It's cold, and it's dark, but Chimera doesn't remember much else. She remembers the way the land feels under her feet and the singing of the Aliens after a successful hunt, she remembers Brother and, vaguely, the spotted mare that had healed her. She remembers that Brother didn't like the mare, but he doesn't like anybody. Not anybody except Chimera, and she lives only for him, too, so they are a match. There is nothing else to know, nobody else to care about. When he is gone - as he is now - the awkward girl is lost. She does not know what to do when he is not nearby, and so she does the only thing she knows; she lashes out.

One of Pangea's awful lobsters is passing by and she catches it up in her snare, lifting the brainless beast into the air so its feet scurry desperately and its antennae flail. Heavy claws seek out its invisible attacker. Chimera is not invisible, she is not even well-hidden beyond the way her black coat fades into the perpetual night, but it makes no difference. She's too far out of reach.

"Rotten little sea beetle."

Somehow, her face manages to be petulant and bored at the same time. A practiced look. One dark ear turns back and a segmented leg rips away from the lobster's carapace. Her lovesick heart finds no peace in the maiming. Where has Brother gone? He always leaves her like this, wordless, slinking away in a way someone who reeks of blood should not be able to do so easily. She hates when he is gone. Her heart clenches as if it might stop, her throat thick, tears rimming her bloodshot eyes until they are fever-bright and wild. Her teeth snap shut against the anguish in her breast and the lobster cracks beneath her ardent fury, echoing sharply against the nearby canyons. It is not a quick or an efficient kill, but it is not meant to be. Blue blood and bits of broken shell rain down onto the dusty ground while, still suspended in the air, the lobster struggles against the eddies of death pooling up around it. Chimera exhales sharply, disgusted, and lets the dying thing fall with a wet crunch while she, sneering, throws her shoulder against the rough bark of a cold-dormant mesquite tree. The spines of its branches tangle in the short threads of her young mane and prick at her skin, but it is nothing to the tearing feeling in her chest.

Heartbreak is a strange thing.