[private] i bet on losing dogs

[midnight]

Midnight

Starsin welcomed Midnight with open arms, and yet he cannot shake the feeling that he must leave. Perhaps it is a side effect of abandonment, perhaps not - he is too busy distracting himself with a wild, alien world to really know.

So, even with as vigilant as his sister is, the mischievous talon-footed boy escapes the clutches of Loess for the first time. When he passes the border, he comes to a total halt, fascinated by the way the scents change. He turns his head, blinking at the invisible line he has crossed. Sylva smells funny and the trees are wider than he is, but continues to delicately stop forward.

It is hot, and what dead leaves crumple beneath his talons are few and far between. Ivy spirals up a tree trunk every now and again, and hardy bits of greenery poke out of the dead ground. Midnight pauses to stare at the curling leaf of a small devil’s ivy, the soft lines of face casting rounded shadows.

Sylva is there and then gone, and the soft moss beneath him turns to dust and grass. Sulfur is strong and hot in his nostrils. Once again, the colt passes another border; once again, he pauses to stare as if the invisible line will appear. He rolls his eyes and casts a line of light over where he imagines the two scents mingle, finding it satisfying to split the kingdoms apart. In his little brain, there is no room for the gray that inevitably resides between black and white.

There is and there is not.
Just as there was once a mother, and now there is not.

Midnight turns from the light border as it fades, digging his claws into the hardened earth of Tephra. He casts sullen (yet still quietly curious) eyes over the tropical landscape.

now I wake up in the mornings and all the kindness is drained out of me
i spend hours just wincing and trying to regain some sense of peace

@[laura] <333