I am a guide to the labyrinth - any

[Famine]

AN INNER WHINE LIKE A MAD MACHINE

They were born on the Mountain, separated by short, hot, heavy moments of grunting and animal urge. He was the second to be labored over and when he finally came, he was beautiful—except, it seemed, the brotherly rivalry had begun whilst still tucked together inside their mother’s scarred body. He was smaller than his brother, bonier by a fraction, as if the two had disputed every last morsel of nourishment Sinew had offered them. 

And he had lost every bout.

Mother named the first boy Feast, and he was hearty and horned, his split toes must have made the Mountain feel like home—he was half of what their father had fought for, that fat and well-fed goat-boy. The second she named Famine, and when his mother cleared the sac from his face, his tiny mouth yawned open to reveal needle-sharp fangs—he smelled faintly of raw meat and the open wounds that shined on his golden body glistened like little red lakes.

Famine took his first meal on the Mountain, too, alongside his brother. Mother’s milk and some blood he could not help but draw from her; mother gave them everything, the boys were spoiled. They played and nursed and slept, curled up, on that peak, breathing the hard, unforgiving air and feeling, constantly, as if they were overstaying their welcome.

The blight that festered in his body was insatiable. Everyday, a new bone was welcomed by the sloughing, golden skin, smiling through great holes on his hip, shoulder and crest. The edges became green-grey and slimy; his black eyes sunk deep into his skull, the skin around them darkening severely—still, mother loved him.

When the day came, as it always had to (no matter how content they were to stay), mother lead them down the Mountain’s side and when they reached its mammoth feet, a prickling and dangerous sensation washed over the boy’s skin. His ears flung back against his neck and he sidled close to mother, clenching his eyes shut. The blight screamed and complained, filled his ears with such horrible animus, as it receded into his body to live like a caged and angry monster.

His skin mended itself, smooth and clean and he smelled just like a boy—horsehair and dirt.

***

The boy is surely dying—father thinks so.
‘Could have left this one, he does not look like he will make it,’

Everyday, it feels more and more true, as the blight eats away at his stomach and lungs, turning the pink, perfect organs there green and slimey. What it could not do to his outside, it does to his guts mercilessly. Feast leaves him behind more often than not, unencumbered and full of verve. Famine cannot blame him for it. If he can, he tries to keep up and watches Feast with dark, filmy eyes as he feeds scavengers tasty little critters.

He walks with a stilted, wobbly gait, his ears drooping to either side. His head is bony and thin, the contrast between his jutting jawline and sunken eyes is disquieting; those eyes, which sit like extinct stars, flat and black. From his right shoulder sprouts his wing, almost long enough drag in the dust like his father’s. He stalks the wasteland like something reanimated, his knees dirty and scabbed—he winds past the river’s gurgle, keeping clear of its muddy suck because he knows he hasn’t the muscle to pull himself out, and slips into a sandstone cave he had followed his father into one day.

The walls are smooth and strange, as if carved by a drunken craftsman; here and there are chalky marks left by his father’s great horns. He plods over to one, measuring his height against it. He falls short but the disappointment he should feel is regressed by his worried mind—that tireless worker who shelves all the things that are not survival. Famine blinks and grunts, turning away from the wall and that defeat.

He likes the quiet here and the coolness, and in the relative safety, he allows himself to drop, slowly, to his knees, groaning and creaking, and then to his belly; his nose falls to the dusty ground, gravity pulling hard on his atrophied neck.

The boy is surely dying.

[burnt]

Burnt lurks;
She has her wings back and they smoke and smolder against her sides, trailing the small burned-out stars of embers at every step - every shuffle of feather against feather. It feels good to have some aspect of her former glorious self restored though she still lacks the ability to pilfer through and push thoughts in other brains; it is a sore spot for her that she cannot claim her telepathic birthright but must grovel and beg for it back. In the end, she knows that she will humble herself before the Mountain’s magics and masters in order to regain this part of her that remains just out of reach, like the stars on high that she can almost touch with lips and wingtips when she is buoyed up by the thermals and the strong muscles of her back.

