Their children will learn to hope for a Caesar.

 

His remarks are short and meaningless, the sort you can’t reply to without feeling like a jackass, so I don’t, instead nodding in silence, dropping my head back to the tangy leaves and sweet berries at my hooves; not that I mind the vapid nature of the conversation, really, considering that he lets slide my almost mentioning her, and it merits little of my attention to remain involved, otherwise.  Even when Duir still stares after the fawn, wishing it would turn back, I’m looking inside, staring after my own proverbial, fleeing spirit, her black tips wings spilling embers, as she turns her back to me for the last time. 
 
I don’t know if I would rather mine come back, or leave forever. 
 
I’d seen my sister since she’d stormed away from Erebos and I that afternoon, of course… but no words had been exchanged in those mass gatherings, in which she had stood among her real family, and new friends, and it had ever since seemed like my brother and I were the only to notice her, the missing piece of our once inseparable being.  Her eyes were always cast on Gods, on speakers, on the strangers standing alongside her, with a warmTH that had once been mine; those eyes never seemed to see us, at least not anymore.
 
I’m glad to be here, where memories of her don’t rise to mind, where all I have are these few fleeting moments.  It makes it easier to push her out of my mind entirely, to chase her deep into the dark, winding woodland of my not-dealing-with-that mind acreage.
 
Fuck her.
 
"I guess," I answer, looking up without raising my head all the way, tilting my head and shoulder in a nonchalant, unicorn shrug, "its not really the home I remember.  Things change, though, right?  Not all of them were bad, even though a lot of them were."
 
When I’d come home first, I’d been unable to stand the thought of it; my home, my kingdom, it had carried on without me!  All the differences had pressed in on my youthful soul and burned it.  Now, however, more time within this existence, and having been forced to deal with more and more change the longer I dwelled in it, I’d begrudgingly come to accept that all I could do was swim, wherever the current of Time decided to sweep me.
 
Didn’t make it any less of a crock of bullshit, especially when the river eddied in whirlpool of death and revived Gods, or the left branch, the ruse, of trying to help Erebos out becoming a swift waterfall of responsibility (accompanied by a Divine threat of who-knows-what should I fail).  A waterfall which I was actively trying to thwart, being out here in the woods, doing fuck all.
 
I redirect my thoughts to more pleasant things:  the positive changes, so to speak.
 
"For one, that Thranduil is who knows where," I laugh, happy that the prying gold is wherever else but in my face, asking questions I don’t have answers to, or do, and would much rather he simply go fuck himself than answer, "did you ever have the, uh, honor of meeting the Laurelin, yourself?  I can’t say I know much about your history with the herd.  I was, er, out."