Just a rat in a cage // Eyas

[Santana]

Leonine, the stallion paced the shoreline. There was murder in his eyes, impossible to miss, and made worse by the impotence he felt. Eyas remained huddled by their daughter's still form. He knew better than to disturb her. Instead, he had flown miles daily in search of the vaguely-described antagonists, patchwork images taken third hand from his son's mind. 

It was futile. Maddeningly impossible to track the waterbound mare and her scaled companion, though he made every effort to drag them back. They'd had their fun though, and it seemed they'd vanished as soon as Brash had broken through into their vicious game. 

The colt shivered now, though it had been some time. He wouldn't leave his sister's side, even if Eyas didn't let him near enough to touch her. Tana wanted justice for the wrongs done to his family. For the chasm that had so suddenly broken the serenity they had pieced together on this island. 

It was a hapless bull elk on the mainland that had taken his wrath instead. 

The draconic stallion returned to Islandres stinking of gore and no happier than he'd been when he left, but spent of any energy to continue his quest. For once, the Dragon's bloodlust was matched by his own. He suspected that neither would be quenched until he held two heads in his claws, and tore them from the necks of their owners, and had presented them ever so sweetly to the mother of his fallen child. 

Pacing was getting him no closer to that day. It was only winding the spring in his chest ever tighter, and causing weak threads of smoke to vent from his nose. 

"There's no sign of them," he admitted roughly upon returning to the makeshift den. It galled him to say it, but it was true. Worse was to say it while Ehko's body lay curled and torn within sight. He'd let her down. More than Eyas, more than anyone, he'd let his baby girl down as her protector. As her father. He had to look away. 

@[Eyas]

[Eyas]

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

She remembered giving birth to the twins.

They weren’t like Narcisus. His birth had been deceptively easy for a first one, though Eyas had been sickly and underweight at the time. Her firstborn had slipped out into the world and stolen her heart immediately, only to make her regret it soon after. Ehko and Brash had been taxing on her from the very first signs of life. Tana had kept her fed and motivated, and Eyas had worked to put weight back on, finally happy to have a reason for living again. She had loved them before ever seeing them. Would’ve done anything in the world for them, but it wasn’t enough.

Foolishly she’d thought herself safe. She’d thought that between herself and Santana no greater protection could be found. With her all-seeing eye and the bond she had to her children, with Tana's claws and fiery breath, his impenetrable scales and her ability to possess a body, they’d been infallible.

And the world had punished her harshly for thinking so.

Her mate returned stinking of blood, though it was not the stench she’d hoped to smell upon his return. “Vermin scum.” She cursed them hoarsely, unsurprised at the turn of events. This sadness felt all too familiar to her and Eyas welcomed it back into heart, codependent in the most unhealthy of ways. She knew only this: that one mare was possibly a bay or black with a lighter-colored mane, and that the other was spotted and a shifter of some sorts. Descending into the sea made it near impossible to track one, and the other’s scent had gone cold by the time she and the foal’s father had arrived on the horrific scene.

Only Brash was there to cradle his sister, and to this day Eyas can’t unsee the stain of Ehko’s blood coating her son’s fur. He’d been drenched in it.

Of course she feels wholly responsible. She’d been the one who’d promised her children that her eye would always be trained on them, that she would always be watching if they needed her. And where had she been when that happened? Playing the exhausted mother; sleeping while her babes had descended into the open jaws of waiting wolves. She doesn’t blame Santana, but her grief breaks her apart from him and Brash. She loses her senses and weeps until dehydration makes her ragged, after pulling her daughter out of the tide and up the shore where she could cradle her stiff body back and forth, like she’d done when Ehko had been a newborn.

“My little Ehko.” Eyas whispered, kissing her daughter’s forehead where one ear had been ripped entirely off her delicate head. She felt delirious.

“She’s so cold, Tana.” The tears began again. “She needs our warmth. Help me keep her warm.” The buckskin pony lamented, pitching her voice.

Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

@[Santana]