Solira: The Ocean: kidnappings; --

“That sprog is related to us?”

“Well, not to me,” he grins, staring at the child through red-gold hair; “to you. Sorry kid, you’re stuck with a crab-killer in your side of the family.”

But she doesn’t seem to mind, staring at her littlest uncle (!) with something akin to amusement. Her eyes are silver and usually inutterably serene; now, however, they flow with something else – curiosity, even interest.

“Maybe we should steal him,” she says hesitantly, tilting her head to the side. Unlike her gray mother and white father, she was born black as her grandfather, the same oilspill darkness that is darker than the night, because it is unbroken by stars or moons. “I mean, if he’s one of us…?”

The one besides her, however, is markedly different: a hoof cocked idly as if he owned the place (and, as far as he was concerned, he did), a lazy, lopsided smile. He doesn’t need words to say he would rather enjoy stealing the child away, if only because he is bored, but then; he doubts the kid’s mother would even care.

All the more reason, don’t you think?

“He isn’t one of us,” he shrugs, because it’s the truth. The foal they observe is more accidentally related to them than anything else. “At least, that’s what F said and F knows what she’s saying, most of the time. But,” and here, he grins again, which is little more than a baring of teeth, “we could kidnap him and make him ours; it’d be cooler than simply stealing.”

“Wouldn’t that piss grandmother off, though?” she muses aloud, which is hardly above a whisper; but he laughs it off. “Since when your grandmother cares for anything? She’s little more than a stone pillar, that one. And before you say that, who gives a damn about what bird-lady and fish-pony thinks?”

Still, she hesitates; it doesn’t last long. “Let’s do it, then.”

With a grin, they part from each other like a river around a rock, coordinating fluidly as if they near the colt from both sides. At age two, they learned to be close (though, of course, not as close as she and Alkonost; that would be impossible), close enough that they could read each other’s actions like siblings would, even if they weren’t.

“Hello, hello, kid,” he says smoothly, neck arching. If one didn’t know him, one might even forget the heavy limp on his left side; a birth defect. “Barely born and already a murderer, eh?”

alerion; jörmungandr
a snake, a wind, a wraith, a slayer;