SEPULCHER

He awakes and finds that he feels different, somehow. His face is cold in the gray light of the desert dawn, but cold in a very strange way. A little cloud of dry dust kicks up as he stumbles up onto his hooves. Obelisk and Altar are sleeping nearby, their familiar outlines curled up against one another. Perhaps Yadigar has already awoken and left for Hyaline again? There is a warm spot on the ground where their eldest brother normally slumbers alongside them.

But he pays this little more attention as he begins to yawn, his face splitting into five fleshy petals as he draws in his breath. Sepulcher quickly snaps his mouth back shut with a clack of his teeth meeting once more. That didn’t feel quite right. Slowly, he opens his mouth once more and finds that his tongue lolls between the bottom two portions of his face unless he curls it upward. He shuts his mouth once more.

A gentle hum of thought vibrates his chest and then turns to his siblings.

“Obelisk, wake up. Something is very wrong,” he says in a yelling-whisper, careful not to wake Altar. He worries she may startle and accidentally douse him with her star-breath, a fate he’d rather avoid. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

Tears drool from the strange toothed eyesockets of his face as a fearful whimper makes its home in his vocal cords. Gingerly, he opens his new mouth just enough for his brother to see the terrible fate he has met with.

BRIGHTBURN

She had drifted away from her mother at a young age and did not bother to look back. Brinly was not an especially caring creature by nature, but even less so when faced with raising a child that she had never asked for. The young girl had learned quickly it was best to simply stay out of her way, until, on a recent winter night, Brightburn had chosen to not return to her mother’s side at all.

It was easier to be on her own, she had realized.

It was easier to be alone by choice, since her mother had warned her that she would likely be alone anyway. Most could not withstand their touch, Brinly had warned her, and it would be smart of Brightburn to just not allow herself to become attached to anyone. Most of them had skin that was too thin, skin that would burn and blister from a simple brush of their muzzle against them. Brightburn had never witnessed this, though; her mother was the only one she had touched, and there was a part of her that wondered if Brinly was lying. There is a part of her that wonders if Brinly wanted to foster the same anger and bitterness inside of her daughter, just because she can.

She is too afraid to test the theory, though. When she stumbles across the trio – one of them still asleep, though she can’t imagine how when the two boys were being so loud – she keeps her distance at first, standing off to the side, simply staring. She has never met any other children before, and she is afraid of what might happen if she gets too close. 

Afraid of what will happen if they reach out to touch her, and she begins to understand why Brinly was so cold to all that they came across.

When she does finally take a few steps forward it is with an almost arrogant upward tilt of her head, hoping to portray a sense of confidence that she was in reality lacking. “What’s wrong with your face?” She blurts out in the direction of the one colt, somehow knowing that her tone was sharper than it needed to be but doing nothing to soften it.

SEPULCHER

Sepulcher loves his siblings dearly. Even without ever truly seeing them, he knows Altar and Obelisk are beautiful in ways that he is not. Now, with this new change to his body, the difference between them is even more staggering. He has quietly dreamt of being as beautiful as his brother, and now that dream has turned to little more than the dust coating them bodies when they rise from sleep.

He steps closer to his sibling and croons mournfully when he reaches for Obelisk’s shoulder. That is, until someone new approaches them and he turns his great head to observe her. Her shape is impossibly warm even in the cool morning air - blinding white in a sea of blue and green. There is a part of him that wants to coil around that blazing heat.

But then she speaks and his ego is further wounded. The five portions of his face click together and fresh tears roll down his cheeks. Is he really so hard to look at, now? She is a burning star come down to grace them with her light and he is just another misshapen monster of Pangea. Sepulcher takes a step back and hides his face behind his brother’s shoulder. He never realized it would hurt him so deeply to be unsightly in the eyes of someone he found beautiful.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he mumbles, his leathery wings curling forward to hide his face. Fool that he is, he doesn’t realize no one can see these appendages but him. They do nothing to mask his shame as he steps back from them.