For now, she is landlocked and lurking.
Lurking after her mother, not that Sinew proves to be elusive but rather that she is a lawless one and keeping after requires more attention than Burnt cares to invest in the matter. They had severed the cord of need for one another a long time ago and she only comes because of the rumor of brothers - half-brothers, but siblings to her just the same. It makes her curious that Sinew has bred again, and birthed not one but two - twins, to some stallion that calls himself king and has a strange command over her mother that Burnt cannot pry into because she lacks her unique gift of delving into the pink-gray wormy landscape of brains (not dissimilar from the way the gift-giver delves into their fears).

Burnt walks when she could otherwise fly; her feet must learn these cracked and broken paths of Pangea. Why, she could not say except that if it is their home, it might as well be hers’ too - until she finds elsewhere to accompany her sense of storm and spirit, like the gray of her eyes, pale and electric. She catches sight of one of the colts (he bears the stamp of Sinew’s get - they all do, in some fey and feral way) as he disappears into a dark space between the sandstone cliffs into what she presumes is none other than a cave. Clever, she thinks, not entirely sure if the colt is just that - clever, or trying to hide from the rest of them. She follows him into it, trailing behind on the cusp of grunts and groans and death-rattles. How has Sinew managed to make this frail sick thing that lies in the cool dust of the cavern? What afflicts him must be terrible indeed!

Pity climbs up to sit thick and dumb in her mouth, keeps it mute as she stares at him.
All the while, feathers jostle feathers and embers rain down on the sandstone floor. She takes no care to spare him from the occasional cherry-red speck that lands near him (maybe even on him) and smolders out of existence beside his own passing mortality. He could die at any moment, she thinks, still staring. Then slowly, she kneels down beside him until she rests on her own belly and folded legs, her wings pulled up close to her body and away from his lest he should catch afire and burn up like yesterday’s old pile of straw.

“Why are you this way?” she asks him, divulging nothing of herself for the time being.
Burnt has always liked her secrets.

[ooc: she wanted to come out and play with her little half-brother lol <333]

[Famine]

AN INNER WHINE LIKE A MAD MACHINE

He sees the shadows her wings cast cross the strange, crooked walls. They dance and flicker; they test the moorings of his imagination. The blight has all but extinguished that light, too. (She could be a dragon—she could be a rabid star. She could be someone set aflame by father for treachery. For all Famine knows, he is mighty and cruel enough to make it so. But he thinks none of these fanciful things, only that what comes snaps at his survival instinct like a rattler.) In his chest, feeble as it is, his heart begins to quicken its slack pace. He grunts, tries and fails to force a chipped hoof to grab purchase of the giving, fine dust that has blown into this hole.

Of all his siblings (half and full), he is the sorriest—at least, for now.

Famine groans, it echoes like tongued death across the sandstone, settling deeper. As he has always been, he is prepared for what is to come. He is prepared for it to be a reaper or harbinger—he expects it will come to engulf him; he conceives of no other reason for the brutal torch this haunt seems to bear.

Fear comes to him in many ways;
He fears death, sometimes—he feels it so close.
He fears his father.
Fear is not his weapon, and so he submits to it; he lets it die on his brain, turn to grave rot, and there it withers in the languidness of his addled mind.

When she shows herself, he narrows his eyes for a moment against the glare of her wings. He pays no mind to the sparks that fling from their conflagration—those that land on the sand around him perish; those that fall on his skin hiss and burrow, stinging for brief, keen seconds. He utters not a word as she looks down on him—he knows what she must see, can only imagine what she thinks.

He curses himself for letting her follow him—

It is a relief, however, when she lays down with him, bellies in the sand like two serpents. He finds it hard to raise his head, harder still to scramble up from the vulnerable position he has flattened himself into. It is a kinder thing to let him rest. He exhales, sand billowing away from his nostrils. “I’m dying,” he mutters back, half-muffled and sober. He pulls his chin up from the ground just enough to look at her, grains sticking to the spittle on his lips, sliding all gritty over his tongue.

“Who are you?” he lets his nose fall again, planted in the barren sediment.