[private] It's nothing complicated, I just want to kill him

[avocet]

He thinks it odd that she smiles.

Avocet looks up from the hooves-that-should-not-be-hooves and frowns slightly, questioning that familial grin with a fixed amber stare. Their mother is gone. She is no longer to be found in the Pampas. Why does that not upset Manikin as it does him? Why is there no worry? Why is there no concern?

The yearling tilts his head as she comes closer and keeps a wary eye looking down on his sister. He doesn't flinch, like she suspects he might. The bay colt is unfamiliar with having his twin this close (at least without her beak and her claws). Her usual accoutrements are gone. Avo doesn't flinch but he stands rigidly as Manikin draws nearer and eventually curls next to him. The smaller bay tries to press her dark lips beneath the hollow of his jaw and it is then that Avocet finally moves. He curves his head towards Manikin and moves the exposed part of his throat away.

Don't you remember? She starts.

Does he? He remembers moving away from Manikin. He remembers that having her so close was uncomfortable. He remembers that he certainly didn't like sharing this proximity with his sister. Or at least, he hadn't in the past. @[Manikin] had loved to taunt him with her beak, pecking at the white spots on his coat. She had loved to use her talons to scrape against his hide. Maybe, though, she had wanted to help? Maybe she had only wanted to make stronger him somehow?

It grows hazy, what he remembers. There is a thin line in his memory and with each moment that passes, his physical protestation at having his only sibling so close weakens. "You made Mama angry," Avocet says with the last of his conviction. "I was just there," he says. He knew their Mother had liked him best. Avocet was just the unfortunate bystander in the memories that start to reform in his mind. If their dam lashed out, it was because of Manikin. She always had to poke and prod; his sister could never be still. There was far too much lightning in her veins, he had thought.

His sister had rarely made sense to Avocet but his stern face looks down to her, "You aren't making sense, Manny." The yearling tells his twin. "How could you die and come back? You went missing for a little while... but it was just a hunt. You always go hunting and you always come back."

Popinjay hadn't.

Avocet grapples with the memories in his head. It was just a hunt, wasn't it? Manikin had just gone searching for prey, hadn't she? He fights with the thought at the back of his mind that she hadn't. The memory in the back of his mind - once concrete - becomes an uncertain one.