib cage, hadn't he searched as far as his petite hooves could take him? Hadn't he looked to the sky every night for the faint sign that she had come to claim him? He's found her at last, when he had stopped looking in all the places a Demi-God might've flown.

Time appeared to move slower in the moments he had landed, his gaze firmly fixed on Aithniel. Part of him really doesn't believe it's her, that his bitterness has finally spilled over and conjured up something to either put his mind to rest or explode upon. The other more rational part knows it is her, flesh and bone and every bit her as she could be. "Mother?" It's weighted, tasted over his mouth to see how it feels before he lets it slip. Does she deserve the mantle of mother? There's nothing afterwards but silence, it hasn't him who has sinned and left his babe to the wolves and the harsh realities of the desert. He let the ball roll over into her court, a son waiting on his absent mother to do something to soothe the waves which crashed against his barriers, a thousand furies screaming for release. Was her absence for a reason? Did some divine will pull her away to tend to matters above mortal understanding?

Or was it she didn't love him enough to stay? Was there something so wrong with him, that she couldn't bear to be near him?



"Talk."

This is the Hour of Twilight,

and all will burn