only silence remained, holding my breath in the dark; gasping for air with the lungs of a lark
Aero has never quite understood why she feels like an outsider amongst the pack that is her family—why she feels as though she is perpetually on the outside looking in. Perhaps it is because there’s something so profoundly sad within her when she has no reason to feel that way. Perhaps because there’s a dark neediness in her that is constantly clambering for more. Perhaps it is, instead, that she was poisoned at such young age with Molech’s specific brand of manipulation and she would forever be chasing that high.
Whatever it is, she does not often expect to be sought out by her siblings.
And when, today, she is, she is not certain how to react.
She hears the call of her older brother and she startles, lifting her head suddenly and swiveling toward the source of it. Without thinking, she shifts into the form of his favored wolves—choosing one that is red and rangy, built for traveling with a keen nose and sharp ears. She considers bounding away back to her solitude, but there is a loneliness that pangs in her breast and so she lopes forward instead, doing her best to hide away the more intrusive thoughts behind a shy smile when she breaks through the shadows.
Her faint glow is lessened in this form, but she still manages to emit it as she nears him, studying the now familiar skeleton that so much of her family wears these days. “Tamlin,” she says with a genuine smile, shaking her head and then the rest of her body, padding closer toward him. “How have you been?”
She pauses then, laughing nervously and dropping her gaze with a frown.
“I’m sorry—that’s such a silly question.”
