Solira: The Ocean: that's what quitters always say. --

It has grown, son or daughter and both.

Wyvern has never enjoyed the element as they did, as his children did. he remembers and doesn’t a time before it, a time when the world was simple and the earth, gentle. He remembers that as he remembers dreams, lost in the fog of REM sleep; imperfect, surreal and – he knows – probably better than reality.

But he could not begrudge his children any more than he could begrudge his lover – which is why he walks, lazy as if the world had not burned to ashes, head low and shaded against the last glimpses of fire and hurt. He walks with singleminded determination: he knows where to go and why, drawn by the cord of bloodline spread between them.

There is pain everywhere – of course it does; she knows this as well as she knows how to feel the pulse of her heart and the motions of winter. darkness spreads in her wake – a bit more literal than usual – and her smile into something almost skull-like.

They do not like her, these kings and queens from distant lands.

Good; she was not born to be liked.

You would begrudge your people aid simply because you do not like me?

He would. She knows he would. They are like this, oracles – unable to see beyond their narrow ethics and even narrower pride.

Alas.

The wind purrs in her wake, as unashamed of their combined water and fire as ever – even as she watches her adopted father flit about, hunting someone. Nuitari. Do think about it. It costs me nothing to send Micah, or Astarte, or Nicodemus, your way. Even my daughter, I think, if this is anything like…

Like the hounds that ripped her throat.

Like the plague that wounded her children.

Like the second wave of hounds that destroyed her brother.

Fenrisulfr may be many things – b###h-Queen is only one of her epithets, as is Slayer – but insensible she is not.

Funny that she would genuinely offer help at the same time they begin to plot her homeland’s downfall.

Well.

Bring it.

I shall retire then. If you change your mind, send mother my way.

Then, she walks into shadows.

“Are you alright?” he asks it, the son – or daughter – he bore in his own body, from his own flesh.

At the same time, without his notice, all barriers fall and all inhibitions end…

fenrisulfr ; wyvern
a slayer and her charmer;